Lessons learned

Page 5

Dear Editor:

Re: Who gets it? Windspeaker September 2006

I applaud Windspeaker for this editorial, which is very well produced, informative and educational. It is too bad that the majority of Canadidans don't "get it," Windspeaker that is.

There is one thing I want to add and that is I know who gets it and has been getting it since the first colonist set foot on our territories.

We have been massacred, jailed, raped, Christianized. Our territories stolen, our future our children institutionalized and robbed of their languages, spirituality, culture and traditions. We have been demoralized, demonized, criticized, ostracized, victimized, hanged, shot, forced to assimilate and exterminated by assimilation, yet we are still here.

Of course, we "get it." Governments will continue to rob us, steal from us, murder us, subjugate us, placate us, befriend us all in the name of assimilation. For you see Trudeau and Chretien's White Paper Policy on Aboriginal Peoples has never been thrown out. It has been thrown out by each successive government to use as they see fit.

Oka taught us a lesson-Never trust the word of government again. The land that cost a life is still not given back to the Mohawk people.

Even though the inquiry into the death of Dudley George has come to some conclusion, the land that an Aboriginal man was killed for has still not been returned to the Stony Point people.

The Lubicon Cree of Alberta continue to be without their territory, which has been promised by successive governments. The list is a long one. We can no longer continue to do things the white way. W must start to do things the right way. Our way.

-Fred Loft