Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
Perhaps not but in the leadership they've obviously spread the word recently that a more aggressive militancy is the way to go.
I am hearing a lot about it in my entourage. Living where I do I have lots of friends who are public servants - both at INAC and in other departments who deal with aboriginal issues. These days when the feds approach indigenous communities with (what the feds think is) good news they are received with lots of defiance and hostility.
Just last week a good friend of mine went to the official opening of this exhibition in Gatineau: http://www.mosaicanada.ca/
And one of the speakers was an aboriginal leader who went into a long rant about this being "our land and not yours", "you are guests here", "white people this and white people that".
So there is definitely something going on. |
I'm genuinely curious what these spokespersons would say at an event in Brampton or Markham. Would they rant about "white people" to a room full of non-white people whose ancestors very clearly had nothing to do with how North America was settled?
Among other subjects, my dad taught First Nations history to a lot of First Nations kids at high schools in the Six Nations area over several decades. He's not First Nations (nor am I). He knows the history inside and out, and while he's been a progressive/social justice person since the 1960s, he doesn't go to the ridiculous polemical extremes that people in the current climate do when he talks about it.
I suspect that my father's life's work would not go over very well with a lot of these bloviating activists. Perhaps it was a form of "cultural appropriation" on his part? I don't think he ever wore a headdress...