Attitude toward Aboriginal Peoples

I was appalled a few years ago to see a documentary about how untold thousands of aboriginal children had been literally kidnapped from their families and taken to England & Canada, used for "cheap" labor and placed in orphanages, etc. Don't have time to research the facts and figures right now. This was a practice that was carried on for years, and not just in the real distant past, either. The documentary I watched was about a grown woman who went back to Australia from England, searching for her mother.

Here are a couple of interesting links:

Stolen Children

Gov.au report

Guess, this is one of those things that tends to get my dander up whenever someone (outside the US) points fingers at our checkered past. We are not alone - pot calling kettle black.

 

Wow, hours pass and the silence is deafening.

 

I may well have seen the same documentary. The information you stated is correct. The treatment of the aboriginal peoples of Australia was appalling. Of course, that doesn't excuse our behavior of our own part, but it doesn't give others the right to be holier than thou. Contries (be it the US, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, etc etc etc) that have systematically victimized peoples in the past simply need to acknowlege that, and learn from it. There's no shame in that. Nor should anyone else rub another's nose in that same acknowlegement.

 

"Wow, hours pass and the silence is deafening. "
''
Patience is a virtue LadyEagle...

Anyways, most of the horror stories about colonialism are the same everywhere. Belgium was especially brutal in Kongo
http://www.historywiz.com/leopold.htm
http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/leopold.html
"Over the next 23 years Léopold will amass a huge personal fortune by exploiting the Congo directly and by leasing concessions to private companies prepared to pay him 50% of their profits. The period will witness some of the worst atrocities ever committed on the African continent. However, Léopold will never visit the region, ruling instead by decree from Belgium.

Among the Congolese the CFS comes to be known as 'Bula Matadi' ('He who breaks rocks' in the language of the Kongo people), a reference to the brutality of Léopold' regime. "

In the eyes of many 19th century Australians, the Aboriginals were simply animals instead of humans could be exterminated like rabid dogs.


On a positive note, a book by one Harriet Beecher Stowe made a great impression on a young disgruntled former civil servant. So he tried to write something just like it, covering colonialism.
http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Orchestra/9632/theBook.html

 

Australians have nothing as a collective in being proud of the treatment of the Aboriginal peoples of this great continent.

It was seen as being non-peopled by the incomers.
Australian White Colonials did a 100% ethnic cleansing of the distinct Tasmanian Peoples which is an abiding shame!

White folk sure were not good to the aboriginal folk but they were not real nice to their own poor and underpriveledged either. Which is why people emigrated from Europe and Britain to the wilds of these New Worlds where they could dream of a better life for their families, where hard work could be rewarded. Those who were persecuted in their homelands for their beliefs a freedom to worship as they saw fit.

 

In Canada the official government policy is to attempt to integrate aboriginals ("Indian bands") into mainstream governance by, where possible, negotiating "self-government" agreements.

The government also has policies aimed at integrating aboriginals into mainstream economies.

There are also policies that allow "Indian bands" to negotiate settlements with the government over historical mismanagement by government of a bands lands or resources.

Critics of these policies cliam there is not enough assimilation of aboriginals, ie that a fuller, or outright assimilation, is the only answer to aboriginal problems.

Advocates maintain the system is slowly working.

There are success stories and failure stories.

History hasn't concluded yet.

 

Here in America the "Indian bands", as you call them, don't want to be assimilated into the main stream. "First Nations" people want to be able to govern themselves. They don't wish to give up their culture and have it watered down by main stream American culture. After all the government has taken from them, I think this is not asking too much. Give them the lands they now live on and let them be proud people again. They have so little to hold on too, the government doesn't need to take their culture also.
I am very proud of my First Nations ancestors. The only reason autonomy would not work for First Nations people is that white men want to own all the land. Greed always seems to be the driving force behind a culture's disintegration.

 

Canada's native peoples want to protect and preserve their cultures.

But it is the native peoples themselves who are demanding political power at the policy making level on regional and national issues. They are very political while at the same time trying to preseve unique aboriginal culutres.

What I'm calling integration at the political level is driven by aboriginals themselves.

 

See this site if you're interested.....

http://www.afn.ca/Assembly_of_First_Nations.htm

 

If the Indian People can make some money off stupid white gamblers, good for them.

 

The revenue from this casino

http://www.casino-rama.com

...is in litigation between the Indian band, the provincial government, and other Indian bands....

http://www.anishinabek.ca/uoi/rama0302.htm

 

Hypocrisy is the tribute evil pays to virtue.
The USA wanted to wipe out the Indians completely in the 19th century, didn't have the 'fortitude' to finish it and stuck the last remnants in reservations to rot to death slowly.
I won't blame the Indians for their gambling operations.

 

Ottoman Turks and Jannisaries - the "reeducation" of Christian sons into Islamic warriors to fight their own people. Not exactly an ethnic cleansing (thought the Ottoman empire was certainly not beyond that practice either) in the strictest sense.

Have you ever heard D. James Kennedy's great sermon where he compares public (re)education to that Ottoman practice? Great stuff.