Actually, all of those 'unintended effects' were completely intended. Lord Monckton ordered the use of 'smallpox blankets' as a way to flush out natives and acadians and eradicate their numbers. After world war two canada and the us both prevented the united nations from defining genocide as eradication of a culture-so long as we didn't murder them outright we'd be in the clear. While we're all guilty of racism and not doing enough to stop our government, the actual responsibility for those acts falls on those who have committed them.

   

[QUOTE BY= Marcarc] Actually, all of those 'unintended effects' were completely intended. Lord Monckton ordered the use of 'smallpox blankets' as a way to flush out natives and acadians and eradicate their numbers. [/quote]<br /> <br /> I don't believe a word of that. Germs weren't discovered until the early 1900's. I can't believe anyone knew how smallpox was transmitted at that time, and intentionally used it as a bio weapon. I even found as many links debunking this theory as I found promoting it.<br /> <br /> [QUOTE BY= Marcarc]While we're all guilty of racism and not doing enough to stop our government, the actual responsibility for those acts falls on those who have committed them.[/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> But I agree with you 100% there.<br /> <br /> I've been to the town south of Gracac, in the Krajina region of what is now Croatia. The town isn't on any modern map, for reasons that will become obvious, but it the birthplace of the term 'ethnic cleansing'. I know people who were peacekeepers in Rwanda. The Sudan, Hati.<br /> <br /> Since the holocaust, we've learned very little.<br />

   

The Kymer Rouge Regime here in the Okanagan valley, first denied poor social benefits like Welfare.<br /> second made pan handlimg and squigy illegal.<br /> <br /> Now the are sending the gestapo after the homeless calling it an offensive on street crime.<br /> <br /> The only thing missing here is the ditch!<br /> <br /> Dennis Baker

   

[QUOTE BY= lesouris] Today was the 60th Anniversery of the liberation of the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau where 1.1 million people (Jews, Poles, Soviets, Roma, and Gays) lost their lives. The Holocaust was probably the darkest moment in German history, most definately in modern history - over 11 million people were brutally killed. Today's Germany is however, one of the most disgusted and ashamed nations on Earth. They recognize what their democratically elected government did to other human beings. This is quite impressive considering that it has only been sixty years - compare that to the destruction of the Aboriginal way of life that has progressively unfolded in Canada for the past five hundred years. Who is the bigger monster, the nation that kills and oppresses and then asks for forgiveness, or the nation that kills and oppresses and then forgets?<br /> <br /> We cannot say that we, as a country, are innocent of genocide, because we are. We did not target any specific group for extermination, but it happened anyways. We did not destroy one culture, we destroyed many from coast to coast to coast. At the beginning, I don't think anyone knew how bad things were going to get; no one knew that this entire continent could be subdued and its people degraded. No one knew that disease would spread amongst those who had no natural immunity. No one thought that Cabot's first steps onto the shores of Newfoundland would mark the beginning of the end. It still happened, and for the next five hundred years, even up to this day, the original inhabitants of this land were kept in their place.<br /> <br /> It is somewhat foreboding that the very land Cabot set foot on was the land of the Beothuk, an entire nation that have been erased from the face of the earth. Sure, unintentional spread of disease was a major part of this extermination, but there are records of Europeans hunting the "Red Indians" for sport. No matter how you slice it, settlers were guilty of genocide. This same brutal killing machine spread westward across the continent. Many, albeit few, were spared from this onslaught. It may have not been orchastrated or intentional at first, but soon it would. Aboriginals were kept out and kept down.<br /> <br /> We have come a long way since the days of the "Red Indian" hunts, but we have not even begun to make amends for our crimes. Right now we live under a friendly apartheid regime: Aboriginals, now a minority in their own land, are not fully accepted members of society. Many live in virtual Bantustans under the dictatorial control of the settlers' Ministry of Indian and Northern Affairs. The only time most people give a damn about Aboriginals at all is when their putting on a show for some visiting dignitary - a degrading and discusting practise, a way of down playing the suffering of their peoples, a way of making them cultural curiosities - not people, not Canadians. They know they are people, they know they are Canadians, but they don't get treated like it.<br /> <br /> As a settler myself (well, in context, some parts of my family have been here since 1700, but compare that with Aboriginals who have had family here for 25 000 years) I find myself always contradicting myself. And I have finally discovered why: I, all of us, have been brainwashed into thinking that our country is a champion of civil rights. That is total crap. We are a nation where a majority white settler population decides who gets rights and who doesn't. It's all subconscious - we've been conditioned by our culture. We've all seen those movies with crazy Indians screaming like hooligans, throwing tamahaks at noble white men who only want a better life for themselves and their family. It's the whole concept that white economic power is constantly under threat, whether it be by hook-nosed Jewish ogres in the cities of Europe, or the bloodthirsty savages of the frontier. We know now that the former conception was wrong, so why don't people figure out the latter is wrong also? Because we're a civilized democracy, and things like that don't happen in civilized democracy - well wake up and smell the Reichstag! Germany was a civilized democracy too, well as civilized as we are, because we are not civilized. How could a civilized country allow the continued oppression of a minority, no less the indeginous minority. <br /> <br /> It doesn't matter when you are your family came to Canada, whether you speak French or English, whether you are Black or White or Asian, whether if you just came here yesterday, you are still at least partially responible for the Aboriginal Holocaust, because we benefit from it, but much more worse because we forget the horror of it. Can you imagine the horror of returning to your village to find it infected with Small Pox, the entire population blistered and dead, lying, rotting on the future site of a Tim Hortons?<br /> <br /> In Canada we comfort ourselves by saying that the way we treated (or still treat) Aboriginals is much better than how indeginous communities were treated in the US or Australia, but that does not make what we did right. In fact, or justifications just make it worse because we are devaluing the lives of those who died here, and more importantly, those who survived and still survive.<br /> <br /> Our country's collective mind must be psychotic, because we feel no guilt and shed no tears. You can, however, make a difference. We can all make a difference by making the treatment of Aboriginals by the government and by the people themselves an issue, a real issue as politically important (or even more so) than health care, or even the comparitively trivial debates on same-sex marriage or Canada-US relations. Don't be proud of being Canadian, because that means beign proud of being an oppressor. Instead be hopeful that one day you can be proud that we have fully addressed our national sins and accepted the Aboriginal peoples of Canada as who they are, the Aboriginal PEOPLE of Canada.[/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> <br /> I personally feel no guilt. I don't think making myself poorer will make others richer, and I don't think I am responsible for wars that happened before I was born.<br /> <br /> How are blacks, for example, responsible? Before Trudeau brought in multiculturalism, it wasn't even legal for blacks to immigrate to Canada from the Caribbean unless they were going to be a servant.

