YZT580 said:
Perhaps if our government had encouraged nationalism i.e. pride in our country of Canada instead of catering to multi-nationalism and pandering to complainers we would be hearing people speaking out loudly against this type of action. This is not a rant against multi-nationalism by the way but an encouragement for nationalism. People need to learn to take pride in Canada and not look back at the past. The same concept applies to first nations. They need to believe that they are Canadians with a rich heritage and not (insert tribe) and go from there. Sadly, the police are doing the right thing. But only because Canadians won't stand with them and say enough. We are allowing ourselves to be bullied by what is, when all is said and done, a small minority of people with an axe to grind.
'Patriotism' probably fits what you're saying better than 'nationalism'. The latter has an exclusionary self-interest element that is the exact opposite of what we want to achieve with FNs.
The relationship between Canada and many of the first nations is, in a literal legal sense, a nation-to-nation relationship. In a lot of cases there isn't much of a Canadian identity there to nurture, and little for them to feel patriotic about. God knows we've given them little reason to over the last century. A couple decades of economic development (when it suits our own interests, of course) does not wave away many more decades of exploitation and abuse. We have a ton to work on.
The thing is, if 99% of Canadians were loudly standing up and voicing their opposition to thee protests, that would be a *political* matter, but it still wouldn't much change the calculus of the crisis. If it led to a forceful resolution, it would immediately - and pretty accurately - get chalked up as just more oppression.
Flip side to that, clearly the blockage of critical economic infrastructure is not something that can stand. Something's gotta give here. Negotiation may not achieve that. It looks pretty likely at this point that Coastal Gas Link's pipeline is gonna go into the ground, of course in accordance with the agreement with the majority of FNs impacted, including most of the Wet'sut'wen. The Mohawks are saying they won't end the blockade til RCMP are off Wet'sut'wen land; it doesn't seem likely that that can happen any time soon without this going back to square one.
So yeah, I don't know where that leaves us, and I don't envy those who make the decisions. I hope this can all get settled without anyone getting hurt.
