Ed. here. Agent 3, who worked for a short while in northeastern Saskatchewan, where, last Sunday, 11 people were stabbed to death (and another 19 wounded) by one man, shares a few thoughts.
In 2017, on the occasion of Canada's sesiquicentennial, the Liberal government declared that "First Nations" -- the people who used to be called "Indians" -- were the rightful owners of the land, and much better people than the white colonialists who built the country up from nothing to one of the top five in the United Nations Human Development Index.
The fact that many of the First Nations lived in poverty on "reserves" in rural areas, rife with unemployment and alcoholism was, the Liberals told us, the fault of us racist white supremacists. We were guilty, guilty, guilty, they told us, of taking Indian children away from their homes, putting them in prison-like residential schools, and trying to make them into white men and women.
So the First Nations became permanent "flavours of the month", forever victims, about whom nothing negative could ever be said, and whose entitlement to the land (and every sort of benefit) was to be proclaimed at the start of every public meeting or ceremony, including hockey games.
Just over 40 years ago I lived and worked for a short time -- it seemed much longer -- amongst the Indians (that word was OK then, so I'll just keep using it) in northeastern Saskatchewan, trying to reconcile their culture with white man's law -- a very difficult task. In those days, life on the "rez" (reserve) was nasty, brutish and short. Seems like it hasn't changed a lot since then.
I refer, in particular, to the James Smith Cree Nation, northeast of Prince Albert, where, last Sunday, a 30-year-old man named Myles Sanderson ran amok, repeatedly stabbing some 30 people, 11 of whom died. They were all Indians, except for one elderly white man who was killed in the village of Weldon, about 20 miles from the rez.
One of those slain was Damien Sanderson, on the left in the pictures displayed by the Mounties. Damien was Myles' brother, and was initially believed to be his accomplice in a folie à deux.
Exactly what transpired between Myles and Damien Sanderson will never be known, because Myles died of unknown causes while he was in police custody shortly after being arrested near Rosthern yesterday afternoon. The Mounties had rammed the stolen pickup truck which Myles was driving, pushing it into a ditch, but witnesses said Myles appeared to be alive when loaded onto a stretcher.
Police investigations continue but of course there will be no trial. Many people are saying, even now, that Myles Sanderson got what he deserved, even if the "justice" was administered by the cops rather than the courts. After all, he had already been "dealt with according to the law" many times before.
He had been in prison -- the Saskatchwan pen is conveniently located at Prince Albert -- more than once. He was once sent to a "healing lodge", to get straightened out in the Indian way. And then back to prison. At the time when Myles went on the rampage, he was on statutory release, meaning he'd done his time and they had to let him go.
Yet the woke politicians and liberal media are already trying to portray Myles Sanderson as the victim! After all, he was an Indian, so whatever he did, whatever happened to him, had to be the fault of white society!
Like many of his peers, he was a hopeless alcoholic and drug addict. That's the white man's fault because drugs and booze were brought to the Indians by white men centuries ago. Although he was never sent to a residential school, just as American blacks are still suffering because their ancestors were slaves, everyone knows that the adverse effects on the psyche can be handed down through the generations.
The Liberal party line is that we white folks have a duty to make things right with the Indians. If they're going to heal, we have to heal them! How? By making life on the rez better -- building houses for them, paving the roads, and (of course) giving still more money for "community projects" and other types of welfare.
My question is: how do you help those who can't or won't help themselves? If getting educated, working hard, and striving to improve your lot in life are "white virtues", then I would suggest that the residential schools were not wrong to try to inculcate those virtues into the children placed in their care. I could go on, but political correctness forbids....
No comments:
Post a Comment