The British decided to engage with the First Nations people through treaties, and yet, it seems that the treaties were simply used as a mechanism to placate the First Nations peoples for the time being until European settlers dominated the country. Never-the-less, the treaties should be seen as legally binding agreements. Whether these treaties are legitimate or fair is not something I'm even qualified to discuss, but they must be an absolute minimum of obligations of the Canadian Federal Government.

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The bodies of 215 First Nations children have been found in unmarked graves at a residential school. Let's be honest: this is nothing new to any First Nations person living at the time. Their children were taken from them and sent to these schools, and many never returned. This systematic abuse and neglect is a consequence of the policies of the Canadian governments, and is likely a 

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A number of people, including politicians, have been asked what should be done about this. Very succinctly, "I don't know" is likely a very honest answer. Here, however, are a number of suggestions:

1. First, allow the First Nations people to give a name of their choosing to this known tragedy, and start using it. The Holocaust or Shoah is already well known, and there is the Ukrainian Holodomor and the Armenian Hamidian massacres, and interestingly enough, the word holocaust was first coined to describe the latter. I will simply refer to it as the Nishiweshkiwin+an.

2. A national Nishiweshkiwin+an Memorial should be proposed and built in Ottawa, and on grounds that one cannot miss while visiting the capitol. 

3. A national Nishiweshkiwin+an Museum should be built in reasonable proximity to the Parliament Buildings, or more reasonably, within reasonable proximity of where the First Nations people determine such a museum should be built.

4. Numerous Nishiweshkiwin+an Education Centres should be built throughout the country, especially in proximity to those places where conflict between the First Nations people.

5. More honest description of the events of the past many centuries in the school books of Canadians, as well as a greater .

6. Education on the part of the government as to the treaty rights of the First Nations people. 

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The last point is critical, as each treaty contains, or has one similar to, a clause

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And further, Her Majesty agrees to maintain a school on each reserve hereby made whenever the Indians of the reserve should desire it.

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The residential school system seems to fail completely when it comes to meeting the obligations of the government under this clause, and that does not even consider the obligation of a duty of care, at which the school system failed even worse, to the children.

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What else? I would encourage anyone who is interested to look into a First-Nation's language. Pick one: any one. While I am trying to learn a few words and phrases, memorizing these when one does not use them is difficult; however, but what is more fascinating is how the language is structured. The ones I looked at were clearly oral languages that had not yet been regularized to the point of other languages that have for a long time been written. For example, I cannot come up with any general rule for the pluralization of a word. Additionally, whereas English uses prepositions and sentence structure to indicate actions, subjects and objects as well as relationships, many of these are the consequence of prefixes and suffixes added to nouns. And once again, these prefixes and suffixes are not regularized, as one may get from a written language. Furthermore, one can see how poor the written alphabets created for these  First Nations languages actually are. I found it very difficult to with any regularity get the true vocalization of written words when I tried to pronounce them; there are so many more substiles in the languages that simply cannot be captured approximately 26 letters.

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One point were I may differ is my may be my interpretation and understanding of beliefs. An individual has the right to believe whatever they want, and a culture has the right to believe whatever they want, and so long as these believes do not directly lead to actions that are harmful to others, I have no issues with them. However, holding a belief does not make them right, nor does it automatically imply that any respect should be granted to that belief. For example, all evidence points towards the Earth is an inanimate spherical planet orbiting the Sun, which itself is an inanimate ball of mostly hydrogen. I have no issues with the concept of Turtle Island as a mythology and I find it fascinating, but those that hold that belief deserve no more or less respect than those who believe that the earth is 6000 years old and first populated by two created people called Adam and Eve. Such myths are interesting interesting, and what is more important is that while a myth may get the facts wrong, a myth generally is the embodiment of some societal or cultural truth or understanding, regardless as to whether or not that social or cultural truth is actually correct. (For example, the Torah describes different tribes as being the collection of all descendants of particular individuals; a truth that is used in some cases to cast other tribes in negative light when that individual is given dubious characteristics or origins.) What I find more fascinating is why is the Earth described as the "mother" and why is the sky described as the "father", and why is the Sun described as the "grandfather" and why is the Moon described as the "grandmother." There is no evidence for the Sun being animate, nor is there evidence of the Moon giving birth to anything, but the tellers of those myths mean to impart onto their listeners some truth about society or culture. If there was no such analogy, the myth would be pointless: stories that are retold are those that resonate with the audience. A myth has its uses, but the existence of a myth does not mean facts supported by evidence suddenly become wrong, nor do beliefs somehow negate evidence. The beauty of science is that upon seeing the evidence, two objective parties no matter how distant in space and time, must agree with that evidence; while the beauty of myth is that it has interwoven in it a more complex socio-cultural relationship, something that cannot be described so easily by science.

On the other hand, I think it quite reasonable to begin to move to the referring to North America as Turtle Island, or Hah-nu-nah, or Hahnunia, or some variation thereunto. But I'm not the one who should be deciding this. Being brought up in 1970s and 1980s Canadian culture, I still accidentally, on occasion, refer to the First Nations people as "Indians" and "Eskimos", respectively, but such errors tend now to be separated by months if not years. The first is the result of a mistake in equating this continent with the Indian subcontinent and the second should be relegated to the same status as derogatory names for the Roma people and Blacks. I right now try to refer to people as "a member of a First Nations" but I understand now that "Niiji" (nee-jee) may be becoming the preferred name for those who are not Inuit. The term First Nations is appropriate as it places their cultures in the appropriate context on Turtle Island.

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