How are these countires out allegedly assisting 3rd world nations and they vote down the Human Rights of their own indigenous peoples who were the first inhabitants of their country??

I could not believe seeing the article in the newspaper. I believe that we should clean our own back steps before we look at others.
Just MHO.

This post has been edited by Tina: Sep 29 2007, 11:49 PM

This has always been a bone of contention for me, having grown up in Kentucky and visited parts of the Appalachians where poverty is alive and well I know for a fact that you don't need to leave the good ole USofA to see what some third world countries living conditions are like. No running water, tarpaper shacks, no medical treatment other than what granny has passed down, you get the picture. We provide better care for the illegal aliens crossing our borders than we do our own citizens.

As for the U.N., I can sum up my opinion of this group in one word...ineffectual!

Canada North is one of the worst in treatment of its indigenous peoples. It goes back to
Queen Victoria and her Indian Act laws of the 1800's that confined aboriginals to meagre sized reserves. The idea was English spoken only, farming, no beading, leather work, spiritual beliefs, traditions nor culture to be practiced. Basically become one of them with no education.

The schools were operated by the churches, with some students to grade 4 and some to grade 8 and sent home. Most could not communicate any longer with their parents and grandparents as they were beaten in schools if their language was spoken instead of English.
There were other abuses too....much worse.
Now the governments are offerring a 2 bit package that the students must complete and relive their horrid past in order to apply. The amount to be received is to be based on a point system devised by the government based on the abuse recieved by the student. Then totalled and an amount figured out. In the severe, unconscionable abuses like rape there has to be witnesses. Many are dead b/c of the aboriginal high mortality rate or beatings. Deafness caused by head beatings is also one example of one which requires witnesses.Approval of witnesses will take time and many of the student applicants are in their 60's...It is idiotic IHO.
To relive all of this again only further contributes to severe psychologoical problems.

And in many cases there are predators out there assisting in this application completion who have their eyes on the monies and with the greater social habits apart from alcohol that this $ will buy and increase the "wallets" of the predators; there will indeed likely be a tragic loss of student lives once the $ is received.
When the Japanese received the $25,000 per head Redress $ from the Canadian government for being put into internment camps during the war they completed no forms.
And I found that $ paid by the government in my mind and that of many others to be unbeliebable b/c we were at war and these were new Canadians who lived in Northern Coastal areas and owned boats and who knew what side that they maybe on and yet they got automatic payments....no forms to be filled in.

In the case of the aboriginal students they must indicate the schools attended and what years etc. and some very personal quesitons. The form is about an inch thick. Preposterous and no way to heal bad wounds.

People don't realize that aboriginal people are not Canadians, they are wards of Queen Elizabeth and have to carry a special card around. The rules of the Indian Act should never have been and now are still being implemented.
Aboriginals can't will their land or any assets to their daughter or grand daughters if they are no longer members of their original reserve b/c of a marriage into another reserve and so their family land gets lost and no compensation is given to thesurviving family women heirs b/c of their marriage into another reserve. Democratic??? This type of treatment only leads to ugly confrontations.
And as well where some treaties do exist, they never have been honored thus creating further animosity. And then of course there are provinces like British Columbia that have no treaties, or just some recent ones that the government flew in non resident members to vote in favor of the treaty and the travel, accomodation expenses was picked up by the tax payer.
British Columbia is classified as "unceded" territory as the land has never been legally transferred to Canada though it is occupied by Canadians and the government is trying to fix it via a back door method!!!

Aboriginals in Canada only got to vote in elections in the 1960's......hard to believe...just a little over 40 years ago.

The Human Rights "No" vote is basically b/c the Canadian government has identified resources that they have used up on their Crown lands and that they have found on aboriginal reserve land and now want to exploit b/c their resources have dried up and so they don't want the Indigenous peoples to have the Rights to their own Land.
A good existing example is Shell Canada has sold out to Shell Netherlands and they are after reservation land in Northern British Columbia. This Utube Link will explain it:
Visit My Website

The tragedy here is that the Canadian governments have had the Justice System wash their hands of handling the arrest of the peaceful aboriginal protesters and are allowing the big corporations to go to the Courts and get an Injunction to remove the protestors and there is nothing in the Law system that allows them to have legal counsel which they would have been able to if the government had followed the rules of justice and had the protestors arrested, thus they get sent to jail b/c they cannot get court representation.
And these are Elders 80+ the few that exist and speak their dialect and of course the younger ones of todays era that support them.
It is simply sickening.

The indigenous people deserve recognition of their Human Rights and not further exploitation of what little lands that are called reservations. The government is playing dirty politics with the handling of protestors putting them in jail at ridiculous elderly ages while hardened crimnals get out on bail.
Now the environmentalists are seeing this happening and the world is focusing on Global Warming and the Go Green and here Canada is doing the opposite and shamefully voting with the US, Australia, New Zealand that our indigenous people have no human rights...all in the name of lining their already bulging money pockets and that of those of their corporate campaign sponsors.

I simply had to write this as I believe we should deal with our own indigenous problems at home before we tell 3rd world nations what to do.
Our Indigenous peoples were here first had a fine culture, grossly misunderstood and trampled on to this very day.
Worse than shameful, a Travesty at the fullest. I simply wanted to post this as our countries are too busy tell others what to do!!!!

This post has been edited by Tina: Sep 30 2007, 09:02 AM

While I agree in principle that the indigenous people throughout the world should be treated more humanely, I'm not sure that the corrupt and mostly ineffectual U.N. should be the central point of this endeavor.

I realize that and that is why I put in all of the details in my prior post, however I had to do some editing and so I don't know if you read it as it took me a bit of time to do the edit.
What I wanted to bring out in this is what is causing the problem here in Canada which I tried to explain in the post just before yours. I aplogize for the long time of edit.

What avenue is there as you can see by my prior post that the governments up here are playing a Supreme Court manipulation game.
Did you see the Utube video and why canada does not want the Human Rights approved?

I'll try to get back to this later, Tina.

Please note that you posted your post at 09:00 AM,

then I replied at 9:44 AM,

and you edited your post at 10:02 AM.


So, no, I hadn't read your changes when I replied, because they weren't there, and now I'm not sure what you changed/added.


I am not surprised, though, that Special Interest Groups would be overriding a government's position on the treatment of it's people, indigenous or otherwise.

Indigenous peoples world wide seem to get the short end of the stick from the governments and embarrassingly the Americas...(North) while we spend billions of dollars posturing as knowing what is best for 3rd world nations; that is all that I am saying....to the point of interfering in these peoples lives.
It was done in the 1800's here in the Americas to our indigenous peoples who still are not treated as equals and suffer from this travesty and we don't correct the wrongs of our ancestors which we still have not learned from. Instead we persist in meddling in other countries affairs.
The indigenous people were correctly the original owners of the land and forced onto reservations with broken promises. We would not be here in many cases if it had not been for these people who provided our ancestors with their natural remedies for such illnesses as "scurvy" which very likely would have wiped out the colonialists.
I believe that we should keep promises that were written on paper and give these people a chance to get on with their lives with a dignity that is rightly theirs. Simply because we did not understand their culture and seemingly still don't; it is no reason to persist with inequitable treatment.

I use two - "United Nothings".