   

[QUOTE BY= Perturbed] <br /> I personally feel no guilt. I don't think making myself poorer will make others richer, and I don't think I am responsible for wars that happened before I was born.<br /> [/QUOTE]<br /> There is no need to "feel guilt" but there seems to be a need to understand history so that past mistakes do not get repeated as they tend to. Understanding history will help relate to today's perspective from different groups when disagreements occur.<br /> <br /> I would argue that the maturity of a country and its success will be determined by its ability to come to terms with its past. For instance, a country cannot become truly sovereign if it has not dealt with its past. Neither can you expect to have a single "nation" if each group making up a country cannot agree on what this common history is, including the important part on where they agree to disagree. History whitewash revisionism by the majority will not help coming to terms with the past.

   

[QUOTE BY= Perturbed]I personally feel no guilt. I don't think making myself poorer will make others richer, and I don't think I am responsible for wars that happened before I was born.<br /> <br /> How are blacks, for example, responsible? Before Trudeau brought in multiculturalism, it wasn't even legal for blacks to immigrate to Canada from the Caribbean unless they were going to be a servant.[/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> I mean thatwe are all responsible for ignoring Aboriginal issues. It just boggles the mind how people can stand for this crap. I mean, even soething as simple as changing the name from "Indian and Northern Affairs" to "Aboriginal Affairs" or "First Nations and Northern Affairs" could be done. That wouldn't solve much, but it would send a message to our first peoples that we care. Even schoolchildren know they're not Indians, they're taught they're Aboriginals.<br /> <br /> I mean, the whole Aboriginal issue could be solved by showing them the respect they deserve. If they're respected, then maybe there wouldn't be such a high high school drop out rate, and then there wouldn't be such a high poverty rate, and then there wouldn't be so much bad health brought on by dieting on cheaper foods. Of course, there would still be problems, but this lack of respect is what I perceive to be the problem.<br /> <br /> BTW the thing about the Small Pox on the blankets was true, although it happened in the US. They might not have known about germs, but they did know that things kept by sick people can carry that disease onto others.

