Aboriginal People In Canada

The indigenous people of Canada are referred to as ‘Aboriginal people’ who under the Canadian Constitution Act (1982), include three distinct groups: First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada. Each of these groups has its own unique history, heritage, cultural practices, spiritual belief and language. Historically, Aboriginal people have been considered ‘self-sufficient and self-governing’ and generally at peace, but since the Europeans came to Canada, Aboriginals have “lost their land, original livelihood, and culture” (Dyck, 2011, pp. 74, 76). Now the history of these aboriginal people is wrought with broken promises, abuse and discrimination at the hands of non-aboriginals. At present, the aboriginal people in Canada, make up 4.4

To be considered ‘alien’ in their own land for which they have been on longer than the European settlers, is in-dignifying and disrespectful. Discriminated against because they do not hold the same values or lifestyle as the dominating Europeans. Instead they are brutally forced to assimilate to a culture that is so different from their own. Resulting in suffering from undue hardships which lead to depression, substance abuse, and physical and mental abuse. Made worse by the fact that when the European settlers first came to Canada they made treaties with the Aboriginals, but those treaties were violated by the settlers in an effort to further strengthen their own colonial aims. After taking their land from them, the settlers forced aboriginals to assimilate to their European culture, as mentioned by Professor Woolstencroft, in lecture, “the winning side apposed its values on to the losing

This failure can be attributed to the fact that the Aboriginal people hold a fundamentally different world view from non-Aboriginal people with respect to issues of justice and the process of achieving justice (“Bridging,” 1995, p. 309). In particular, the Canadian justice system, from police, to courts and to corrections, is considered foreign to the aboriginal population and designed to continue the cycle of poverty and powerlessness. This feeling of powerlessness stems from the fact that efforts made to justify previous injustice lack legitimacy. Aboriginals tend to see this Euro-Canadian system as repressive (“Report Osnaburgh/Windigo,” 1990, p. 5) and a representation of all that has been stolen from them. However, the underlying trend to all these injustices were the European’s assumption that the aboriginals were racially inferior to them. This inherent notion that aboriginals are inferior to their white-European counter-parts is the foundation to the paternalistic ideology that the European settlers viewed Aboriginal people as savage and in need of assimilation to make them ‘better’ than they were. In turn, Aboriginals viewed the Europeans with distrust, anger, resent and fear. Leading to a history of discrimination and disadvantage for Aboriginals in Canada. As long as there is this belief that Aboriginals are inferior to