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Comment by tsimionescu | Hacker News Reader

> Canada’s inclusive treatment of its indigenous peoples, at least in recent decades, could be emulated by Europeans (though First Nations Canadians might fairly object to closer ties with ex-colonists)

I really wonder what the author meant with this line. There's very few populations in Europe that bear any similarity whatsoever with the relationship between First Nations people and most Canadians, since most populations in Europe have created their own states. And the few tribal populations in Northern Europe generally were and certainly are today treated at least as fairly as anything in Canada. So who are they talking about? Would the Basques feel that they would be treated better as First Nations people in Canada than they are today in Spain?

Note that the treatment of immigrants is a completely separate topic in the article, so I don't think they could be referring to, say, the treatment of Syrian refugees with that sentence above.

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Most peoples in Europe do not have their own nation state. In fact, pretending that those peoples with their distinct languages (often called “dialects” despite lack of mutual intelligibility) and cultures do not exist is a key part of the establishment of nation states in the 19th century. In most of Europe, the nation state project was so successful that this hardly matters today (but of course there are exceptions).

Still comparison to First Nations seems off. Maybe it's about this: Disadvantaged ethnic groups such as Romani or Jews (particularly post-Soviet Jews in recent times) are often denied a connection to the nation state or (what you might call) the shared European cultural heritage. In contrast, I don't think anyone argues that First Nations aren't true Canadians.

Not sure how you can lump Romani and Jews together like that. Jews have a nation state, with "right of return"; a much better deal than the Romani get.

I had not thought about it that way. It's not such a great deal if you feel you belong wherever you are living now in Europe, and view yourself a quasi-citizen and European (even in case if there's no realistic path to citizenship due to your personal circumstances).

What's a "quasi-citizen"?

Someone with pretty much all the rights of citizenship (including that deportation is only a very distant possibility), except for voting rights and the formal recognition of citizenship status. Kind of what you get if you move within the Schengen area, maybe except for the deportation part.

Can you explain this in a bit more detail? Or maybe with a hypothetical example?

What do you mean by no path to citizenship?

Are there historical groups of jews somewhere in the EU without any passport?

Starting in the early 90s, Germany invited Jews from the Soviet Union to settle in Germany, but their ancestry was not considered German. Germany did not strip them of their citizenship during the Third Reich, so that type of right-of-return law did not apply, either. Some would have been hesitant to accept citizenship any way. (This was the time when refugee homes were burning in Germany, and the unconditional right to political asylum was abolished.) The effect at the time was hat professional qualifications weren't recognized, which meant that many did not have access to high-paying jobs. Previous pension contributions or equivalent in the CIS states are not recognized, either. The end effect today is that many among the older generation are dependent on non-pension welfare payments because the German state pension they receive is so low. This makes it impossible for them to obtain citizenship because of the self-sufficiency requirement.

Other persons whose ancestors emigrated from the Holy Roman Empire (long before Germany existed as a modern nation state) are considered Germans by blood, so it's not about the time of emigration from Germany. These decisions are arbitrary, and it's puzzling why Ashkenazi Jews are still not treated as having German ancestry.

European nations still have plenty of overseas colonies.. err.. territories. As somebody from an ethnic minority that was eradicated through educational and cultural policies that sounds like a good idea even without the former.

This is the best point that I hadn't considered by far. I was only thinking of the actual territory of Europe, but you're absolutely right that things look very different in overseas colonies.

Western European countries do. The list of European countries that never had colonies is much longer than the ones that did. You take away 4 England, France, Spain, Italy, and Belgium and you have almost no colonies and there are roughly 50 countries in Europe.

Modern boundaries don't reflect history well. There's an extension of linguistics concept to states rather than languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...

We also have lost much to history. Take a look at the shuffling that happened during https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period

They certainly reflect history better than they do for the First Nations in Canada.

I also have no idea whatsoever what 1500 year old history has to do with anything. None of the cultures of that time exist today in any meaningful sense. Even the Italians or Greeks of today are not the Romans and Greeks of 300 CE, they are vastly different cultures and speak unintelligibly different languages.

