Re: “Nelson adopts aboriginal acknowledgement”
I understand Nelson council has a new formula of words to open meetings, acknowledging indigenous peoples. The natives of what Canadians call our country have never been paid for their lands and our title to it is indefensible by any fair measure of right.
Private property owners of the settler culture love their property, but they ought to know that their ownership is without a basis in morality, despite the history of European colonization. The racialist and religious legalizations of an alien sovereignty (the Crown) over Canada by European theory since the 15th century cannot disguise the basic truth that justice is denied to the aboriginal people.
Moreover, in BC there is even less legality to the title of land taken from natives because indigenous people never “ceded land to the Crown” here — in the grossly-unfair way they did in Treaties 1 through 12 in the west, and other treaties in Ontario and provinces east.
BC still is unceded native territory. Reconciliation begins with truth. Truth demands non-native private property owners admit without equivocation that they cannot in any way make their land title meet the absolute standard of justice. Unless might makes right, the land of BC still belongs morally to the first peoples here.
People want what they want, and make their desires acceptable to their values and ethics. The 10 per cent of very wealthy Canadians feel no shame for the inequality of our socio-economic system, capitalism. Read the excellent and thorough study of inequality in the modern world by T. Frank, titled Listen, Liberal. It will alter your illusions about nice people.
I appreciate Nelson council is trying to be sensitive to indigenous issues by adopting the new formula. Good intentions can lead to concrete actions.
Charles Jeanes, Nelson
