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How To Treat Aboriginal People In Canada

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Canada’s First Nations have a beautiful culture. Although we have done some things to help Canadian aboriginal people to preserve their traditions and culture, we could have done much more. We have wronged the First Nations People in many ways; we have treated them as less than ourselves and in some cases still do. Forcing children into residential schools, not allowing Canadian aboriginals to vote, taking away the land that they had lived on for years, these are just a few things that we, as Canadians, have done.
150,000 Indian children were taken away from their families to live at residential schools. The first residential school was opened in 1840 in Bradford, Ontario and by 1910 there were a total of 74 schools all across Canada. Residential …show more content…
This made all First Nations people wards of the Canadian Government. Becoming a ward of the government meant that the government assumed that a person or group of people were unable to properly take care of themselves. They therefore must be taken care of. The Canadian government treated aboriginal people like children who needed to be taken care of until they could be assimilated into mainstream Canadian culture. The government hoped that the people in first nation communities would choose to become more mainstream Canadian and get a “modern” education instead of learning their own culture and identity. The Act stated that an Aboriginal person couldn’t be a doctor or a lawyer or even get a university degree and at the same time remain an Indian. The government wanted First Nations People to become like everyone else in Canada. Traditional potlatches were banned because the government thought they were prohibiting Aboriginal people from becoming more civilized. The First Nations began to lose their identity and alcoholism became common. Finally, in 1951, Aboriginal leaders demanded that the Act be changed. Aboriginal women were now allowed to vote and the ban on Potlatches and Sun Dances was

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