Quote Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars View Post
That is very debatable, and indeed I recall some fairly fearsome debates on the subject from when I studied it.
For simplicity's sake, I'll use my own area as an example, with a few key dates.

1874 - the signing of Treaty 4 started; the First Nation peoples were then herded onto their respective reserve lands. Over time, they would be denied the right to leave their respective reserves unless given written permission by a white Indian Agent.

Despite the treaty, Canada would continually, over the years, steal reserve land. Almost half of a certain Blackfoot reserve was sold to settlers, for example. And when a Blood First Nation refused to sell its land, Canada cut back its funding on that particular nation until they bled white and gave in to the sale. Today, most of these reserves have been rightfully described as having third world country living conditions; a strange thing to hear in one of the most industrialized and developed countries in the world.

1947 - First Nation and Inuit peoples finally granted formal citizenship.

1960 - Finally allowed to vote at Federal elections.

1960's - Residential Schools begin to be closed. First Nation children attending these schools were not allowed to speak their own language or practice their own beliefs. Physical and sexual abuse were notoriously common, and with very poor healthcare, tuberculosis was deadly (with mortality rates as high as 69%). Cultural genocide, anyone? It's a shame so many First Nation peoples today speak only English and know almost nothing about their own culture.

1985 - First Nation women who married non-native men were given the right to retain treaty status upon the marriage. Previously, this was not so; the woman would lose treaty status, as would her children from the marriage.


I don't know what else to say, bro. We weren't even allowed to vote at federal elections until 1960, and were actually, by law, forced to remain on our reserves, too. All of this sounds like strange mixture of apartheid, forced assimilation, and cultural genocide to me.

It certainly left its mark, too. Check out what wikipedia says of contemporary First Nation peoples:

First Nations peoples face a number of problems to greater degree than Canadians overall. They have higher unemployment, rates of crime and incarceration, substance abuse, health problems, lower levels of education and poverty. Suicide rates are more than twice the sex-specific rate and three times the age-specific rates of non-Aboriginal Canadians.

Life expectancy at birth is significantly lower for First Nations babies than for babies in the Canadian population as a whole. As of 2001, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada estimates First Nations life expectancy to be 8.1 years shorter for males and 5.5 years shorter for females.