Great article. In Canada a lot of people don't know about the injustices the government has inflicted on the Inuit and other indigenous people. It's all conveniently left out of the school history curriculum.
While it is hardly "left out" (it has, in fact, been a massive national discussion for at least two decades), it also suffers from the classic folly of considering history where one side is assumed to act under only the worst motives, and the other under only the best.
Reality is, as always, much more nuanced. Right now many aboriginal communities in Canada are like third world nations, with overwhelming rates of substance abuse, etc. The government keeps pouring billions and billions in, and has given in to every demand (self-governance, no accountability), but the result is something that is absolutely shameful for a first-world nation. Racism is always blamed, while Canada's largest city is more than 50% visible minorities, many prospering.
Trying to maintain a "traditional" lifestyle in the modern world is not sustainable. The world doesn't stop because a people's hang on a grievance from many years ago.
I have lived in Toronto for all of my life. I cannot ever recall meeting an Aboriginal person, except once as a teenager. I was working retail, and they provided their ID card when they wanted me to not charge sales tax. They didn’t fit my stereotype of what I thought they should look like, so it’s entitely possible I’ve met more without knowing it.
Just because Toronto and many Canadian cities are multicultural doesn’t automatically make us not racist. I have some friends that share my skin colour that moved to Calgary, and they have some pretty negative attitudes towards Aboriginal people.
I love Canada and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. But we’re far from perfect.
No doubt. This example however, is low on the injustice scale, 87 people once and has been "described as a humanitarian gesture to save the lives of starving native people".
Well, that was how the government described it initially. More recently they've admitted wrongdoing and apologized. I think it's more likely they were trying to assert sovereignty in the high arctic using people they knew would stand a good chance of surviving there.
Why not both. To me this seems like the gov found a mutually beneficial opportunity and acted upon it. I'm not absolving the gov of all wrongdoing, but in this case I feel the issues were more in the execution rather than the concept or intentions.
It's not both because the threats that the displaced people faced after the move were far more severe than those faced before the move. Also, instead of keeping the families together they were dispersed into multiple groups without being informed beforehand. That is _not_ a sign of trying to help combat overpopulation, and _is_ a sign of asserting sovereignty over the land.
