I find it amusing when people that do not belong to a certain group, attempt to determine what is good and proper for that group of people to do.
Natives and Métis should "just move on", and forget that several generations of their children were stolen from them, were brainwashed by the government and by the agencies that the government contracted with, and those children often ended up outside of both the "mainstream culture" and of their own ancestral culture.
Sorry, but this is NOT something that any Native or Métis person should EVER "get over".
This was nothing less than a bald faced attempt to totally destroy the Native cultures in Canada. Pierre Elliot Trudeau personally prepared a "White Paper" calling for all natives to be fully integrated into the Canadian Culture (meaning their native cultures were to be effectively eliminated) within a 20 year period. When he became P.M., he tried to implement that plan.
MY family ARE Métis. Some are ashamed of that ancestry, and do everything possible to conceal it. I have a cousin, a retired Crown Attorney in Saskatchewan, who will not speak with me any longer, because " You destroyed the memory of my Mother by proving that she had Native ancestry."
Others are more realistic, knowing that we are what we are, and embracing ALL of our ancestral roots and branches, in their complexity.
The government did indeed attempt to do "Cultural Genocide", and they succeeded in all too many cases, leaving people, "betwixt and between", not truely fitting into any culture. That behavior should be roundly condemned, and the government should pay reparations to all of those living people that they treated so badly.
I AM Métis, and I am proud of that ancestry. My people were rejected by BOTH sides, so they created their own culture in every sense of that word. They had their own language, their own music, their own foods, their own dress, that took elements from both their Native ancestry and their European ancestry, and melded them into something totally unique.
My particular ancestors were called "half-breeds", because we were of Scots and Native ancestry. But they were treated no differently than those of French and Native ancestry by the government.
My paternal Grandmother was denied the right to attend the public schools in Manitoba in the 1890's, because she was a "filthy half-breed". She did not look native however (black hair and eyes, but a pale complexion and European features), and she married a man from Nova Scotia who ad no prejudices against the Métis, and after moving to Winnipeg, she "passed" as a "white woman". Her children were never told that they had Native ancestry, and were not allowed to meet their maternal grandmother.
That's what "cultural genocide" does to people, it makes them ashamed of their own families. It SHOULD be a criminal offense.
Canada has been cited, repeatedly, by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, because of its horrible treatment of it's native peoples. Isn't that odd, that Canada, who was one of the earliest signers and ratifiers of the Human Rights Resolution by the United Nations in 1948, has repeatedly been cited by that very organization, because it refuses to treat it's own Native people properly?
