I'm Canadian (33 for another month), and I first heard about all this when I was a teen. When the first nations began seeking some form of redress for what happened in residential schools.
Actually you can draw a line from residential schools and high unemployment* to the substance abuse and other social problems that are endemic on first nation reserves.
*The unemployment thing can be caused as much by geography as anything, if you look at a map of where a lot of reserves are.
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