Discussions

I've been mulling over a letter ( actually he has written several letters and his topics are more or less a put down to Native peoples) that Ken Douglas, from Binscarth, Mb. wrote to the Brandon Sun in the Letters To The Editorial section back I believe in January. Since Binscarth was my home town ( way back), and my mother is of Aboriginal ancestery, I feel compelled to respond to this particular letter and I'm sure if he sees this forum, he will know which letter I'm referring too.  
In his letter he seems to think that there is some kind of hidden benefit to living on a reserve. First of all I would like to enlighten him what to what a reserve is according to the Indian Act. A reserve is a tract of land reserved for Indians for which legal title is vested in the crown. This simply means, the Crown (Federal Government) owns the land the reserve is situated on, not the First Nations People, as well as any infrastructor, right down to housing.  
Let me enlighten you to a few harsh realities of trying to survive on a reserve. Asingle man or woman receives $150.00 a month to live on. That amounts to $35.00 a week. This is welfare or social assistance, which you proudly claim to be tax-payer's money. What a joke!  
It is troubling that Canadians have such an incapacity to feel the pain of Indians. Most Canadians are fugitives or descendants of fugitives, who came to Canada to escape political oppression, religious persecution, or economic deprivation. In many instances they or their forebears have fled injustice to find this haven. Yet, these very same Canadians continue to subject Indians to the same (or worse) persecution, oppression, and deprivation from which they or their forebears escaped. Seemingly without a meaningful twinge of conscience, Canadians are destroying the very people whose lands have given them a chance for freedom and well-being.  
Canadians seem incapable of understanding the sense of injustice that Indians feel over the dispossession of most of their ancestral lands with only token or no compensation at all.  
Will mainstream Canadians have the capacity to feel empathy and reconciliation towards First Nation peoples in this generation?  
So as to your letter Mr. Douglas and to your rehetric of First Nations people, I would extend an invitation for you to spend two weeks on one of the 66 reserves in Manitoba!