   

This is from the CDC:<br /> <br /> "Within recorded history, cases of humans using biological warfare against their fellow humans are well documented. During the wars of the middle ages it was common to catapult the bodies of victims of smallpox or bubonic plague (In the 14th century an army besieging Kaffa, a seaport on the Black Sea in the Crimea in Russia, catapulted plague-infected cadavers over the city walls) into besieged towns since it was well known that these two diseases were highly contagious. There are numerous reports of Europeans knowingly trading the American Indians blankets on which men had died of smallpox or measles, two viral diseases that decimated these peoples."<br /> <br /> Lord Monckton's journals are available at your local library-probably university ones or you could check canadiana.org. He was quite proud about his accomplishments and was duly promoted for them. If you still don't believe, well, everybody's entitled to a wrong opinion I suppose.<br /> <br /> As for the poster who doesn't think they're becoming poorer will make another person richer: if I find your wallet with 100 dollars in it I am now 100 dollars richer and you are 100 dollars poorer. Of course no natives even want your money, they want THEIR land, THEIR power and for us to stop ruling them. We all live in a free country, we can lobby politicians, organize strikes, etc., not only that the innate racism of canadians has been well documented during burnt church, oka, etc., racism is always something to feel guilty about. In Canada of course we have the luxury of a government that does the dirty work so we don't have to.

   

chemical and biological attack<br /> <br /> That must be the pot entering the USA, from B.C.<br /> <br /> Certainly not the stuff coming here from there.<br /> <br /> Dennis Baker

   

Its funny this place was an alternetive to main stream media, yet you all discuss last night broadcast?<br /> <br /> Dennis Baker<br /> <br /> Lets deal with today and prevent a repeat of yesterday.<br /> <br />

   

If you don't know anything about yesterday it's hard to 'learn from the past'. If anything, those here would really want to be learning their history. What is occurring now to central canada is much the same thing that occurred in the maritimes early in the twentieth century (and still continues, as does violence against natives, etc-hardly yesterdays news.) It was well documented that aircraft dropped mercury and aluminum on the predominantly native town of Espanola in the late nineties. Hardly ancient history (though I admit it 'probably' was not designed specifically as an attack against natives).<br /> <br /> "History is bunk" said Henry Ford, who knew almost none. Having never learned much in public school I am now enjoying history so much more than I ever thought I would, everything on the page is history, even these words. Anyway, enough rhapsodizing, my point is that during the 20's and on there was the Maritime Rights Movement which arose out of the disaster that was confederation. It failed, however it is a useful study because when you read NAFTA and WTO agreements you quickly find what 'Canada' is facing now (although largely 'Ontario', the maritimes did not benefit from companies 'from away' any more than we do from american firms now. So people may want to look at what worked and what didn't during those rights movements, hardly ancient history as the Antigonish Movement is still alive and well. It will take more than griping on a bulletin board I'm afraid.

   

[QUOTE BY= lesouris] We have come a long way since the days of the "Red Indian" hunts.[/QUOTE]<br /> Have we really ?<br /> <br /> [QUOTE BY= lesouris] I, all of us, have been brainwashed into thinking that our country is a champion of civil rights. That is total crap. We are a nation where a majority white settler population decides who gets rights and who doesn't. <br /> <b>It's all subconscious - we've been conditioned by our culture.</b></b>[/QUOTE]<br /> Bold by michou.<br /> <br /> This is what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious. There may be more to it than brainwashing and cultural reasons, genetic memory may also be a kink in the wheel of evolution. In whatever shape or form, we are all conditionned by our environment and inheritance and as such carry over some of its burden and responsibility. <br /> <br /> [QUOTE BY= lesouris] Because we're a civilized democracy, and things like that don't happen in civilized democracy - well wake up and smell the Reichstag!<br /> [/QUOTE]<br /> Good one !<br /> <br /> [QUOTE BY= lesouris] Our country's collective mind must be psychotic, because we feel no guilt and shed no tears. You can, however, make a difference. We can all make a difference by making the treatment of Aboriginals by the government and by the people themselves an issue…[/QUOTE]<br /> The question is, does a psychotic collective mind have the ability to make a positive difference here ? I’d say, not without first getting treatment to help raise its conscience level. Your post lesouris did just that. Thanks.

   

Of course there are people who's racism or brainwashing if you prefer runs so deep they will never even seek to examine 'the native problem'. For those others I'd like to share some constructive ideas I've just discovered upon.<br /> <br /> 1. Some native bands have well prepared business co-ops that are seeking investors, if you regularly contribute to an RRSP then look into this. <br /> <br /> 2. Many native bands and some off reserve natives also have print newspaper available for subscription. Not only does this help their industry, you'll find out about 'the other side' of most native issues and you'll have ready access to what is going on in native life. They usually run around 20 a year, a far better deal than the propaganda you get from your local or national newspaper.<br /> <br /> 3. Research. There are countless books on the subjbect, not to mention the Royal Commission, at the library, I know perhaps I sound preachy, but believe me, that preachiness does not come from an innate 'I think I'm smarter'-until two years ago I knew nothing about anything. Now, I regret only that I wasted all those years in public and post secondary school when I could have actually been learning something!