Comment by hluska | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hluska | Hacker News Reader

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Hey pal, I almost wonder if our Dads know each other. Our upbringings were so similar, just a couple of provinces apart.

My version of that story was when the Chief of the Peter Ballantyne First Nation came to visit us. I spent the first couple years of my life on the PBFN. I was about your age and had the same questions about how great it would be if they moved to my city. he explained that on reserve, he can just be a man. He can be good, he can be bad, he can make mistakes and he can have successes. In a city, it doesn't matter what he does, he's just 'a fucking Indian.' If he makes a mistake, he's a 'dirty fucking Indian'. If he has success, he's a 'fucking Indian sucking at the teet'.

I also remember him cracking a joke. "Do they know this isn't India?" :)

I've never heard a proposal to give back the land unless people have been sipping. And I say silly stuff too when I sip so who can judge. The most radical idea I've heard outside of those settings is to treat current lands as sovereign nations that have an equal standing with the rest of the nation. The goal seems to be peaceful and respectful coexistence.

I think we can all (or at least should all) be able to get behind that. Wouldn't peaceful coexistence be a pretty amazing way to live??

“treat current lands as sovereign nations that have an equal standing with the rest of the nation”

This isn’t as radical as you may think. It’s been a stated goal for a long time. I’m always surprised how the actual meaning of these words don’t seem to make any impact on Canadians. Perhaps phrased another way, such as, “When I have an Ojibway passport…” might catch people’s’ attention.

Tangentially, they do have status cards, I worked at a wal-mart up north for a summer after high school and I used to have to type the number on the card into the cash register to override the tax on the transaction of people with a status card. The same wal-mart that banned people with a status card from buying mouthwash because they labeled the natives drunks and didn't want to propagate the issue. Yah seriously, that happened.

Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s not radical at all. It’s almost a word for word quote of what early Indian agents said to get people to sign. It asks Canada to abide by the treaties it signed! Crazy and radical thinking, hey??

Weirdly, in the Canada of today, that’s considered extremely radical. But it’s also considered radical to think First Nations should have clean drinking water.

If you’re interested in one heck of a read, learn about a Cree Chief named Big Bear. He quite literally saw into the future - I think his words make him one of the few genuine political visionaries of his era in Canada.

If you’re or anyone else is interested, I have a bunch of books. My email address is in my profile - some of these books are hard to find and I’m privileged enough to be able to afford them. I’d be happy as anything to mail them out to anyone interested, provided you give them wings and give them away to someone else. :)

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