wampus

Eh, online polls, with practically no respondents from one of the most important demographics (only 47 FN in the mix), are pretty lackluster / non-news. Part that seems worthwhile in the article is the note that better surveys should be done. Seeing the article on a FN news site, I'm surprised they didn't attempt to poll their readership to get another data point.

Also, francophones being more positive on this front wouldnt be a huge surprise. The rhetoric / angst for the history is largely aimed at anglo colonials -- and it's such that it targets all english speaking white people, regardless of whether their families were around during the period or not. The french are likely more prone to absolve themselves of guilt, because "we were oppressed by those anglos too!". Kinda like how none of the asian/middle eastern/african immigrants I know, think any of this stuff applies to them / is a dig at them. When non-Caucasian Immigrants see anti-colonial graffiti scrawled all over an alley, they don't generally seem to take that as a demand being made of them.

You're right, we likely won't convince each other of the other's view point, so not much point labouring over it in regards to Canada's actions explicitly.

That said, back to the core point, I don't think anything you've said changes my position that equating these two things cheapens the word Genocide.

To take a similar situation to clarify: Rape. Go back a decade or two, and Rape brought forward images of like, a guy hiding in a dark parking lot at night, jumping out and violently forcing himself on a woman. Or cases where the rapist broke into a single woman's home and assaulted her. Now, in Canada for example, when a woman has an orgy with 5 guys, is recorded saying shit like "Get over here and fuck me you pussy", and later decides she didn't want to do that... it's called rape. Or the Harvey situation, where women consenting to sex in exchange for power/privilege, is called rape. Advocacy groups make claims like over 50% of women have been raped, with the 'broader' understanding of the word. Even if some legal gits have structured arguments and bullshit so that the term 'technically' fits in the broader sense, people care a lot less now when someone like Trump is called a Rapist -- the words been diluted to a point where its lost its power. If everyone's a rapist, why be morally outraged?

Calling Canada's actions over the course of more than a century a genocide does the same thing. Calling Canada's actions a genocide, while dithering on whether Israel's actions count, makes the term genocide far less impactful.

So do something similar in structure to the Dairy industry.

Also, supply/demand curves are very much capitalism. When demand goes down, and supply is high, price point goes down to maximize profit. If you want to maintain the price point when demand drops off, you limit supply -- not by burning things you've already got, but by pulling back on logging / cutting down old growth trees. So, still a win if they go that route, though not as beneficial to Canadians in terms of building stuff.

Wasnt Arnie a republican elected in cali? So I mean, its a non zero chance, really.

Some of the cultural differences that got impacted included slavery amongst FN, particularly out towards BC's coast -- where about 25% of some bands were slaves from other groups. Outlawing slavery was something done around the initial forming of the country -- basically as BC joined and at the start of it all with John A. Do you maintain it's wrong to call the practice of slavery savage, and that Canada should've allowed such traditions to persist? The old systems often also maintained a hereditary chief setup, with the leaders being fixed / based on blood -- something that doesn't exactly mesh with democratic principles, such as all people being created equal, and deserving equal respect. The implementation of that principle is admittedly a work in progress, and has been since the country was formed: women not gettin a say till much later is proof enough of that. But just because the country didn't recognise women's rights from its initial founding, doesn't make the whole country misogynistic. But I digress -- should we go back to explicitly preferencing people based solely on their blood lines? Or are we wearing rose-colored glasses and absolving all the potential wrongs/ills of the earlier culture, in favour of only the positive elements we want to highlight today, to make it a one sided story?

215 bodies over 150+ years is bad, but it's nothing compared to the 60k+ deaths occurring in Israel in the past year. Like the total number estimated to have died at residential schools is 6000 over the 150 years. That's one tenth the number compared to what's gone on in Israel in the past year -- that 6000, would need to be closer to 9 million to have the same sort of scale. There weren't even 9 million people in the entire country of Canada until sometime after the 1920s.

