It's like every neo-con's wet dreams come true, and it is going to gut this country before it gets repealed when the Tories get voted back to their post-Mulroney two seats in parliament next election.
It just dawned on me, what if Conservative policy today is the result of an elaborate revenge fantasy being played out as payback for that electoral humiliation? That certainly would explain a lot.
Frustrated that it took a complete screw job by Harper to get so many people active, these people would have had some actual impact a year and a half ago when the Conservatives were getting their "majority" government, but now it's going to all be for nothing because Harper knows they're going to be Idle Again in 2015 when it matters next election. He has no reason whatsoever in his view to listen to Native leaders because Native voters is almost a contradiction in terms in this country.
The fact that its sprung up mid-mandate means people have to stay angry for the next two years and not let up, but how many young people with little or no political experience are going to do that, and how many are going to let this new frustration reinforce their preexisting political apathy. I'm a university tutor in a northern community, and even the students in my political science or native studies classes are already showing signs of getting jaded before the first planned rally tomorrow.
Admittedly, the current Conservative government isn't the only government that hasn't really helped out the First Nations all that much. They're just the most recent, on top of their... other issues surrounding them.
It's not that Harper isn't helping First Nations much, it's that he's cut them out of their rightful, legal place in the deliberative process by cramming his Omnibus 2: Omnibigger and Badder down all our throats. Amending the Indian Act has a well-defined legal procedure to follow, but Steve and the boys saw fit to completely ignore the law once again and dare Canadians to do anything about it. He has openly shown nothing but contempt for the democratic processes and traditions of this country, this is just one more example to go along with proroguing Parliament and short-circuiting Election Canada's investigation into the RoboCalling scandal; if the man's not above fixing a federal election, a protest movement doesn't stand a chance.
Honestly, I support the Idle No More movement, I think it's long overdue, but I also think its timing couldn't have been much worse in terms of effectiveness, due to the two and a half years it has to sustain itself. Given the fact that Canadian voters in the West were completely willing to forgive Harper's anti-democratic sins before and during the last election, they're almost certainly going to forgive him sticking it to the Indians; hell, given his core voters, this is as likely to win him a bigger majority in 2015 as it is to hurt him at all. When you consider all the redneck resentment focused at our First Nations population and the treaties that founded this country, it could well be part of Harper's plan for the next election
Yeah, it seems like this topic is already on the brink of racism. Uncle Tomahawk. It's bad enough that First Nations have to deal with people bad mouthing them "Lazy. Government pays for everything. Dancing around fires. They deserved residential schools."
It would be great to stop giving Canada a bad image, that's all I'm saying. There's joking, and then there's just racism.
Wasn't really intended as a joke, it was a comment on how the establishment (Whitey) will grab on to any representative of any minority with a negative opinion of their own group, so as to justify the shitty treatment they get from said establishment (Whitey). He was made an overnight celebrity because he gave voice to the racist opinions white Canadians hold about Natives and the INM movement in what was taken as an acceptable manner ("It's not racist to say this, look, *he's* one of them and he agrees with us!")
Do you think Patrick Brazeau was the youngest Canadian senator ever and a member of caucus at 38 because he was some sort of political savant, or because he was someone Harper could count on to take a dump on his own people, like his comments about Chief Spence's weight and general disdain for INM activists as "lazy". I lost track of the number of times my students called him an "apple" for the week or so he was in the spotlight before his sexual assault arrest and subsequent drop-kick out of caucus, the level of respect for him and Sowan is not high out this way, seems the second most used term has been "sell-out".
