"The discovery of unmarked burial sites in Canada holding the remains of nearly 1,000 people, mainly Indigenous children, has reverberated worldwide. But it has hit a particularly resonant note in the United States. The burial sites were discovered last month near former residential schools – government-sponsored religious institutions created to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children into white society. More than 130 such schools operated in Canada from the 1870s to the 1990s; an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and placed in them." - Christian Science Monitor
Even though I am just learning the news of Indigenous Children deaths in Western Canada, and you're just learning about Indigenous Children deaths in Western Canada, guess who's known about these atrocities for a long time? The Canadian Government.
You notice that the Canadians are very, very sorry, but they haven't come up with any new concrete resolutions for these grisly discoveries. That's because the Canadian Government has known about this for years and has already created their version of reparations. They just don't call it that, they call their solution the Territory of Nunavut.
Back in the 1990's, I had read proposals about Canada splitting the Northwest Territories in half. It made no sense to me whatsoever. The population of the Northwest Territories was about 75,000 spread across well over a MILLION square miles. About a quarter of that population was in the city of Yellowknife alone. On the eastern end of the Northwest Territories, the city of of Frobisher Bay had changed their name from their colonial nomenclature to the traditional name of Iqaluit, but other than that I didn't realize what was percolating under the surface. A few years after the name change, the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement of 1993 stated that the Government of Canada would give the native Inuit people the Eastern Section of the Northwest Territories for self governing. The separate territory of Nunavut would be the largest Aboriginal land claim settlement in Canadian History with a land mass of nearly 750,000 square miles.
The newly founded capital of Iqaluit had its population "spike" from around 5,000 to almost 8,000 today.
Now if I was a Canadian Right-Winger (I am neither Canadian, or a Right Winger), I would have wondered why the Canadian Government capitulated to a few thousand Inuit.
In hindsight, it appears that the Canadian government created Nunavut out of guilt. They gave the Inuit almost unusable land that was 95% Tundra and Glacier in exchange for Inuit self governing.
Because they knew what they did to the Inuit.
The Christian Science Monitor article hinted that there could be indigenous graves in America, also. The problem there is that there is no Native American homeland in America for repatriation.
Stupid people think that changing the names of the Cleveland Indians or the Washington Redskins does something.
It.
Does.
Nothing.
If you really cared about Native American causes, you would petition the U..S. Government to create a Native American Homeland in America based on the principles of the Inuit Homeland (Nunavut) in Canada.
Splitting Oklahoma in half and returning the eastern section of the state to a self-governing Indian Territory would be a sample of a real solution.
Seriously, what are the chances of something like the concept of Nunavut happening in the U.S.?
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