It's unfortunate that I truly have developed a bias against natives in Canada this way. I do attempt to be open minded, but when just about every single native person where I live that I have talked to and been around follows many of those principles I said; and I had a girlfriend (status indian as the term applies in Canada) who was so happy to be able to bum off the government for free tuition and easy access to university (and a host of other things but this is the one that annoys me most) while her marks are so-so and she could do much better if she actually put in more effort towards school, but she doesn't have to since she gets lenience because spots are set aside for native applicants; it's difficult not to have such a mindset. I don't extend this to the US because Canada offers far more benefits to them than are granted there, and I don't know well enough what the situation is like in the US.I also know caucasians like that, such as the neighbours beside my dad. They are low life white trash idiots that sound a lot like what you described. I've also noticed that there's more native homeless people here than other racial groups combined, and the ratios of population don't even come close to matching up to that. Is it wrong that I notice that? Should I close my eyes and pretend that it's not like that?Now I am, once again, basing my opinions on the lowest of a group of people, but my statement is perfectly relevant to that. I commented that our policies encourage such behaviour, and I support it by saying that I see more prevelance of natives exhibiting such behaviour in general ratios of occurences I see around me. While not encompassing what universally happens, my experiences have shown me that my case is, to an extent, true. And my claim is not that all native people are like this, but there is a higher prevalence of such behaviour in this population.Btw, there are some major issues that exist here that I am sure do not exist there do to differences between Canada and the US. For example, that thing about natives having unlimited hunting/fishing rights is true and has led to some nasty consequences in some areas where fish stocks are dwindling and native commercial fisherman can be more successful than others since they aren't restricted in the same way. How is that fair?
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Im tired of seeing this.
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What's even more amazing to me is the lengths some of them will go to to remain that way.
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Very nice, but how about dealing with the idea that was raised? The thing that ended with "...your way is not the only way". You were in effect saying that the answer to racism is to have everyone forget about their, and everyone else's, skin color.
So, if I'm discriminated against, how do I get everyone else to forget about my skin color? Should I just wait for a few generations and see what happens? You said the same thing before, and it didn't really make much sense then either.
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Scotty Scotty Scotty...first lets look at what you wrote:the Caucasian race where I live. They're loud, extremely loud, the only thing louder are their $1000.00 pipes on the $250.00 pick-up truck. They are short and fat and seem to not be very concerned with hygiene. The men of the race tend to dress in faded blue jeans and stained t-shirts, while the women tend go about in men's pajamas and flip-flops all day. The Caucasians I know and have been around don't seem to work much past 30. Around 30, the males most especially, tend to claim some kind of phantom injury and live off disability the rest of their natural lives. The females on the other hand tend live of welfare checks, child support, and later in life their children. Most of the money males and females get seems to be spent on satellite T.V., cigarettes and copious amounts beer and alcohol. These people seem to not be able to settle any dispute without resorting to violence, though they do tend make-up quickly, generally by sharing a case of beer and a carton of cigarettes. Most are ignorant with little formal education beyond what they needed to know to remain eligible to play sports in high-school. Lastly, these Caucasian are rude and arrogant beyond anything I have seen. They tend to believe themselves superior to anyone or any task at hand and commonly try to assert their dominance over anyone who crosses their path. When they fail, as they frequently do, they tend to blame an unfair system and or claim "cheating" or oppression of their white "minority" population at the hands of powerful racial adversaries. Well let us now talk about it...fThat part about the 1k on the 250 dollar truck?thats the only part that I find offensive, My truck was 350, and then alot of cash into the engine and tranny and tires, a shell and a carpet kit, and the body work that is now being done it it then the paint job its going to set me back all total well over 3 grand. If I didnt have so many contacts and so many auto parts and engines and shit at my disposal, it would od been even more, and my exaust only set me back about 400 dollars, not 1k.I do know what you speak of though, its the same here, and iv been there, and many many place, and its the same everywhere, your little rant is nota generalization, its a observation of an great portion of the US white boys.with parts of it even applying to everyones favorite white boy bastard, namely ME.Im loud, and I know it, and I like my music loud, and violence always seems like a good choice for me, it doesnt always turn out to be the best one after its said and done, but it always feels right when the choice