Eden Robinson’s “Terminal Avenue” is a short story that is also dystopic. The short story centres around a family from the Mohawk Nation. This story focuses on two things: firstly, the relation the family has with the Oka Crisis and the “Salmon Wars” and the disconnection the Nation has with their cultural lands. Both these conflicts were conflicts between the Mohawk Nation and the government of British Columbia. The Oka Crisis was amongst three groups: the Mohawk Nation, police, and armed forces relating to the Mohawk’s refutation of constructing a golf course and houses on what they claimed to a Mohawk burial ground. The “Salmon Wars” was a conflict between the government of British Columbia and “Native” fishermen in which the Mohawk Nation were deemed to be fishing illegally …show more content…
“Terminal Avenue” shows that apart from physical abuse, the Indigenous People have been deprived of their right. What right? There are two rights: the ability to roam freely and engage in traditional as well as cultural practices without being hindered. Firstly, considering that Canada is the home of the Indigenous People, everyone should have the right to live anywhere they want and to roam freely; however, as it is now, the Indigenous People have lost that right because now, they are confined to staying within their limits that have been assigned to them by the Canadian government. Secondly, because the way they acted and engaged in their way of life and was considered savage by the British explorers and settler thus, they felt it was necessary to make them transform them to beings that were like them(the British) which led to assimilation. Hence, the process of assimilation is a way in which these people were removed from their traditional and cultural practices. While all the methods in which the Indigenous People have been wounded are tolerable, there is a limit to how much one can tolerate and, when that limit is crossed, individuals tend to and give in to the attacker which is