Lots of Europe has ethnic strife and tensions. Bosnian / Serbian. Czech / Slovak (until recently). Spain has its breakaway ethnic movements. Ireland like others mentioned is a close analogue.

Nothing like that is even by slightest similar to indigenous people of Canada. Nothing. Also while Canada my want people, so does EU.

The English colonized, ruled, and conducted a deliberate genocide against the Irish people. It's pretty analogous.

The English starved them to death. The English forcibly displaced them. The English stole their resources.

The English even forbade them from speaking their language.

And about 100 years ago, the Irish rebelled and won their independence from England. And those that didn't are no longer being treated this way, and haven't been for more than 50 years.

So what exactly should the English learn from Canadians today? Even the Irish in Northern Ireland have more freedom and autonomy than the First Nations have in Canada, not less.

Not to mention that UK doesn't even belong to EU for a quite considerable time for a random person to take a bloody notice.

Ireland does, though, and is it conceivable that a victim might also learn from Canada's mistakes?

The articles was praising Canada's treatment of the First Nations as a thing that EU countries should learn from, not mistakes to learn from.

The level of ignorance of some people here is astonishing.

Bosnia, Serbia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic are all separate countries today. Of course, not all Bosnians, Serbs, Slovak, and Czechs live in the respective nation states, and there is still strife. But I still fail to grasp what, say, the Czech Republic could learn about how to treat its Slovak minority from how Canada trays its First Nations minorities.

Should different Slovak communities in the Czech Republic have their own lands and make their own laws? What if they're living in the same village as Czechs, how will they split the territory there?

There is simply no valid comparison between how populations in Europe live and have developed up to today, and how things sit in Canada with the First Nations.

And note, the Basque country in Spain is already an autonomous region with significant ability to do its own governance. The Basques there have been practicing their own traditions and using their own language since the fascist dictatorship fell. The Catalans of Catalunya (one of the richest regions of Spain, mind you) also speak their own language and are not in any other way culturally suppressed, again, since the fascist dictatorship fell. The reason for their struggle for independence is mostly their perception that they are being dragged down economically by the poorer parts of Spain (i.e. the strictly Spanish-speaking South).

From reading the article, it is about reconciliation. Canada makes a lot of public official gestures to the people who suffered at the hands of the government. Such overtures could help in European countries where ethnic strife still exists.

That would make sense, indeed. It's true that a lot of European countries have a great deal of difficulty in admitting to their past crimes very loudly, even if they technically do recognize them officially.

and pushing for division and strife is what putin pays you for

On the topic of Russian agitation about Western oppression, imagine all the quiet repression of the minority ethnicities in Russia.

Russian spending on 'internal security' is legendary.

Ireland springs to mind, and in fact has strong ties to Indigenous nations in the Americas for their similar struggles

That doesn't make any sense to me (as an Irish person). A hundred years ago, sure. But modern Ireland is one of the richest and most privileged places on earth. The problems we have in modern Ireland - wealth inequality, housing crisis etc. - are decidedly problems of our own causing, and do not in any way equate to or reflect the struggle for rights and recognition of indigenous peoples around the world.

We do have our own indigenous minority who are treated badly by society - Irish travellers. There's a lot of racism in Irish society towards them, and we could do with looking at how other countries treat minorities, indigenous or not, and recognize for all that we like to harp on about our own poor treatment in history, we are doing exactly the same here towards travellers.

It’s odd to call Travelers “indigenous” because they don’t predate the settlement of Ireland by the current majority group. They’re Irish people who culturally diverged around 1600. It’s like calling Appalachian Americans Indigenous.

I don't think the semantics of the word indigenous are the important thing here, although I will say that officially, according to the Irish government, Irish travellers are an indigenous minority and attempts to discredit this are usually a thinly disguised attempt to discredit the credibility of the Irish travellers as a distinct ethnic minority - or, to put it another way, it's one of the more common ways that Irish people are racist towards travellers.

