Charlie Angus: No Friend of Aboriginals

Vincent J. Curtis

13 April 2016

Due to the high number of recent suicides in the town of Attapwapiskat, an aboriginal community in Ontario near the shore of James Bay, the Canadian House of Commons held a special debate on the matter last night.

I wondered what intelligent things were to be said in the special House of Commons debate upon the mental health crisis in Attawapiskat.  It turned out that nothing new or insightful was said; it was simply an exercise for showing “concern,” and engaging in a bit of flagellation. 

Some politicians are quite un-selfaware.  For example, the NDP MP for the Attawapiskat area, Charlie Angus, said that the issue is “not partisan”, but has been the result of a “150 year system of systemic discrimination and racist denial.”

If the issue is non-partisan, why is Mr. Angus invoking the oldest, most exhausted tropes of progressivist ideology – racism – against people like me?  The non-partisan Angus condemned half a dozen generations of white Canadians for being racist.  He condemned most of the people around him in the House as racist, and this is supposed to win support for his cause?  In order for a white person to concur with Mr. Angus, he has to confess to being an anti-Aboriginal racist, by the non-partisan reasoning of Mr. Angus.

Angus’s solution to the problem?  Spend more money!  How original of him.  He would prefer to castigate over the past then offer serious and searching solutions for the future.

The arrow through the heart of Angus’s argument was his point about how the people of Attawapiskat really want a nation-to-nation relationship with Canada, and it begins when “we get past the talk.”  In plain English, aboriginals want to be treated as a separate, sovereign people, and not as fellow Canadians.  Hence, money spent on aboriginals by Canada is akin to foreign aid, or a treaty subvention, or plain and simple extortion money in exchange for non-violence.

Progressives like Mr. Angus probably think of themselves as good friends of aboriginals, and people like me fall under his category of racist.  He indulges native self-pity.  He wants to treat them like children, except when they are in a “nation-to-nation” relationship with my country, Canada.

I submit that it is not racist to be from the tough-love school of thought.   Aboriginals do have problems, but racism by whites isn’t one of them.  The problem lies in this essential issue: what does it mean to be Aboriginal in the 21^st Century?   The hunter-gatherer lifestyle which defined Aboriginal life in the 19^th century and for millennia previously is no longer possible, and with modern 21^st century communications, aboriginals in places like Attawapiskat can see what they’re missing.  There isn’t much of an exciting future for an aboriginal in Attawapiskat.

Anything the government does to address the present issue in Attawapiskat will be temporary, because it fails to address the essential issue.  What it means to be aboriginal in the 21^st century is something only aboriginals can answer, either individually or collectively.  We Canadians should be open to their answer, and I think it is a question we should hold before them if they don’t want to address it, and yet expect Canada to come to their rescue whenever a psychological crisis erupts.

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