is made.but I dont kiss and make up, not even if they buy the beer, I have before understand, but not often.White people, overall, are real scum bag bastard mother fuckers, self important fucking moron dipshits.speaking as one, I think I have the right to speak for my people, you summed up atleast 70% of us in that rant, thats a majority, and in the US the mojority rules.I am however over 30, and still workIn regards to "Any perceived difference in rights is do to one fact. Your government, or our government, at some point in the past struck a deal with the natives for a peaceful resolution to land acquisition. A land deal. That is we will give you this, this and this for "X" number of acres "I think your people got the shit end of the stick, just another example of those dirty white bastards thieving manipulation.Look at the blacks, kidnapped and brought here as slaves, tortured killed, used, and now that they are finally standing up to fight, to have the same rights that the constituion says they have, those filthy white fucks tell them if they dont like it to go back to africa.The best part of that being that very few of those living here today came from africa, or have ever even been to africa, They are americans, born and raised here.I recall long long ago saturday night live, in the 70's. garret morris up for parole, singina s ong in a skit, "gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whiteys I see" and the next verse about "gonna rape me a white woman"those uptight white mother fuckers were so upset over a comedy skit on late night tellivision that instead of laughing over it, they got pissy and bitched and sent letters.You make all the generalizations about the white devils ya like, the fuckers deserve it, just remmber that there are a few of us that are only HALF bad.
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Yeah, but you don't live in Oklahoma. You live in a progressive state. (More progressive than Afghanistan anyway.)
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To Chance,You know I hold you in special esteem, bud. If all the rednecks where as progressively minded as you Oklahoma would, without a doubt, be the best state in the union. ___________________________________________________________I don't know why I'm writing this because in my heart of hearts I know it doesn't matter...To RobBob,In most of my posts I do my best to refrain from using "I" or "you." All those terms seem to do, in most cases, is personalize a dialogue and reduce it to a mere argument. But, in this case I can not do that and I can't even really tell you why. Maybe it's just to personal. However, please understand that unless I expressly state otherwise, in this post, were I say "you" I am referring to the Caucasian race that shares your views and not necessarily you - RobBob.Secondly, before I begin my proper response, I want to express how deeply offensive and angering I found the previous postings, but most likely, for the reasons other than you would think. My anger and outrage springs not, so much, from what was said but, because I hear a version of it everytime a new company rep or, for that matter, a new white person comes around. My anger springs more from the fact that you seem to think you can say anything about and to an NDN, things you (polite white society) would never say about any other race, at least not to their face - unless of course you have a good crowd backing you up. You feel free to come in my office and call me "wagon-burner" or "redskin." You feel free to come in my office and expound, at length, about the laziness and the ineptitudes of my race. You feel free to make any generalized racist statement or observation that comes into your head. Yet, should I become offended by what you said, then I am the one with the problem, I am the one who causes the contention in the office, I am the one with the thin skin who can't handle "the truth". The worst part is though, liberal seemingly open minded people will sit silently by. People who, if you had made the claim the blacks are lazy or unmotivated or criminals, would have jumped on you and ripped you apart, raise no objection. When ndns are the topic these people, while most likely not out of agreement, demonstrate racist remarks as acceptable by virtue of their silence.The reason you feel such freedom in doing this I can only assume, interpret by your actions and judge by how you talk about us when your abroad. That is, you refer to us as "our ndns," "our natives," "our redskins." I guess you feel that you own us, like you own the mountains, prairies and waters of our continent. We have no value in and of ourselves, our value as a people is held by you and reduced to a fictitious lore of your conquest of this continent, a history of the west that has become popular myth. That may not be correct, but it's the only reasoning I can come up with that fits what I see and hear.To briefly address a couple of points. The claim was made that native hunter and fisherman are pushing species toward extinction and are granted unlimited access to do so. According to the Native Participation in British Columbia Commercial Fisheries - 2003 report, drafted at the request and issued by your government, Native fisheries represents only 14.2% of the total harvest of fish. The article goes on to state that they (the natives) are restricted to a "quota". Then later, that management of the fish stocks follows the principal "...conservation is paramount, once conservation needs have been satisfied the second is to the Native food, social and ceremonial fishery. After these two priorities have been met, access is provided to recreational and commercial interests." I think this lends more credence to what I