Thanksgiving, where we celebrate what we did to the natives.
Despite all the awful things that settlers have done to Aboriginals in Canada (and Native Americans in the USA), neither country's Thanksgiving is about that. Canada's Thanksgiving was originally a celebration of arrival in the New World. Over time, it became a harvest celebration.
Which half the provinces don't even recognize (as in, not a stat holiday). Not that it really matters that much. No problem has ever been solved by merely declaring a holiday and there's no shortage of shitty actions speaking louder than any holiday could.
I've been living outside of Canada for a number of years now. Up until recently, I actually became more proud of Canada. Patriotic even. I almost convinced myself that Canada had something special that the rest of the world didn't.
That all came crashing down because of three things:
Unmarked graves of native kids at former residential schools. 250 in BC. 751 in Saskatchewan. They were just kids. How many more haven't we found?
Horsy pigs pointing AR-15s at unarmed Wet'suwet'en protestors. On Wet land. In their own homes. Why? For the gall of protesting against the inevitable environmental disaster that the Coastal GasLink pipeline would bring.
More horsy pigs letting the convidiots run rampant around Ottawa, and hugging and kissing convidiots at the Alberta border.
Kid gloves for white people; violence for natives. It crushed me to realize it, but Canada is an ethno-state like any other.
You lost me at the ethno-state. They are issues to be addressed sure and it's good to put them on the table instead of shoving them under it but you can't just cherrypick the worst offenses and conclude ethno-state.
I think "like any other" is the key take away here.
Canada isn't any better, but for the most part is also not worse than anyone else in these matters.
That's not to say that we should be excused for doing the bad things (as a culture/society) because other people also do the bad things and sometimes worse bad things.... no. Everyone is guilty. It's a global problem. The names and groups change, the methods change, the outcomes change somewhat, but the story is largely the same regardless of where you go.
The only logical conclusion is that we have a long way to go before the civilization we have built, could be considered "civilized" in any way, shape, or form.
The internet will always be be telling you that you should hate your own country. No matter which country you're from, it's the worst country in the world. Funny how that is.
Kid gloves for white people; violence for natives.
Umm... I'm not sure how to approach this, because I'm pretty sure people don't care about the facts and just want to push whatever political narrative, but here:
Also man... The freedom convoy was removed, had their accounts frozen, officers that donated to the convoy were disciplined, and docked pay. At the time I compared it against a pipeline protest by native people, and they were both removed in equal time.
Remember Occupy Wallstreet? Go google Occupy Wallstreet Kettling, and tell me how "handled with kitty gloves" people are.
The thing I can't stand about all of this is Natives recieve tons of support, and recognition in Canada. Like dude. I'm not saying racism doesn't exist, and I'm not saying there isn't generational trauma, and other issues, but just as a matter of fact, in Canada under law Natives aren't given less, they're given more.
It's called Restitutions. It's when white people say 'My bad!!’ and bashfully try and make good of the atrocities they have orchestrated in the past against ethnic groups, more often than not half hearted and poorly distributed.
"Oh shit! We massacred your tribe and stole your children? What? The children had their teeth yanked out instead of getting dental care? Soorry, eh. Have a field house for your shitty little park."
The solution as always is to stop electing 'conservatives'. All people want to move hard with reparations and reconciliation with the exception of RW politicians and their white supremacist base. We need to outnumber them at the polls until they have no say.
As a French Canadian (Acadian), I don't mind it either. It's a nice looking flag. Something about the blue being proportional to the French speaking population kinda irks me though.
I fail to see the nuance in situations like residential schools. Could you perhaps educate me so I can come to a more informed conclusion than sending thousands of indigenous Canadians to schools designed to stripped them of their culture is a bad thing to do.
The country has acknowledged the atrocities of residential schools for many years. If you want to criticize the current state of affairs by all means go ahead, but you are not contributing to the discussion in any way by pointing out residential schools were a bad thing.
Is this a shitpost because blue actually represents the Quebecois who view themselves as oppressed the way they oppressed Indigenous People, for whom orange/yellow/black/red/white are more representative colours?