One word

When a young student asked me what reconciliation with the Indigenous meant, I replied, "Money".  She stood there shocked because there she was, writing what she thought would be a complicated analysis of land claims and traditions and I had just destroyed her entire thesis.  I mean, what would she be writing about when it can all be summed up in that one word?

'The Globe and Mail' tiptoed into the subject today with its editorial, "The high (and rising) cost of reconciliation".  They went on about ways of life and traditional territories, but after all is said and done it boils down to that one word -- especially after the Cowichan decision, giving all of Richmond, B.C. to the Indigenous it'll only get worse.

Can you imagine owning property in Richmond and finding out the title belongs to the Cowichan?  Good luck trying to sell it.  (See, "Everyone's effed", August 25, 2025)

Tanya Talaga weighed in on another Indigenous reality:  The preponderous of Indigenous inmates in Canadian prisons.  In Thunder Bay, for instance, it's 100 percent.  Tanya's analysis, however, is brilliant.  

She claims that the high rates of recidivism of natives are due entirely to the lack of librarians in correctional institutions.  Huh?!  Yep, it's all because there are no librarians helping them learn.

"What did we teach them in there?" she asks.  She never, however, asks what their upbringing might have had to do with their fates.  No, it's all the librarians' faults -- never the parents.

I'm getting sick of the blame game being completely dumped into the laps of everyone but the parents and the community.  Hey, look into yourself, as Mark Carney implored Rosemary Barton.  

Will anything change?  Rhetorical.

How can communities like this foster civilized behaviour?