It’s all about the money nothing more nothing less

And why should it not be?

It sounds to me that if they had made the same agreement with a town of white folks and they had not kept up to their part of a similar agreement you would not have made that comment.

Stop the expansion? Then stop the taxpayers flow of money, my pockets are already emptied way too much by taxes.

Good luck Enbridge!

he residential school program was a good idea and remains so. Educating any child is most beneficial and in the case of the natives was more than needed. The sexual abuse was perpatrated and seemingly promoted by a particular religious organization was awful of course, but I would say the environment of a residential schoolfar exceeded the living conditions where they came from. Like uh some reason they don’t want to become Canadians?

Must be a sign of the times ahead. NDP=The Wet’suwet’en?

Huckleberry=Lieberals? (makes promises they don’t keep)

With the exception of Gus and some others, it is deeply concerning to read the comments on the post and know that they come from my fellow Canadians. It’s also sad to know that these stunted individuals have also likely reproduced and passed on their ignorance to their kids.

I hope all these ignorant racist comments don’t reflect badly on Prince George, because in general the people that live here don’t have these attitudes.

Is pointing out a long entrenched pattern of behaviour “racist”? Enough of the politically correct, coddling crap- it’s time to put a stop to this economic blackmail. Whether it’s under the guise of the environment, jobs, or the nebulous “traditional territory” the solution is usually found in a chequebook.

If you miss your mortgage or car payments to the bank, you can be sure they will repossess. Is that economic blackmail as well?

An agreement signed in good faith is an agreement that must be honoured. If the payments are in default whose fault is it?

If the money is so tight perhaps the high paid executives ought to take a cut in pay or go the bank and borrow.

I had a neighbor want to run a powerline across the corner of my acreage. It would save him the installation of eight power poles by bring power in to his new shop “the back way”. We came up with a fair offer and an easement was put in place. No problem. Had he decided not to pay then we would have had a problem. This is different how?
(other than the knee jerk racist attitudes)

This issue will be settled by Imperial Metals, and the Wet’suwet’en, and certainly won’t be influenced by anyone making comments here.

If they don’t settle the issue, and close the mine, then you might start to hear some concerns by those people working at the mine.

The residential school program was inherently abusive. It was not, as Birdman suggests, a means of providing needed education that has acquired a bad reputation due to the misconduct of some members of “a certain religious organization”. To begin with, the explicit purpose of the residential school system was to take the Indian out of the children, that is, to assimilate them culturally, not to educate them. The schools did everything they could to prevent the children from speaking their own languages and to teach their traditional culture was primitive and evil.

The residential schools did not provide an education at all comparable to that received by whites. People involved in native education operate on the assumption that someone who went all the way through residential school and thereby received what was nominally a grade eight education in fact received a grade five education. This was due in considerable part to the fact that much of the children’s day was spent on farmwork in the case of the boys and domestic work in the case of the girls, not to mention excessive amounts of prayer more appropriate for monks and nuns than for school children. Many of the teachers were not well qualified – in fact, especially in the early days, many of them had a poor command of English themselves. (Some non-teaching staff, the “disciplinarians”, did not speak English at all.)

There was no need, in general, to require the children to attend boarding schools. Given the wide dispersion of people in the north, in some cases boarding might have been necessary, but most children could perfectly well have been accommodated in day schools, which was what the Indians requested. Residential schools were established in order to cut the children off from their families and communities. This is easily seen in the history of Lejac school in our area. The first Indian school was established in Fort Saint James, in the heart of a major native community. That school could easily have continued as a day school, and those children from remote areas who needed to board could have been permitted contact with their friends and relatives in Nak’azdli. Instead, it was soon replaced by Lejac, which was deliberately built in an isolated location rather than in or adjacent to an existing native community. To further increase the isolation, children’s families were only allowed to visit on Sundays.

Conditions in the schools were poor. They were deliberately funded at 80% of cost, which is one reason for the excessive time the children had to devote to farm work. The children received poor and meagre food and for the most part did not benefit from the food that they themselves produced, which was served to the staff or sold. In addition to the well known sexual abuse, which was not limited to “one religious organization” but was rampant in the residential schools run by both Protestants and Catholics, there was considerable physical abuse. I do not refer to mere corporal punishment of the sort common at the time, though even that was foreign to Indian children, but to very severe strappings, beatings with the fists, and so forth.

As for Birdman’s allegation that conditions in the schools were superior to those at home, that is ridiculous. That was true for some children toward the end of the operation of Lejac, by which time conditions on the reserves had deteriorated due to the devastation of the native economy and the effects of several generations of residential school on the family structure, but it certainly was not true in general or at earlier times.

Contact between boys and girls was minimized. Children were beaten for merely speaking to or sending a note to a child of the opposite sex. Brothers and sisters were not allowed to speak to each other.

In short, the environment of the residential schools was inherently abusive. They were deliberately established more for the purpose of cultural genocide than for the purpose of providing Indian children with a good education.

The words to the Dire Straits song “Money for nothin” continue with “chicks for free” …. not “cheques for free”

The topic is the lifestyle of successful rock and roll stars.

Here is how the Lummi, a Coastal Salish tribe in Northeastern Washington State are doing these days under the laws of the USA which is known to have treated First Nations worse than the British North Americans did and subsequently the Canadians did. But, today that is a different story.

http://www.lummi-nsn.org/website/index2.html

Many of the tribes own casinos. The Lummi are no exception.
http://www.silverreefcasino.com/index.php/general-info

Many of the staff of the casino are aboriginals. There are even some from Canadian bands. As it says on the web page “The Silver Reef Casino Practices Native American Preference in hiring according to law”.

The USA keeps Census info for those living on reserve. The workforce participation rate of the Lummi is in the 70% range.

Thank for that reminder billposer.

billposer~~I remember the Lejac kids in the parades in PG…and I don’t remember ever seeing a smile.

Sorry, that should read Northwestern Washington State.

Ram Tough Perineum (doesn’t that name say a lot) asks, “Is pointing out a long entrenched pattern of behaviour “racist”? “

Yes, it may well be, especially when the pattern is grossly exaggerated and slanted. For instance, Dearth says it is about the money, referring to the First Nation involved. He doesn’t mention, not at all, that the mine was built in the first place to make money. He is right, the mine is all about the money, and the refusal to pay the contracted amounts is also all about the money.

Since he focuses on the First Nation and ignores the money grubbing refusal by the mine owners to do what they contracted to do, his comments are indeed racist.