previously stated that is, basically business interests upstream don't like the idea of native subsistence society being given consideration in-front of their check book. Furthermore where overfishing is occurring natives are just as restricted by the government as everyone else. If a species is threatened lobby your government to regulate it and look at the industry as whole instead blaming the 14.2% who are native for the whole problem. Just because the majority of society wants to blame the natives doesn't make it so. You can talk all you want about how "unfair" this is, but let me ask you this how fair do you think it is that the First Nations people of Canada are relegated to three-tenths of one percent of the land that was formerly 100% open to them. That doesn't sound fair. The claim was also made that all first nations peoples are provided a free education by the Canadain government. I personally contacted the finiacial aid offices of UVic and NCSS the ladies, while addmitedly seeming to be limited in their knowledge, said that the funding is inpart through native bands (band as in a group within a tribe) and only avalible to a certain persentage that the band has moneys to fund. I inquired about what that persentage is but could not get an answer and could not find the answer anywere. So, by that it could be as much as 99% or as little as 1% funding. Further, according to the the Canadian Federal Programs, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada website funding for post-secondary education assistance is available to "some" native applicants. Also, according to the same website funding is provided "in-part" to specific bands for "in-whole" dispersement as the band provides and sees fit to administer. So by what I was told, your statement may be, in practical terms, for the most part correct or it could be completely wrong. I cannot find enough information to either verify or refute it.As for the special deference given to native students, yes there are seats set aside in universities for native students, which is not unlike seats being set aside for foreign students as is done here. Yes, many natives preform poorly at university, but outside your racist simpletons answer of them being lazy and ignorant and unmotivated, did you ever wonder why that might be? No one tends to take into account how differently the native mind operates or the vast cultural differences that still exist between your perception of the world and ours. Universities exist in state of their own suspended reality, where in general, the outside world never intrudes. Students entering university are expected to leave behind who they were and become, generally for better, apart of this new university culture, until which time they leave that behind and move to the corporate culture and all of its entrapments. Most of the time your reasons and requirements for university do not meat or reconcile with native traditions, beliefs or values. These people, Kirkness, V. J. and R. Barnhardt, might put in Caucasian enough manner that you can understand it. I don't mean that as an insult but in the context of how different people present information differently. They said, In reply to:"It is clear that despite the many efforts to improve First Nations' participation in higher education, U.S. and Canadian mainstream universities, by and large, do not yet provide a hospitable environment that attracts and holds First nations students at a satisfactory rate. University policies and programs aimed at decreasing First Nations student attrition are typically oriented toward helping the students make the transition from their home culture to the culture of the university. (Beaty and Chiste, 1986; Pottinger, 1989) In a study of the college experiences of American Indian students in the U.S.: Tierney identified five implicit "axioms" or assumptions held by universities, that serve as the basis for most of their efforts to integrate the students into the ways of the institution:* Post-secondary institutions are ritualized situations that symbolize movement from one stage of life to another.* The movement from one stage of life to another necessitates leaving a previous state and moving into another.* Success in post-secondary education demands that the individual becomes successfully integrated into the new society's mores.* A post-secondary institution serves to synthesize, reproduce, and integrate its members toward similar goals.* A post-secondary institution must develop effective and efficient policies to insure that the initiates will become academically and socially integrated.However, from the perspective of the American Indian students Tierney interviewed, who had their own distinctive reasons for "going to the university," social integration into the culture of the university was not what they had in mind, at least not if it was going to be at the expense of the culture they brought with them. He quotes one student who had dropped out in his first attempt at college after two semesters, and then returned to the local community college ten years later with a different cultural perspective: In reply to:I think white people think education is good, but Indian people often have a different view. I know what you're going to say - that education provides jobs and skills. It's true. That's why I'm here. But a lot of these kids, their parents, they see education as something that draws students away from who they are... I would like to tell them (at the university) that education shouldn't try and make me into something I'm not. That's what I learned when I wasn't here - who I am. And when I learned that, then I could come back here. I sort of walked away for a while and then came back. It's one of the