There were definitely issues on this front, and there was a higher mortality rate amongst FN during the period, but for a time frame that goes back to "before phones / vaccines were common", I honestly don't think that's so clear cut. School age kid mortality rates in general were around 1 in 250 back in the early 1900s - it wasn't until fairly recently that the mortality rate dramatically improved, to like 1 in 4000, largely due to vaccines and advances in medicine. And old graves from 150+ years ago, or even from like 50+ years ago, not having headstones/markers isn't that uncommon -- I've no clue where my grandparents are buried, and I'm pretty sure they don't still have headstones. There's no specific reason to think that the bodies in old, unmarked graves weren't treated with respect and dignity at the time of their passing, based on the customs of the time: or do you really think that old time priests who were super devout / wanting to spread the word of god, were doing disrespectful things to corpses of people they considered part of their flock, on a regular/systematic basis? That'd be one hell of a leap, and it'd need a lot more evidence to convince me. The level of dignity given to the dead in these two situations is very different, even if those missionaries at the time failed to follow the specific burial rights of the FN.

I looked up / read a bit more about the 60s scoop here - not sure if that's a good source. One of the reasons development differed significantly between on reserve and off-reserve communities, I'd posit, is that non-reserve land allows for individual Canadians to 'own' the land. That ownership leads to development of that land, as you hope to pass it on to your kids. We see this sort of thing even today, with "leasehold" 99 year lease properties that are tied to FN groups being far less desirable / lower price than regular freehold properties. We also see it in the clear hesitation of many banks/FIs to lend to FN based on res properties/businesses, as there are no assurances that the band won't just declare the land theirs and negate the security. As much of the development of industry is done by private sector, the government was ill-equipped to handle a huge number of under developed communities needing funds/infrastructure, and being wholly reliant on the gov for such things, without private sector interest. The lack of development on reserves translated to shit living conditions, with high mortality rates, particularly for kids. While we can look back and say it was wrong now, I'm not sure whether it would've been 'better' to leave the kids in those conditions to die / live in abject poverty, assuming that the government couldn't instantaneously deploy infrastructure to those remote communities. Hell, our government can't do anything of that sort even today. Realistically, one thing that's missing from the discourse is "What should've been done better back then, given the real socio-economic situation of the time?"

I'd want a source for the RCMP comment, if you can? The history that I can see about it, does not align with your claim. I admit that the sources of that history could be biased though, so I wouldn't refute your comment, but I won't believe it either without some far more significant evidence. Like the RCMP site claims that the NWMP (precursor to the RCMP) first got started to basically defend FN from attacks by US Whiskey traders out west -- seems a bit different than what you're claiming, without a source... ? I mean, it's basically the opposite, in that it was a response by Canada to try and defend/protect people in the west, specifically FN, with FN guides integrated into the force.

Does Canada's history have issues? Sure. But it's disingenuous to frame it entirely as a one sided thing, and to villainize one group while absolving the other. And in comparison to Israel's actions in the past year, Canada has not, to my knowledge, ever done anything nearing that level of direct, pointed hostility / brutality. But by all means, prove me wrong -- point me to the evidence that Canada rolled in to FN communities with the military, slaughtered everyone while laughing about it, and then dug mass graves to carelessly throw the dead babies in.

Equating what Canada did as part of its bumbling attempts at cultural integration to what Israel is doing today, or what Nazi germany did previously, is an inappropriate softening of the term Genocide. It cheapens and diminishes the moral insanity, the utter depravity, of what Israel is doing.

So .... I live in the province that's most impacted by this (BC), but not in a logging area. I gotta admit I'm not really sure how to think about this particular tariff area, despite all the media scare mongering over the years.

Like we hear about mills closing, and logs getting shipped 400km from small communities with closed mills, to get turned into pulp at big mills, generally for export to other countries. And those closures have been ongoing for like decades now, with a seemingly shrinking market presence north of the border despite our governments feigned attempts to take action, and all the free trade stuff that's been in play. K.

We also hear about the high cost of construction, and have a serious housing problem -- with the government saying they're gonna try addressing that issue more in the next 5 or so years.

