The host says, "This is not a sob story about whining Indians." It is depressing, though. When Bishop Desmond TuTu visited some Canadian Indian Reserves a few years ago, he said he had never seen anything as bad anywhere. The Americans defeated the American Indians in wars that went on for centuries while Canadian Indians were in business with the Hudson's Bay Company, the French Voyageurs and the North West Company. Canadian bureaucrats in Ottawa defeated the Canadian Indians. We live in "A dictatorship of laws, not men." Canadian Indians were imprisoned on tiny Reserves by the Indian Act. Their jailers were the Indian Agents. Indians could not vote until recently; they could not leave the Reserve, or do anything without the government's approval.
Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School
Learn more
Celia Haig-Brown Indian children were taken away from their parents and shipped to residential schools where they had the Indian beaten out of them. Their parents and grandparents were left to rot on whatever they got on welfare the government decided to give them, exactly like inmates in every prison. Other Canadians despised them because they got welfare and didn't pay taxes. "We have to work and pay taxes. Those bums." In Newfoundland there are no Indians. Canadians have thrilled to movies about the 7th Cavalry and Indian fighters like Dan'l Boone, but in Canada most of the fighting was done by grey faceless bureaucrats. They are our enemy. They make the laws that imprison all of us. We pay taxes. We are slaves. We have no rights. We are just like the Indians. This is Oceania.

You say you are a "civil servant"? (Everyone in Canada "works for the government" in one way or another.) You are part of the system. You are really one of the guards in the Gulag that is run by the few top billionaires who "own" everything. You have nice lives and a pension? Harper is going to change that. Harper announced to the big billionaires at the ber luxury resort at Davos, Switzerland, that he has plans for Canada. Harper hasn't told Canadians he has plans for them or what they will be. Don't you find that peculiar? Who do you think Harper works for? He doesn't work for you: neither does Barack Obama work for Americans. Obama works for Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, just like the Bushes and the Clintons. You were born free but everywhere you are in chains.

These are our most popular posts: what were residental schools?

The Knoll: Canadas genocidal legacy

Whether they were the child taken or the parent left behind, they spoke of the heartache of losing their families. ... With a voice that at times shook with emotion, he offered an apology to the residential school survivors. read more

Bangladesh: 3000 Education Centres Of Indigenous Peoples About ...

He said prescription drug abuse, addiction problems, early deaths and other social challenges are a direct result of the intergenerational effects of the residential school system. "They said they wanted to educate our children ... read more

Lejac Indian Residential School: FIRE DRILLS

Were Aboriginals capable of educating themselves prior to the development of residential schools? It seems that North American aid was not only unwelcome, but also widely unnecessary. Neegan (2005) describes the highly ... read more

No amount of money will compensate for residential school: Stan ...

The boys are down at the lake below the school. this photo is from June 1963. Posted by tina ... read more