best gifts I've ever had. But a lot of us just walk away. (Tierney, 1993, p. 311) In these comments, we see the university from a perspective in which what it has to offer is useful only to the extent that it respects and builds upon the cultural integrity of the student. The university must he able to present itself in ways that have instrumental value to First Nations students; that is, the programs and services that are offered must connect with the students' own aspirations and cultural predispositions sufficiently to achieve a comfort level that will make the experience worth enduring. If we cannot create an environment in which First Nations students began to "feel at home" at the university, all the special programs and support services we can dream up will be of little value in attracting and holding them in significant numbers. We must recognize that attending the university is not an all-or-nothing proposition, and many students, such as the one quoted above, will move in and out of the university over a period of many years, depending on how well it suits their purposes."Kirkness, V. J. and R. Barnhardt (2001). First Nations and Higher EducationTierney, W.G. [1992]. Official Encouragement. Institutional Discouragement: Minorities in Academe - The Native American Experience. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Corp. Lastly let me say this about university. This is your way not ours. This is your idea not ours. This is your tool for anglicizing us to be more like you. This is not our tool for taking advantage of you. You are the one who want us to forget our culture, our ways. You didn't kill us all so now you have to find tools be it university or other "benefits" to end what we were. It is in your interest that we give up our ways, you can not allow it, and what better, more ethical way is there to exterminate a culture than by mainstreaming it into your own. Forced assimilation - what a humane way to die.Now, today, you whine and cry fowl because you think an NDN is getting preferential treatment. You think that because we no longer wear blankets or caribou hides we are no longer ndns. You think because we are alcoholics, jobless, homeless, or because we have the highest suicide rate among all American and Canadian groups we are merely weak in character. All this shows is how little you understand or more to the point how little you care to understand.You think you killed the ndn a hundred year ago. You think because we were tennis shoes instead of moccasins, jeans instead of leggins, live in houses instead of huts that we are assimilated. I assure you we are not. Did you ever think any deeper about why we're alcoholics, why we don't manage in your societies, why we commit suicide at a rate 6 and a half time greater than you, even more than that in some areas. My own people, for the most part, don't even want to hear it but I'll tell you why. Despite what you think a hundred years ago what you killed was not the ndn. Instead what you killed where his ways of livin'. In the years hence what you have done is take away our names, take away our language and try to make us as much like you as possible. Educate us get us jobs hundreds of miles away form our peoples we can live like you and forget what we were. That is what you would like and to a point it is working and that is why you see us killing ourselves. All the blights we bring to your precious society are the consequences of the success of the killing of our culture. What your witnessing is the death of our culture. It didn't happen a hundred years ago, it's happening now. With every elder that passes we die a little more. With every kid that moves to the city for a good job we die. What you don't understand is that what you are seeing is our death. But don't despair, I personally don't think the last gasp is that far away, maybe not in my lifetime, at least I hope not. But what's another hundred years to you. Then we will be you and what we were will be simply the lore of the west. Those lazy people you talk of are the ones, for the most part, who can't handle it. That is why you see so many of them. They don't fit in your world and here's the thing you never seem able to understand, they don't want to, so they die. I must admit I myself have a hell of time being part of your world. I don't like it. I don't understand you. I don't understand your rigid structures. I don't see how you people could ever be happy, but since you are I guess it works for you and thats fine. I dislike it to the point of clinical depression that requires medication. All I want to do, and plan to do when I have my house paid for in 2 more years, is go back home where at least a few of my people are left so at least I can laugh with "them", as my culture takes it's final breaths.I don't expect you to understand the reasoning, the emotion, or the hurt behind any of this. I don't think you can. I have been to your world and I don't like it. I don't understand it and I just barely cope in it, though luckily I haven't sought refuge in a bottle. What I found out it going into your world is, the things important to you are not important to me. Despite all your Anglicization of me, despite all the "benefits" you "give" me I have not become you. If all this has been worth nothing, I hope at least you take away the realization that I don't want to be you. I know I can't go on bein' ndn all I can do is pay it tribute once or twice a year, but I couldn't make it if I thought I had to exist for the rest of my life in your world. All I want to do is gain ownership of my house and leave your world behind, go home and laugh with my own people in my own country and die with my own people in my own country. I don't want what you have.
