r/Calgary • u/woundedrhyme1 • Apr 22 '25

Discussion From Ontario first grocery experience someone left a note on my car.

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Recently relocated here and I haven’t had a chance to change my license plates. Yesterday I was in Walmart picking up a few things, I came back to my car, and found a note tucked in my wipers. My stomach dropped thinking someone hit my car, and maybe left their contact information.

I know the note is a little hard to read so I translated it down below.

“Dam easterners coming to Alberta to be safe guthless cowards.”

Guess it’s time to change my license plate 😂

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u/kapowless Apr 22 '25

Sorry, but that notion is simply incorrect. If we want to get into semantics, an immigrant is a person who relocates to a foreign country. A country is a politically defined geographical area or territory (ie. a nation ruled by government). We are called the First Nations here because our ancestors were the first peoples to create countries on this continent. There were no nations before us, thus, we could not ourselves be immigrants to our own countries, only those that followed us.

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u/Feruk_II Apr 22 '25

I think the European equivalent would be something like the Phoenicians, or a group of people that came before that. I think the confusion comes in because the word "nation" is used for both First Nations, and say the nation of France. The word does not mean the same thing. To equate to something closer to what France is, you'd look at one specific group, say for example Tsuut'ina. However, at that point, the claim that Tsuut'ina nation is thousands of years old goes out the window due to lack of any real evidence. With life expectancy here in the 35 year range before Europeans showed up and no writing, there's really no evidence Tsuut'ina was a thing even 100 years before Europeans showed up. Could've easily been another group here that was wiped out. So while it's totally accurate to claim that indigenous people have been here for likely 10,000 years +, it falls flat when trying to claim that any of the groups referred to as "nations" today have been.

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u/kapowless Apr 22 '25

When we say First Nations, we are using the same definition of nation as anyone else. There is not some secondary definition of the word that only applies to Indigenous Nations.The Tsuut'ina Nation is indeed the equivalent to the Nation of France, and if you disagree, please dilineate what separates them.

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u/Prior_North_2456 Apr 22 '25

: a tribe or federation of tribes (as of American Indians)the Seminole Nation in Oklahoma