This news comes with the sinking feeling that we are paying for this foolishness. Did you know that Canada’s Saugeen Ojibway Nation is suing the Crown to return most of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay to the tribes? It seems the white man might have spoke false in some treaties in the 1800s. The case is expected to tie up the courts for many years to come.
How you lay a claim to the waters flowing through the Great Lakes is mind boggling? I guess we are going to find out. I suspect the aboriginal nation has also found out the value of fresh water in this modern world.
This reminds me of my old friends up in Tiny Township on Georgian Bay where some of the home owners land was sold to them to the shoreline instead of the beach line. The native claim should add an interesting complication to an already complicated argument.
It seems to me that it would pay dividends for the federal government to pass a statute of limitations on those old treaties. We could not only save a lot of money and time of the courts but it could give our aboriginals an opportunity to get a life. There is a lot more to it than just drumming, dancing and demonstrating.
And the courts need to realize that the aboriginal bands that were here when Europeans discovered America were mainly nomadic. They tended to park in places where food seemed plentiful, until it was no longer plentiful and then they would wander off again.
This style of life tended to leave ancestors where they fell and that is why just about any land that is not too rocky can be considered as an ancient and sacred burial ground.
I have met and known many aboriginal and métis people across Canada and by and large they have earned my respect. And the more they do to improve the lives of their fellow aboriginals, the more respect I have for them.
And I am sorry I will not use the word ‘indigenous’ in talking about them. The word ‘indigenous’ means ‘from here.’ They are not from here. Their ancestors came to the Americas maybe 15,000 years before my ancestors arrived but we can all work together to make this a great country in which to live together.
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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