Instead, it's the racism and discrimination against an ethnic minority that we should focus on.

Calling them “indigenous” is a tactic to give greater moral weight to their political positions. While those positions may be meritorious, that doesn’t justify false characterizations in their service. Irish Travelers are ethnically no different than other Irish, nor does their presence in the country predate that of other Irish.

Like the Roma?

> And the few tribal populations in Northern Europe generally were and certainly are today treated at least as fairly as anything in Canada.

Really? The Sami populations don't have any sovereignty that I know of.

In Sweden they have a separate parliament.

In Finland as well, although it's not really sovereign like national or municipal parliaments. The constitution does grant Sami and Roma people sovereign rights on their languages and culture.

Is sovereignty the criteria for being treated fairly?

Not being treated fairly is a pretty good criteria. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001d059

You have to shoehorn the Sami into this comparison because they really only colonized the Nordic countries contemporary with the majority "European" populations. They weren't, in the same sense, indigenous, just... less western.

No. What you are refering to might be in regards to Uralification, while 50% of Saami undeniably have been indigenous population and were there before Uralics arrived there. And Nordics encroached on lands where even partly Uralized Saami were first. No one is arguing that Saami are indigenous to Oslo, but they were first in 80% of Scandinavia.

I don't think that 80% is true in either the geographic [1] or more practical sense. It's maybe 50% by landmass.

But more significantly, it's not the arable or densely inhabited parts; the vast majority of Scandinavians do not live on land where Sami ever lived. This is just a vastly different than Canada where every square inch was native land at one point. For example, Vancouver has Squamish-owned and developed land right in the middle of downtown, it's a big controversy!

I'm not trying to dispossess or trivialize the Sami or the injustices they did suffer, it's just a very different relationship.

[1] https://canadiangeographic.ca/articles/the-sami-side-of-trom...

At least in Finland Sami lived in the southern parts as well, some still in the 17th century. Most southern Sami probably assimilated with the Finns.

Sami are part of the uralic people although they arrived to Fennoscandia some centuries before the Finnic. There were people in the area before the uralic people came but very little is known about them.

They got some sovereignty in Sweden with their own parliament etc (but its jurisdiction etc is limited). Can't really say if better or worse than Canada because I don't know enough about the laws in Canada.

> So who are they talking about?

Maybe the Irish, who were genocided by the English up into the 20th century.

They are talking about what the EU countries of today can learn from the Canadians' treatment of First Nations people today. Canada's treatment of the First Nations people was also appaling up into the 20th century.

"inclusive treatment" is also an insane label to apply to Canada-First Nations relations

The irish. The scots. Basically everyone who wasnt related to the vikings after 1066. The welsh trying to protect thier language are basically quebec. The scots talking about leaving, but never actually doing it, are basically alberta. And thats just similarities in the british isles. Then there are all the little counties bordering giant countries (finland) that see parallels to the canada-us relationship.

Your assertion is that the Scots, the Irish, and the Welsh are treated less fairly in the UK today than the First Nations people are in Canada? Because the article was claiming that EU countries have a lot to learn from Canada today.

I personally very much disagree with the concept that First Nations people in Canada are afforded more rights and are freer to practice their cultural identity than the Scots, Welsh, and Irish in the UK in 2024.

Whether they are or they aren't treated fairly today is beside the point. They were treated badly in the past and now their descendants want recompense for those past wrongs. The wounds in Canada are likely a little more fresh, but many peoples in Europe still remember wrongs done to grandparents.

> They were treated badly in the past and now their descendants want recompense for those past wrongs.

They (we?) do? This is the first I hear of this. Where did you read about this?

Are Frist Nations people in Canada receiving recompense for their past terrible treatment?

At least the Scots and Welsh still exist (e.g. unlike the Occitan people or the Bretons) and were actually allowed to have a referendum (unlike the Catalans).

Were the Scots (i.e. lowland ones) really ever treated that bad?

If anything they had a much bigger part oppressing the highlanders than the English.

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