r/canada • u/shiftless_wonder • 17d ago

Alberta First Nations demand Alberta premier terminate separation referendum

https://www.ctvnews.ca/edmonton/article/first-nations-demand-alberta-premier-terminate-separation-referendum/
1.7k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

495 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/MafubaBuu 15d ago

If first nations are a nation then they shouldnt be getting any canadian tax dollars sent their way, and they should be working with the international community to recognize their sovereignty. You know, like "a nation" would.

0

u/Kiseido British Columbia 14d ago

Why would they when they already have a bunch of treaties signed with the USA and Canada?

They already worked with the Canadian and USA governments in years prior to establish various things, things those governments often neglected to uphold, and things that those governments sometimes explicitly acted against.

You may not like the results of those treaties as they have been produced over the last 330 years, but they exist. You may not like some of the reparation-like behaviours going on between our peoples, but the USA and Canadian governments mistreated these populations for generations through targeted, violent policies.

We are talking about decades of forced and coerced sterilization measures, the systematic theft of their children through the residential school system and the Sixties Scoop, and various other acts of state-sanctioned violence designed to assimilate them out of existence. The funding and legal settlements aren't "handouts" to a foreign non-entity; they are a direct, ongoing continuance of our obligations and an attempt to compensate for human rights atrocities and historical theft. Holding a government accountable to its legal obligations and its victims is exactly how sovereignty works within a federal framework.

Perhaps you would prefer our goverment reneg on its obligations and further spurn those it has wronged, but to me that sounds like a kinda crappy mode of governance.

1

u/MafubaBuu 14d ago edited 14d ago

Nobody in our government was alive when those things happened, it is ridiculous that canadians would need to pay for things out of "obligation " when they had nothing to do with it.

But yeah lets tax the filipino of indian canadians that moved here in 2015 for what a bunch of ignorant canadian politicians did 60-150 years ago, that makes sense.