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> Canada’s inclusive treatment of its indigenous peoples, at least in recent decades, could be emulated by Europeans (though First Nations Canadians might fairl
by tsimionescu 2y ago
> Canada’s inclusive treatment of its indigenous peoples, at least in recent decades, could be emulated by Europeans (though First Nations Canadians might fairly object to closer ties with ex-colonists)
I really wonder what the author meant with this line. There's very few populations in Europe that bear any similarity whatsoever with the relationship between First Nations people and most Canadians, since most populations in Europe have created their own states. And the few tribal populations in Northern Europe generally were and certainly are today treated at least as fairly as anything in Canada. So who are they talking about? Would the Basques feel that they would be treated better as First Nations people in Canada than they are today in Spain?
Note that the treatment of immigrants is a completely separate topic in the article, so I don't think they could be referring to, say, the treatment of Syrian refugees with that sentence above.
- toenail 2y agoEuropean nations still have plenty of overseas colonies.. err.. territories. As somebody from an ethnic minority that was eradicated through educational and cultural policies that sounds like a good idea even without the former.
- tsimionescu 2y agoThis is the best point that I hadn't considered by far. I was only thinking of the actual territory of Europe, but you're absolutely right that things look very different in overseas colonies.
- Pet_Ant 2y agoWestern European countries do. The list of European countries that never had colonies is much longer than the ones that did. You take away 4 England, France, Spain, Italy, and Belgium and you have almost no colonies and there are roughly 50 countries in Europe.
- jbrennan 2y agoIreland springs to mind, and in fact has strong ties to Indigenous nations in the Americas for their similar struggles
- esperent 2y agoThat doesn't make any sense to me (as an Irish person). A hundred years ago, sure. But modern Ireland is one of the richest and most privileged places on earth. The problems we have in modern Ireland - wealth inequality, housing crisis etc. - are decidedly problems of our own causing, and do not in any way equate to or reflect the struggle for rights and recognition of indigenous peoples around the world. We do have our own indigenous minority who are treated badly by society - Irish travellers. There's a lot of racism in Irish society towards them, and we could do with looking at how other countries treat minorities, indigenous or not, and recognize for all that we like to harp on about our own poor treatment in history, we are doing exactly the same here towards travellers.
- rayiner 2y agoIt’s odd to call Travelers “indigenous” because they don’t predate the settlement of Ireland by the current majority group. They’re Irish people who culturally diverged around 1600. It’s like calling Appalachian Americans Indigenous.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- esperent 2y agoI don't think the semantics of the word indigenous are the important thing here, although I will say that officially, according to the Irish government, Irish travellers are an indigenous minority and attempts to discredit this are usually a thinly disguised attempt to discredit the credibility of the Irish travellers as a distinct ethnic minority - or, to put it another way, it's one of the more common ways that Irish people are racist towards travellers. Instead, it's the racism and discrimination against an ethnic minority that we should focus on.
- lazyasciiart 2y ago> And the few tribal populations in Northern Europe generally were and certainly are today treated at least as fairly as anything in Canada. Really? The Sami populations don't have any sovereignty that I know of.
- impossiblefork 2y agoIn Sweden they have a separate parliament.
- jampekka 2y agoIn Finland as well, although it's not really sovereign like national or municipal parliaments. The constitution does grant Sami and Roma people sovereign rights on their languages and culture.
- belorn 2y agoIs sovereignty the criteria for being treated fairly?
- patmcc 2y ago[flagged]
- gpm 2y agoEh... I think that position is largely derived from treaties guaranteeing that, and a local history of severe mistreatment. I don't know much at all about how the Sami have been treated in the nordic countries, but I doubt it's a particularly similar situation.
- Yawrehto 2y agoOh it very much has been. Things like forced assimilation were very much employed against Sami, as well as (in the UK) Celtic peoples, (Ireland) the Irish, France (Bretons) and others, seemingly mostly in Eastern Europe. And, while not indigenous, Jews and Romani have faced centuries of on-and-off slaughter, forced assimilation/conversion, expulsion, etc., culminating in the Holocaust. And that's just off the top of my head.
- aprilthird2021 2y agoLots of Europe has ethnic strife and tensions. Bosnian / Serbian. Czech / Slovak (until recently). Spain has its breakaway ethnic movements. Ireland like others mentioned is a close analogue.
