• IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    That is the same kind of condescending logic that I’ve heard all my life. Just put up your bootstraps like everyone else, forgive, forget, get on with it and life marches on … just like for everyone else.

    What that logic always fails to understand is that unlike the rest of Canada, Native people have had to start with a handicap and at the same time the establishment swung a tire iron to the kneecap to never allow us to stand up properly. Then Canada has the nerve to stand over us and ask us why we can’t stand up on our feet.

    There are answers to all these problems and I agree from the point of view that this is a problem that will take generations to solve. In the meantime, don’t rush people along to give up everything in their lives just to satisfy the country’s guilty conscious.

    • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Most Canadians do not have a guilty conscience about indigenous people because no one is responsible for the actions of their personal or racial ancestors. Each of us starts with the hand we are dealt, some better some worse. Sure, the political class mouths platitudes about the historic suffering of indigenous people, but I’m sure you know that politicians don’t really care about anything but themselves. Similarly, the chattering classes and the professional classes look and sound stricken by the plight of some indigenous people, but they are paid to care. There are a few saints out there, but vast majority of people will not willingly give up any substantial amount of their personal wealth to any poor person, whether indigenous or otherwise.

      Unless someone swung an actual tire iron at your actual personal kneecaps, most people don’t really care for the colorful analogies. And if you’ve been hearing the same “condescending” logic all your life, maybe there is a lesson there. That lesson isn’t that you are wrong, but rather that people have limited fucks to give and don’t want to be burdened with other people’s problems. Everybody wants to claim victim status these days, even conservatives and billionaires like Trump, so I think it is a spent strategy.