1. Chief Dan George read the speech “Lament for Confederation” to 32,000 people at Empire Stadium. Dan George, Chief to a Coast Salish band in North Vancouver and activist on the rights of First Nations in North America was a residential school student at the age five. He was stripped of his language, culture and family. The speech discussed the devastating ways in which the European settlers stole the native territory and culture. I think Chief George’s speech highlights how the Europeans ethnocentric mindset led them to believe that stripping, judging and abusing the First Nation culture was “helping them” or showing them “the proper way to live”; when in fact it did the opposite. As Chief George illustrates in his speech, “long hundred years since the white man came, I have seen my freedom disappear like the salmon going mysteriously out to
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The white man’s strange customs, which I could not understand, pressed down upon me until I could no longer breath.” The First Nation lost their language, their rights and their culture all within a century. The affects are still present today, as we continue to have a high numbers of Indigenous people who suffer from PTSD and substance abuse due to the mental and physical abuse is which took place in the past. We often think these events happened a long ago, however, the last residential school didn’t shut down until 1996. The Canadian society turned a blind eye to our own cultural genocide with the First Nations for many years. As a society we stood by and let these horrific events take place because in our ethnocentric mindset we convinced ourseleves that our culture was more sophisticated and higher than their’s. However, we could learn a lot from the Indigenous culture. Society must acknowledge that the wound of many Aboriginals are still raw. Even though, we cannot go back and change the way we treated our First People we can improve how we presently treat them and how we will in the
The white man’s strange customs, which I could not understand, pressed down upon me until I could no longer breath.” The First Nation lost their language, their rights and their culture all within a century. The affects are still present today, as we continue to have a high numbers of Indigenous people who suffer from PTSD and substance abuse due to the mental and physical abuse is which took place in the past. We often think these events happened a long ago, however, the last residential school didn’t shut down until 1996. The Canadian society turned a blind eye to our own cultural genocide with the First Nations for many years. As a society we stood by and let these horrific events take place because in our ethnocentric mindset we convinced ourseleves that our culture was more sophisticated and higher than their’s. However, we could learn a lot from the Indigenous culture. Society must acknowledge that the wound of many Aboriginals are still raw. Even though, we cannot go back and change the way we treated our First People we can improve how we presently treat them and how we will in the