- genman 2y agoNothing like that is even by slightest similar to indigenous people of Canada. Nothing. Also while Canada my want people, so does EU.
- KPGv2 2y agoThe English colonized, ruled, and conducted a deliberate genocide against the Irish people. It's pretty analogous. The English starved them to death. The English forcibly displaced them. The English stole their resources. The English even forbade them from speaking their language.
- tsimionescu 2y agoAnd about 100 years ago, the Irish rebelled and won their independence from England. And those that didn't are no longer being treated this way, and haven't been for more than 50 years. So what exactly should the English learn from Canadians today? Even the Irish in Northern Ireland have more freedom and autonomy than the First Nations have in Canada, not less.
- zeckalpha 2y agoModern boundaries don't reflect history well. There's an extension of linguistics concept to states rather than languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a... We also have lost much to history. Take a look at the shuffling that happened during https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period
- tsimionescu 2y agoThey certainly reflect history better than they do for the First Nations in Canada. I also have no idea whatsoever what 1500 year old history has to do with anything. None of the cultures of that time exist today in any meaningful sense. Even the Italians or Greeks of today are not the Romans and Greeks of 300 CE, they are vastly different cultures and speak unintelligibly different languages.
- KPGv2 2y ago> So who are they talking about? Maybe the Irish, who were genocided by the English up into the 20th century.
- tsimionescu 2y agoThey are talking about what the EU countries of today can learn from the Canadians' treatment of First Nations people today. Canada's treatment of the First Nations people was also appaling up into the 20th century.
- sandworm101 2y agoThe irish. The scots. Basically everyone who wasnt related to the vikings after 1066. The welsh trying to protect thier language are basically quebec. The scots talking about leaving, but never actually doing it, are basically alberta. And thats just similarities in the british isles. Then there are all the little counties bordering giant countries (finland) that see parallels to the canada-us relationship.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tsimionescu 2y agoYour assertion is that the Scots, the Irish, and the Welsh are treated less fairly in the UK today than the First Nations people are in Canada? Because the article was claiming that EU countries have a lot to learn from Canada today. I personally very much disagree with the concept that First Nations people in Canada are afforded more rights and are freer to practice their cultural identity than the Scots, Welsh, and Irish in the UK in 2024.
- sandworm101 2y agoWhether they are or they aren't treated fairly today is beside the point. They were treated badly in the past and now their descendants want recompense for those past wrongs. The wounds in Canada are likely a little more fresh, but many peoples in Europe still remember wrongs done to grandparents.
- andsoitis 2y ago> They were treated badly in the past and now their descendants want recompense for those past wrongs. They (we?) do? This is the first I hear of this. Where did you read about this?
- tsimionescu 2y agoAre Frist Nations people in Canada receiving recompense for their past terrible treatment?
- fweimer 2y agoMost peoples in Europe do not have their own nation state. In fact, pretending that those peoples with their distinct languages (often called “dialects” despite lack of mutual intelligibility) and cultures do not exist is a key part of the establishment of nation states in the 19th century. In most of Europe, the nation state project was so successful that this hardly matters today (but of course there are exceptions). Still comparison to First Nations seems off. Maybe it's about this: Disadvantaged ethnic groups such as Romani or Jews (particularly post-Soviet Jews in recent times) are often denied a connection to the nation state or (what you might call) the shared European cultural heritage. In contrast, I don't think anyone argues that First Nations aren't true Canadians.
- Stevvo 2y agoNot sure how you can lump Romani and Jews together like that. Jews have a nation state, with "right of return"; a much better deal than the Romani get.
- fweimer 2y agoI had not thought about it that way. It's not such a great deal if you feel you belong wherever you are living now in Europe, and view yourself a quasi-citizen and European (even in case if there's no realistic path to citizenship due to your personal circumstances).
- Stevvo 2y agoWhat's a "quasi-citizen"?
- fweimer 2y agoSomeone with pretty much all the rights of citizenship (including that deportation is only a very distant possibility), except for voting rights and the formal recognition of citizenship status. Kind of what you get if you move within the Schengen area, maybe except for the deportation part.
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- throawayonthe 2y ago"inclusive treatment" is also an insane label to apply to Canada-First Nations relations
- morgango 2y agoLike the Roma?