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I'm sorry you feel that way about what I posted, although it probably doesn't mean much saying that. Understand how much respect I have for that post you just made. I did not mean to insult, mock, or cause hurt but simply state what I see around me and why I held my view of why many of the extra native rights were extent unfair (not all, but the ones I pointed out).
In reply to:
I don't know why I'm writing this because in my heart of hearts I know it doesn't matter...
No, it does matter, because it's a topic you feel very strongly about and you have a damn strong opinion on the topic.
Admittedly, I never looked at the issue I brought up in the same perspective as you, which is why my reasoning differs so much. I look at it from the point of the nation that I know and live in, the laws I am governed by, and the modern society that I live in - as opposed to the view of someone who sees his culture slowly dwindling away and who has different values and viewpoints than my own.
So you say the native individuals I talk about are the ones who don't fit into this culture? So you can understand my view, which I'm sure you already do better than I considered yours, you have to understand my view point is not influenced by unlimited knowledge but only the knowledge and objective views that I see from my way of living and the knowledge/experiences that I've had in my life. I view the world objectively, and I view people by how they act in the society that I know. Unless they came recently from another nation, I consider them generally to be Canadian and I place them on the same leveling field with the same objective comparisons that I would give to any other person whom I consider to be Canadian. Also, when I refer to a general term like natives, it is not meant to be offensive (although obviously it was). Just as when I say Caucasians, asians, etc I don't mean to impart any connotation aside from the direct reference that is being made to that particular group. And know this, I never once said "our natives" or whatever else to imply that I feel I have ownership. As I said before, I place you on the same level as myself and size you up in the same way I would any other person who has been born and raised in (in this case North America, although generally Canada) whether your values and strengths are the same as mine or not, not because I choose to be ignorant - I would much rather learn why these differences exist (and I thank you for posting this because of that) - but because I see the world from a different viewpoint than you do.
Thank you for making that post. I wish more people would voice their opinions so strongly rather than keeping them to themselves where no one else sees or hears them.
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First let me say, thank you for your responce.
In reply to:
In reply to:
I don't know why I'm writing this because in my heart of hearts I know it doesn't matter...
No, it does matter, because it's a topic you feel very strongly about and you have a damn strong opinion on the topic.
Just for clarity, I was referring to fact that one day soon we will cease to be.
>>>"I did not mean to insult, mock, or cause hurt..."
I know that and that is also probably why it elicited the reaction from me that it did. That and who said it. I've always thought your posts where rather intelligent and insightful and can't think of one that I've ever had issue with. And there's the rub, if I (we natives) can't look to someone like you for little, not necessarily agreement, but rather simple understanding,at least someone that will ask why, then where do we look.
My point with this was not to change any opinion or anything like that (it was to painful to write for such lofty goals) rather it was to get people to maybe think a little deeper and ask "why" before they condemn us to their harshest judgments.
As I said before, I don't think our condition is something that the societies we must now try to live in can understand. I'm really not sure how well we understand it ourselves. I guess in the end, the only thing I am trying so feebly to get across is that you can't understand how much it shatters our hearts and souls when "we" give up to become "you".