I think this post alone is enough evidence of that. I mean, don't you find the above just a little patronizing? Let's flip that around shall we? Let's ask what we should do about Austrian racism, which resurfaces in the news periodically, there is no question of that, and yet, why shouldn't we be the Enlightened Ones to self-appoint ourselves to solve it?

If these were easy questions suited to a semi-anonymous webforum or a call-in talk show, as, say, how to care for your septic tank or how to support Earth Day by educating others about Bruce Nuclear's insurance liability limits, then that is one thing. But they are not.

These are complex issues, and as with most human questions, we have to take each individual timeline case on its own merit, we have to look at that timeline carefully, without pre-judgements such as whether defending your property is defacto illegal (remember Henry David Thoreau?) from only a few slanted newsreels hyped by a media who's agenda is already quite decided. Don't call them by derogatory labels, you have to call them by their real name, and when you do that, every case in the courts clearly calls for a trained and sober judge (which is more than Mr Blues got) and I have never seen CFOS throw a call-in party about Owen Sound bully gangs or white-collar crime.

I'm not even sure these issues you formulate here are even questions. Isn't it racist tripe to say 'Natives' are tops in all those profiling categories when you do not say what the comparitive ratio is when compared to whites from identical socio-economic backgrounds? Because I have news for you: White trash end up in jail a lot too. So do Asians, Africans and I dare say even immigrant Europeans.

"While it still exists, racism in this country is no longer the fundamental impediment to the advancement and social improvement of Native people."

Read that above quote carefully: It implicitly voices a frustration on how, after spending billions to do it, these people refuse to want to be like us. There is a tacit assumption of our own stainless purity and righteousness, a statement that if only they would be more white then we could get along. That, my friend, is what racism is. Racism says that if others do not want what we want, then they must be 'broken' and need fixing, and racism says that our fix is unquestionably the right one, the only one, the God-granted angelic-ray one. That's what I mean by 'tripe'.

If we want to improve things among our relations with the First Nations people, we should start with granting some respect, and I think the rest follows pretty easily from there. Pompous patronizing pronouncments will only get you the sort of response my comment here is probable to provoke ;)

We're all a family under one sky
A family under one sky
We're all a family under one sky
A family under one sky
We're all a family under one sky
A family under one sky
We're all a family under one sky
A family under one sky

We're people(We're people)
We're animals(We're animals)
We're flowers(We're flowers)
We're birds in flight(We're birds in flight)

We're people(We're people)
We're animals(We're animals)
We're flowers(We're flowers)
We're birds in flight(We're birds in flight)

From my experience during our founding of the NATIVE-NET, it's my best guess that if our global empire colonists simply honoured all existing treaties, aboriginal situations everywhere would be much improved.

Only that ain't gonna happen. It has to do with the Golden Rule that says "He who has the gold has bigger guns, so he gets to make the rules."

The sad truth is, from Okinawa to Lapland, from Inuktituk to Alice Springs, from Mongolia to Macedonia, Tibet to Timor, Capetown to Cameroon, many of those who welcomed the tall ships got along real well with the early settlers and are generally pretty happy with the contracts per se, but a tad miffed by lack of honesty and scruples in the implementations (and revisions) bullied upon them.

So it's no real wonder they get impatient and aggrivated and maybe recoil a bit when any colonists step forth to say "We'd like to help you savages ..." because that generally literally translates into "We're taking another slice of your share of your pie."

Apropos to all this talk of helping the conquered adapt to Our Holy Way and also apropos to that other discussion on how Our Holy Way, by the way, must needs be also include dumping raw death in their backyard, and somewhat related also to the comment here on how, in many respects, it is us who should be living more like these people we've labeled, relocated and marginalized, some words of widsom from Jonathon Porritt, the chief ecology advisor to the Tony Blair government:

'Many big ideas have struggled over the centuries to dominate the planet, ... Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy. Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of our society. More powerful than any cause or even religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe. It is consumerism.'
[ Stop shopping | The Observer ]

Hear here! There they're!

Gary that BLACK cat of yours and the WHITE cat of mine were seen out back scuffling the other day.
Now I sat Charles the Cat down and discussed this with him. I had concerns because the CNN truck was out front interviewing Trish the dog next door to determine what she had seen and she was going on how Charles the white cat had always said he really hated that Black cat all along and that he was gonna get him.... A group of black cats were started protesting on my lawn, when they saw the CNN truck, saying Charles used unessecary force to get the black cat off our lawn.
Charles the white cat was then contacted by a lawyer representing the black cat saying he would bring a class action lawsuit against Charles on behalf of all the cats of the world , and since there is only one in the neighbourhood they brought in other black cats from Toronto who didnt know what all the fuss was about but thought it would be fun and set up a camp on our lawn. Then a bunch of white cats, with real short haircuts showed up and . A stand off ensued, and the the police and government became involved and told Charles that he was just a stray anyway and that he had no right to chase the black cat off the lawn as it had only been his lawn for a few months, and that Black cats in the past have been known to cross this lawn .
The thing went to court and when the judge said under political pressure told CHarles he had to give up the lawn to the Black cat but the governments told Charles they would pay him 25 years worth of tender viddles if he accepted this. This meant though the government would have to cut back on the money it spent feeding the abondoned and abused cats in the shelters
The thing is Charles has chased off cat after cat, the problem is he is colour blind and all he saw was a cat crossing his lawn.
As an end note the thing is back in court as the geat great great great great grandkitty of a dark grey cat was chased off that lawn by the black cat and now the dark grey cats want the lawn from the black cats as it was their lawn before the black cats
Gawd this really makes no sense. does it????

The lawyers won't come out ahead if nobody give them such opportunity.

... Charles comes over to our yard as much as Fang does to Waynes'. In actual fact, they quite like one another:)

Alright people lets stay focused here:) I tried to , in my usual convuluded way, try to point out that it doesnt matter whether we are cats are people we all react the same way when confronted with someone entering our space and insisting it should be theres. Humans just have the capacity to take simple confrontation or disagreement and turn it into a circus
Cats are colour blind (or is that dogs???) , people should be as well, but when push comes to shove then we, as a natural/evolved/instinctive responce act in the same manner as 2 cats meeting each other on the lawn. a lot of swatting hissing and tail wagging, just different physiological attributes. We as a species will always regardless of schooling and PSA's still be the us and them society when initially dealing with a confrontation catholic vs protestent (or any religon vs any other religon) , male vs female, rich vs poor , any hockey team vs any other hockey team including the parents. The current issue being discussed is no different.
The politics and solutions around it though is a truly and uniquly Canadian phenomenom (sp) .
I haven't figured out whether we are more highly evolved here or what but that is for another line of discussion

Charles and "Fang" are birds of a feather, in fact sitting on the Muskoka it is actually the amusing moment of the day watching two lethargic felines who are in the lower percentile in the cat IQ grid interact.
Makes me feel much better about myself, and I think thats what pets are for.
ps
Lawyers become politician...politician makes laws so complicated lawyers can make more money when they are no longer politicians.

Animals fight for survival. Human sometimes fight just to show that they are strong, smarter and better than others.