The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations is trying to make inroads with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, hoping to forestall the tensions and angst that marked the party's last time in power.
Lol … I’m full blooded indigenous in Ontario and this is freakin laughable.
Go ahead work out any deal or agreement you want … None of it will mean anything once they get in power. The last time the Conservatives were in power, they gutted everything to the near breaking point. Whole organizations folded and many tribal councils who represent entire groups of First Nations almost disappeared. Native groups everywhere spent the entire time fighting to start relevant and functional rather then in actually helping native people. Then when the Liberals came in, anything they did look better than the Conservatives doing nothing.
This is like making a deal with the devil … and if the details of the deal surprise you when it comes down to asking about your agreement … you’re the idiot that signed up for it all.
The only way I’d ever trust the Conservatives is that they are untrustworthy.
They are continuation of a culture from 200 years ago that believe that native people have no special rights, no special status and that all the agreements and treaties from centuries ago no longer matter and that all native people should be assimilated, reservations ended and all indigenous people taken, forced, coerced or made to get off their lands and disappear into the Canadian collective. And if all those systems we have now for native representation are eroded, ended or taken away, then maybe people will have little or nothing to the point where they will want to get off their homelands.
I get it, native people live off government handouts but what most people don’t understand is that we need that help now because we want to build ourselves to the point where we would no longer need those handouts in the future. There are many native communities that have become our on their way to becoming independent of government funding. All across northeastern Ontario around Timmins Sudbury and North Bay is mining country and the communities in there are getting so good at negotiating deals with mining companies that they are developing their communities by leaps and bounds. I know a couple of First Nations that have so many employment deals with mining companies to employ their people that they’ve run out of people to employ.
The other northern semi remote and remote First Nations are still on their way to getting that level of development and they’re getting better at it as time goes on.
Right now it’s critical … mining is going to be booming in far northern remote Ontario and the biggest stumbling block for mining is the poor native communities up there. If Conservatives get into power, mining companies could do whatever they want and bypass all these native people while they make their money.
Conservative leadership will send native people back 20 years … and if they are zealous enough, they’d like to send native people back 200 years.
Conserving what? The status quo, the way things have always been, the systems that created the winners and oppressions of the past.
Absolutely right not to trust them if you’ve found yourself and your people on the bottom of the wheel. I recognize my own privilege, and I can see that they will happily throw me under the bus too, just to stay on top.
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