Canada is celebrating its 150th year with Justin Trudeau making a statement on how inclusive and welcoming his country is. Certainly, a very different message to that coming out of Donald Trumps administration in Washington D.C.
Justin Trudeau, as opposed to Donald Trump, is lorded as the golden boy of politics like Emmanuel Macron in France. However, Justin Trudeau has been attacked on his environmental credentials by one leading environmentalist.
What Trudeau's relationship is like with Native Canadians I cannot say, however, he is obviously aware that his nation is guilty of racial and cultural genocide.
As one Native Canadian mused, his people have been in Canada for thousands of years making 150 years of the Canadian nation seem insignificant.
Canada has nothing to be proud of
Like the United States, Canada should hang its head in shame in what it has done to its native peoples. Could it be called a holocaust with genocidal tendencies? Yes, almost certainly.
From day one when the interior of Canada was being opened up by European explorers, again like in the US, Native Canadians who had lived in this wilderness for centuries were in the way. Like so-called 'Manifest Destiny' in the US, Native Canadians were killed, bribed, and driven from their land so Canada could develop into a modern nation state.
The forced fostering of Native Canadian children and the recommended sterilisation of Native Canadian women were just some of the awful things on the agenda.
The findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The above group launched an investigation into Canada's treatment of its native people and found that Canada was indeed guilty of crimes.
Many non-Native Canadians are not comfortable with the history of their often tragic treatment and encounters with native people. Going back to the findings of the above group it found there had been cultural genocide enacted by the Candian state on the First Nations people as they are sometimes called.
Even though natives will take part in the celebrations others will not because of what happened to their ancestors and because they do not feel welcome in Trudeau's so-called inclusive nation.
So often you hear about the awful scourge that was slavery in North America but you hear next to nothing of the suffering of the Native population. It is about time these issues were properly addressed and talked about.
