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I see no problems in Belleville. I haven't seen any problems except on tv since I was a little kid. It's pretty alien to me.

   

I once had a 45 minute drive home with a co-worker and his father, a recently retired cop with almost 30 years on the service.
He asked my name and since my last name is Irish, as is his, he quipped ' At least your not one of those Catholic bastards’.
In fact I am Catholic, but apparently he'd never met an Irish Catholic with my last name before.
Then he proceeded to spout comments on blacks, natives, gays etc.
He also mentioned an incident where he was called to my former high school to deal with a guy who had hit his girlfriend.
The cops hauled him out of the school and were shoving the kid around on the way to the police car. The principal noticed and demanded they stop.
He was totally pissed at the principal (one of my favourite teachers in high school), and told me he was a 'pansey faggot'
I was getting a drive and didn't want to tell him to shut up (it was winter and too damn cold to walk anywhere), so I ignored him for the rest of the trip.
I felt like I'd met the real life Archie Bunker by the time I got home.
The next day my co-worker apologized.
He's told me his dad is not usually that bad unless he's around his cop buddies.
It told me a lot about my city's police force, things I wouldn't have known otherwise since I'm not a member of a visible minority.
I know not all cops are bigots, but bigotry is a part of police culture, like other things not often discussed – higher than average rates of alcoholism and spousal abuse for instance.

   

I remember reading about the cops dropping that native off in the cold when it happened. I've visited the prairies and there is a problem. Alot of natives live in reserves that are third world conditions. In 1876 the Indian Act was first drafted. Reserves were designed to be temporary holding cells for three generations until Indians were fully assimilated into our culture. They had to give up there culture, loose there language, and move into the maine stream. Then you could vote and own your own land. This was called "enfranchisement." To be enfranchised you had to be fluent in english or french, and have passed three years probation. And how long did this policy remaine? 1985.
So thats how we treat Natives. In 1990, Desmond Tutu saw clear parallels between the homelands of South Africa and the reserves in Canada. I've been to Winnipeg, and as beautiful as it is, Natives are often looked as second class citizens. Europeans destroyed there way of life in a very short time. No wonder it's hard for them to adapt. We are still occupying there land. Generations later Native offsprings are suffering from the cycle of poverty. Tax breaks and Native status is not enough.
So when I read that an idiot cop drives a drunk Native to the outskirts of town and leaves him in the snow it pisses me off. If it was a black man it would be a different story. People would cry racist (and it would be). But because he's native the story is quickly delegated to the back pages and no one cares.

   

That problem is going to get bigger in the near future too. The way our demographics are shifting, natives will make up half of our population soon. Prejudice against them becomes more and more problematic as they make up more and more of our population.

Our last mayor, Glen Murray, had some pretty solid ideas on how to deal with the situation. He was pushing for an urban reserve to encourage native businesses, and wanted to employ even more natives as city workers, both to make up for the employment gap in the private sector and to fight the perception that natives can't or won't work. Murray is gone though and the new guy doesn't seem to even want to acknowledge that a problem exists. I never liked Murray much, but he did have some positive ideas.

We already have a huge Metis community. When you hear about St. Boniface being the French part of Winnipeg remember that most of the "French" people there are actually Metis. It's part of our heritage and most accept it. Until we accept the rest of the city's native heritage there are going to be problems with systemic racism.

I still think that making National Aboriginal Day a federal statuatory holiday would go a long way towards fighting this specific prejudice. It would encourage people to learn more about native culture and history. Education is the generally accepted to be the first step in fighting prejudice.

   

Rev, Gonzo, Aquarius, Robair, Ralph........

Thanks, its attatudes like yours which really make Canada a Kick Ass place to live.

   

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