Editor: Thanks to Monique Tamminga for writing the 鈥淥n the road to reconciliation鈥� article which was very informative.
Thanks for sharing that information about the residential schools.
I, like many Canadians, had not even heard of the Aboriginal residential schools before and did not realize that they had been forcibly made to attend the schools for seven generations.
A colleague at work had remarked to me, 鈥渨hy there is any need for 鈥榯ruth and reconciliation,鈥� and for how much longer this reconciliation should continue to go on?鈥�
I remarked that I didn鈥檛 realize that any such thing had even begun.
I visited Winnipeg several years ago and was really surprised as to how openly racist people were toward Aboriginals, even more than here on the West Coast.
I have also learned that Aboriginals are very limited in ways they may earn a living, not being allowed by Dept. of Indian Affairs to sell their fish or other natural resources like oil, off-reserve.
I recently discovered that Alberta and Saskatchewan bands with oil reserves could only sell them with the involvement of Indian Oil Canada, a federal government agency.
And we wonder why aboriginals are so impoverished when we deprive them of the means to support themselves.
And many of us still think that school, housing and other social funding to the bands are social programs when really, they were to fulfill the promises made in the land treaties and should instead be considered more like mortgage payments by the Canadian government to the Aboriginals.
Colin Chang,
Abbotsford
