[IPSM] holy racist bullshit by the national post

[shelly]

Fontaine goes over the top

National Post

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Phil Fontaine has sounded the alarm about the law regulating the status of Canadian aboriginals. According to the Assembly of First Nations National Chief,the restrictions contained in the current classification system amount to "legislated extinction."

Mr. Fontaine's complaint is baseless. By law, a family's offspring loses Indian status after two generations of marriage with non-status spouses. That means a child whose closest Indian forebear couple are his great-grandparents is not considered a status Indian, and so becomes ineligible for the various financial benefits that native Canadians enjoy. Reasonable people can argue whether this
is the appropriate cutoff. But certainly, no one can plausibly claim that such a generous standard amounts to a systematic program of "legislated extinction."

Even putting aside the question of which Canadians should be eligible for Indian status and which should not, it is inflammatory to compare their integration into Canadian society to a mode of "extinction," as if they were being physically expunged. In recent years, the hysterical overstatements of Indian politicians -- witness the prevalence of such terms as "cultural genocide" --
have intentionally blurred the line between genocidal violence and cultural integration. The former is a crime against humanity. The latter is a normal and welcome part of life in a developed society.

However aboriginal leaders and their supporters cast the issue, economic progress will be impossible for most natives unless they migrate to Canadian post-secondary schools and urban job centres. Whether they keep their formal aboriginal status is beside the point. The fact that Mr. Fontaine uses such over-the-top scare tactics suggests he is more interested in maintaining the size of his constituency than increasing its welfare.
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