Learning about history as an adult is certainly different from learning about world and Canadian history as a child. Maybe it is because I am able to critically think about what is being fed to me as truth and that I try to either rationalize this against my own values or that maybe I just question what someone else considers truth.
And I am troubled. Extremely troubled by the amount of abuse towards a particular population that our government has allowed to happen and even in some cases participated in. Okay, yes, this happened in the past and was (is) fueled by extreme racism, and a drive to “own” everything.
The troubling part isn’t that these events took place, well that is troubling, but in the actions of our government in condemning other nations for doing similarly to their own populations. Our government, and ourselves, are quick to criticize other countries for genocide, cultural infringement and many other oppressive and repressive activities. Some of these activities our government itself still practices towards populations here in our country.
Here is another interesting thought. We teach our children to share. When they grab a toy or push someone out of a seat we scold them and either take back the item to give back to the person they grabbed from or move them from the seat so that the original person can return. We teach them that such actions are not appropriate, fair, or acceptable. Yet how can we even start to teach this action to our children, when our governments (ancestors) have bullied, for lack of something better, populations original to this land into giving up what was theirs in the first place.
Pot meet kettle much.
We wonder why there are so many people who are depressed, confused, or just generally messed in the head. Think about this…someone took what you had and didn’t say they were sorry, give you anything in return or if they did took that back too, broke a promise to give you something, how would that make you feel….good god come on now. Really! Eventually you would get mad and might do the same thing back, if you were in a position to do so or finally at least stand up for what you had left.
I live in Canada. I love living in Canada, but am getting kind of tired of learning about the problems we have in our own country that need to be resolved, yet we are expending dollars to assist another country’s original population from being oppressed when we have a population right here that has been oppressed and repressed for centuries. This is not going to go away by being ignored, swept under the rug or locked in a back room. The noise is getting louder and I personally don’t want to see what happens then the door explodes.
I keep coming back to the expression “People in glass houses should not throw stones.”
It’s coming…and it won’t be a pebble.
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