We'll need lumber to make those houses. We can use lumber to make furniture for those houses. Hell, we can use lumber to make things like the towels/dishcloths that go into those houses. We use lumber for our ass paper in those houses. If the US doesn't want to buy it as a result of them tariffing it to shit, why not sell it cheap to local manufacturers to supply local demand with local product?

One thing I've often heard, is that BC exports raw stuff down south, and then we end up buying back processed goods, which seems kinda wrong to me. If those manufacturing facilities are generally south of the border currently..... it can't be that difficult to get em setup up here. I mean, shit, with all those closed mills.... repurpose them, and repurpose the people who were in that industry, to be slightly further down that supply chain.... no?

The UN declared Canada a genocidal country because over a period of about 150 years there was a higher mortality rate amongst FN, and the government forceably sent them to school to learn to read/write, which ended up screwing up things like their oral tradition culture. Personally, I'd argue that was more a matter of cultural integration, with a misguided/mismanaged school system lead by a religious group -- and that religious group was definitely keen on indoctrinating people into their faith, as religious groups are, but they're at semi-arms length from the regular population/government. Graveyards where people were buried didn't have headstones after 150 years, resulting in constant media spam about unmarked graves, with some less than brilliant idiots equating unmarked graves to mass graves even to this day. But still, Canada's history is basically genocidal right up until 2020 at least, according to the UN.

But they can't seem to figure out that Israel's mass graves with bulldozers just piling in corpses, explicit targeting of journalists and people seeking aid/food, flattening of whole neighbourhoods, killing crazy amounts of civilians, forced starvation complete with dying babies, and with a population on the Israeli side that's openly saying shit like "We gotta kill the babies otherwise they'll grow up to be terrorists. They're all cockroaches"..... on this one, we're not so sure.

Someone make it make sense.

America / Trump's EO's on AI basically say they need to tune their models to be as racist, or more racist, than Grok currently is.

At least with China's approach they seem to be 'saying' the right thing with regards to open sourcing it and having a more collaborative approach internationally. The USA and Trump is just "NO DEI AT ALL!!! MAKE IT SUPPORT DEAR LEADERS RIGHT THINK OR NO GOVT CONTRACTS FOR YOU!!! THIS IS NOT BIAS, THIS IS US REMOVING BIAS!!!"

Yeah.... no thanks, haha.

I assume I'm blocked, but for anyone who's bothering to read this far --

The FN identity story angle is, quite literally, pulled out of Canadian news cycles and is 100% a pertinent, modern/contemporary story related to FN issues and identity: me referencing it is quite literally me saying in a very explicit fashion that we should've had more FN stories / content in the show, though the other poster seems to consider that racist or boring or something, without bothering to explain their dislike at all. The "Gill" sisters, Indo-Canadians who's parents immigrated over from the UK -- their mother appropriated a FN identity and secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants/money from the government based on that identity, getting her two daughters top tier educations and setting them up with an online business selling FN-inspired products. Once the identity fraud was revealed, the mother, who'd committed other frauds earlier even, took full responsibility to save her kids any jail time / punishment, but those daughters still had to drop out of things like law schools that they'd gotten into under false pretenses. The kids have since gone to the news, and lamented their situation, as they're relegated to basically being safeway cashiers or something along those lines.

Putting that sort of real life trauma on a screen, interrogating it, showing the characters on all sides as humans, and finding a way to get a laugh from the audience as you do it -- is the sort of thing good writing ought to be doing. Doing so not only helps people think about the situation critically and engage with the topic in less 'charged' ways (discuss the fictional version with the alien, rather than the real life one with tangible victims, but still talk about the issue!) -- but it'd also help people like the other poster learn about what it's like for FN people in some areas of the world.

And I never said white people should be spared flaws/faults. I just said that to stereotype all the white men, and all men who aren't FN, and pretty well all the white women on the show as negative / deplorable sorts, is racist. To say that "Some white people historically did bad things, so they should all be typecast as dumb incompetent evil people on TV" is racist. It's as blatantly racist as white people used to be towards non white people. Failing to recognize that, and failing to engage with the repercussions of it, is one reason there's increasingly animosity between the different demographics / groups, and there's an increasing rise in White-supremacist groups -- things left in the dark, tend to fester more. People need to be able to talk about those things openly to move forward, and Art is traditionally a primary vehicle for that very thing. That sort of racism, we see play out on line and in this very thread, the show should've actually confronted it head on if they wanted to maintain more character authenticity, and to keep the attention of the audience longer / get people engrossed in the characters. Walter White would've been boring as shit without his dark flaws.

