How should Canada settle native land claims ?

I hear a lot of concern here about native land claims, and I wonder whether people support the government in settling these, or do you think that force is the only answer?
I include this curriculum unit introduction to land claims as information, and to find out what people agree and disagree with.
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ABORIGINAL LAND CLAIMS
Recommended for Grade 10

BACKGROUND...

In 1992, North Americans celebrated 500 years of "discovery": Christopher Columbus' first voyage from the "old" world to the "new". Conventional history textbooks have tended to celebrate this as one of humanity's finest hours, but the aboriginal peoples of the Americas saw it very differently.

To the aboriginal peoples, the New World was so old that it was the only world. "Turtle Island", as many called it was a great piece of land supported on the back of a giant turtle. Every kind of society from nomadic hunting groups, settled farming communities and civilizations with cities as large as any then on earth flourished here.

The arrival of the Europeans changed this. The nations now known as Canada and the United States are the result of colonization and unlike Asia and Africa, the colonizers never left. Aboriginal people have seen their lands and their peoples decimated, largely due to crippling diseases which saw their populations drop to less than a tenth of what they had been prior to contact.

Although colonialism broke the connection between many peoples and their traditional land, aboriginal people have struggled since contact to keep their land and their distinctive ideas of land tenure, and have fought to preserve their culture. Today, you cannot pick up a newspaper without reading of aboriginal peoples in North America seeking to reclaim their birthright through land claims, setting up barricades and protest marches. There is an important reason for this: for aboriginal peoples, the land was part of their identity as a people. The Earth was their Mother, the animals were their spiritual kin and all were part of the greater whole, which was life. Their culture was grounded in nature. Time was marked by the changing seasons and the rising and setting of the sun, rather than by numbers, and their existence was marked by an acceptance of and respect for their natural surroundings and their place in the scheme of things.

The most fundamental of rights for aboriginal people is the right to their identity as aboriginal people. Since that identity was derived largely from the land they used and occupied before the arrival of Europeans, they believe they had - and still have - certain rights in regard to the land, including continuing habitation and use of the land, whether it be for hunting, fishing, trapping, gathering food and medicines, or for any other traditional activities.

The right to identity also implies the further right to self-determination, for it is through self-determination that a people preserves their collective identity. Yet, the right of aboriginal people to pursue a traditional economy is disrupted or damaged when natural resources are exploited and abused on a large scale, such as by a hydro-electric project, a pipeline, or a strip mine. Furthermore, the right of aboriginal people to sustain their communities so that their cultures may develop and thrive is severely hampered by not having access to a sufficient land base. Thus, when aboriginal people assert their land rights, they include the resources beneath the soil, the trees and animals, the rivers, hills, coastal waters, ice and air. "Mother Earth", they maintain, incorporates all of these elements. Aboriginal peoples also speak of their collective and inalienable right to the land. Land, as they see it, is not a commodity to be bought and sold, but a responsibility of the community, which must be passed on to future generations. The land is more than just an economic resources: it is also a place where spirits live, where their ancestors are buried and where new generations will grow up.

It is sometimes suggested that, through the process of treaty-making, aboriginal people agreed to "yield up" the land they traditionally used and occupied, and to move to reserves in order to make room for expanding white settlements. Indeed, many aboriginal groups signed treaties with representatives of the British Crown in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, the aboriginal view of the importance of treaties differs considerably from that of the Europeans who negotiated them. In treaty-making, the European objectives were to exercise complete control over the land and to make it safe for settlement and for the development of its resources. Aboriginal people considered the treaties to be agreements between sovereign nations. While Europeans considered the treaties as transfer of titles to the land, aboriginal nations perceived them merely to be agreements to share the land, as they did with the animals and other groups. While aboriginal people had strong concepts of territory, they did not believe that land was something which an individual could divide, transfer, surrender, destroy or own to the exclusion of all others.

Today, aboriginal people believe their treaty rights are a series of broken promises, as Canada still refuses to implement fully the terms of existing treaties. Furthermore, many aboriginal groups in Canada did not sign treaties. Much of the Canadian land mass has been claimed by aboriginal people as never having been given away. As a result, many aboriginal peoples have sought return of their land (or compensation) in the courts, in Parliament and in land claims negotiations.

In the settlement of land claims, aboriginal peoples seek a wide range of opportunities. In some cases, this may mean local renewable resource activities, activities such as fishing and hunting that local people can undertake, that can be locally managed and controlled and that are related to traditional aboriginal values. However, aboriginal people also seek access to economy of the dominant society, where large-scale technology (such as logging, commercial fishing, and mining) predominates. The settlement of aboriginal land claims has to provide the means to enable aboriginal peoples to thrive, and aboriginal cultures to develop, in ways denied to them in the past. Most importantly, the sense of community and identity of aboriginal life must be affirmed. The very well-being and existence of aboriginal peoples depends upon it.

Despite major land claims agreements such as the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, the Northern Flood Agreement in Manitoba, the Umbrella Final Agreement in the Yukon and the Nunavut Agreement in the Northwest Territories, there continues to be a lack of commitment on the part of the government of Canada to settle the many claims of aboriginal people. With First Nations spread across the country, each having its own individual specific claim, it is difficult for them to sustain sufficient pressure on governments to achieve positive and speedy action on any of the particular claims. This fuels the belief that claims are only settled when there is a show of public anger or violence such as that witnessed in the summer of 1990 in Oka. Unless the federal government makes a strong commitment to settle all outstanding aboriginal land claims, the protests of aboriginal people will continue. Rectifying historic injustices, through the settlement of aboriginal land claims, is vital for the well-being of all Canadians.

Next time just link the aped site http://www.schoolnet.ca/aboriginal/issues/claims-e.html

And why would anyone here enter into a dialogue with you about history when you’ve demonstrated quite well that you simply don’t know squat about the discipline? You’ve quoted amateur sites, pushed ahistorical agendas and been objectively wrong on numerous occasions and that doesn’t even cover your junky analysis.

Sorry, this is a “wait and see” thing

Hmmm, I haven't hung out here enough to know the poster. I'm probably putting my foot in it... sorry.

I think it would be extremely prudent to settle land claims as soon as possible. Canada is not going to conquer the Coast Range. The longer the treaties go unsigned the more expensive it's going to get. When First Nations without treaties start to use their independence and soveriegnty to atract businesses and growth, it's going to be way too much money to buy back. If you're going to make a deal and unify Canada, best get doing it. Otherwise you might want to look at the advantages of having a native Singapore.