Well, despite the blockades in some areas, yesterday’s Native Day Of Action went without any major conflicts. I would say this is to the various police forces credit - they decided not to take a confrontational approach, so we had no Oka-type scenarios anywhere. That attitude was in contrast to some of our right-wing blogosphere colleagues, who when they were not making derogatory statements about the First Nations peoples, were calling for the army and/or riot police to be sent in against “Native terrorists”. Thank goodness these people aren’t the ones making decisions on this - they would have had this country up in flames yesterday if it was up to them.
Obviously, illegal activities can’t be condoned, and one would rather not see civil disobedience, (though there is a place for that, as Ghandi and Martin Luther King demonstrated) but overall, the police knew better then to make a mountain out of a molehill, so credit to them. And, the natives made their point peacefully as well.
The burden is on this Conservative government to do something to address First Nations concerns (ie. the fact a lot of these Native Reserves still don’t have running water or clean drinking water is a disgrace to Canada). Specifically, this government is the one who canceled the Kelowna Accord, so the onus is on them to come up with something better, if they think Kelowna was a bad deal.
I wonder how many of our Native friends had to take a day off work to attend the gatherings???
The problems that exist today have been with us since the 60’s, but 40 years of liberalism did almost nothing!!!
The concept of 700,000 people absorbing the best part of 10 BILLION dollars a year is mind boggling . . .