But the writing fell off, made things into 1 dimensional bland virtue signalling snooze fests, and people moved on. It earned its cancellation.

As for the other person 'noping out', it's more realistically that they just realised they were wrong and wanted to try and save some face. I feel like my patience and attempts to explain / get through to the other side is made plain within this thread -- and that nothing I've written is in any way wrong or racist: it isn't racist, to call out racism in other races, just like it isn't fascist, to call out fascists.

It's more realistic and engaging, and it isn't 'wrong' to "speak the truth" about what goes on in those communities, or within those minority groups. I also made sure to highlight that you'd want to have variance in the characters to provide a broader context, with an eye to making it clearer to viewers that these demographic groups are not a uniform monolith, and that each person should be viewed as an individual. Putting out a show where all the white people are negatively type-cast, where all men who aren't FN are type-cast as incompetent morons, and where FN are all type-cast positively, is bad writing. Just like how back in the 1950s or whatever, when all women were type-cast negatively and all FN were type-cast negatively, it was bad writing. If you think that an adult audience is too stupid to understand that this shit is bad content, I need do little more than point to the shows cancellation as proof that it had gone to crap and detached from its audience -- if the writing was good, it would've/could've had more seasons. The production quality overall was decent.

To pretend there's no racism in FN communities is absurd, as the evidence is pretty blatant. And as for your comment, I didn't say anything about FN people as cheats, that's your bias again showing through. That sort of bias -- you thinking that all critics of FN must think FN are cheats, a potentially 'internalised' and imagined victimhood that taints your interactions with others -- ought to be represented on screen, with the negative repercussions put on display for discussion. The authenticity, or the relative authenticity of the characters matters.

As for muslims, why shouldn't the moderate muslim have a voice? Why shouldn't we tell the stories of what many of us have seen with our own eyes, and what many people living in western countries have gone through themselves? Why shouldn't we expect an adult show to tackle adult themes, rather than treat their audience like a bunch of immature, cattle-brained morons who can't understand nuance?

If you always had to portray characters/cultures in a positive light, without digging in to the conflicts and inner turmoils of individuals, pretty well every good show in the past two or three decades would be 'bad'. And I'm being very conservative with that time frame. Imagine Shakespeare, without any social commentary -- like Othello, where you can't broach the racial components of it. It would be utter drivel without that nuance. Good art / fiction tackles these sorts of concepts directly, messily, and puts it out there as authentically as possible for the audience to engage with. I encourage you to expand your perspective.

Yeah, pretty sure the stats support this take -- QC has been pretty uniform / pointed in their response.

My guess is that it's partly tied to the realization that "if" that annexation stuff happened, and Canada eventually 'lost', there's no way QC culture / french language stuff would have the same sort of power/clout as part of the USA. Especially with the current government trends, which aren't exactly welcoming of other cultures.

Likely similar sentiments amongst many FN, in that a USA annexed Canada would absolutely give the finger to any and all treaty type things. Canada's approach to integration may not have been great, but the USA was much more inclined to extermination and is absolutely not as supportive as Canada is on that front. Like the Mohawk weren't really a "Canadian" band with large traditional territories in Canada -- they're basically from New York, and were displaced by America killing em off, and Canada (or the brits, as Canada wasn't really much of a thing back then) welcomed them as refugees / gave them some space. Tyendinaga, for example, was founded around 1780, it's not exactly their ancestral homeland. They're one of the biggest groups at this point, even though they started off in Canada as refugees. If groups like Idle No More started blocking 'public' roads/rail to impede projects in an annexed Canada, they'd absolutely get sent to alligator Auschwitz for re-education, and the band involved would get labelled as a terrorist group.