To the Editor,
Newfoundland and Cuba were purged of their original inhabitants.
The US killed off buffalo, declared bounty on Indian scalps and gave them infected blankets.
South Africa taught villagers in their tribal tongue to keep them divided. Sadham Hussein gassed Kurds to silence their oil land claims.
Before USSR invasion of Afghanistan, elderly goat herders were left behind if they couldn’t keep up with the tribe. A Hawaiian tour guide lectured “Only those with ability to store fat, survived island hopping to settle Hawaii. She said Hawaiians accepted missionaries’ unseen entity over their own because the Christian god came with the power of the gun, which their tribe’s king required to subjugate other islands.
Tribal warfare exterminated neighbouring villages or surviving meek were pushed on to ice floes and desert. Might was right too, in Japan’s rape of Nanking. Are we a vicious species that created a vain, cruel god in our image? Is it vanity to judge others’ creation stories myth?
Will second coming be theocracy dictatorship — ie. no freedom of worship democracy. Does today’s society care for the least of our citizens?
Did Canada’s rulers err, gifting aboriginals a common language of communication, enabling them to use Canadian laws to initiate land claims? Would Haida conquerors have been kinder? If abuse exists in families, police force, and schools, was assimilation a church-state conspiracy?
British gentry paid to send their children to private schools Is Canada the first to compensate First Nations for having attended residential schools?
R. Frankow,
Port Alberni
