Indigenous peoples in Canada

And what they said, Dr. Schweitzer in West Africa in 1913, he said that, well, After a while, after the whites come, after a while the natives tend to live more and more like the whites and his observations led him to attribute this to the fact that the natives were living more like the whites and this is why all those diseases started to increase in prevalence as they get exposed to the so-called Western civilization.

And they weren't sure, of course, what it was about the Western civilization that caused all these problems, but nevertheless, there must have been something about it, because it didn't really matter whether they're African, whether they're, you know, Australian, whether they're Northern Canadians, it didn't really matter.

The same sort of thing always happened.

So if you look more closely, the First Nations, so the Native Americans or the Native Canadians, if you look back at previous surveys, so you can look at a survey done in 1910, for instance, in the Indian Affairs Bureau, And what they found was that they almost never found cancer.

So that is malignant disease, if it exists at all, must be extremely rare.

And not only that, but even though their life expectancy was equal, it wasn't that they're all dying very young from, you know, coyotes and stuff, it was that they were living just the same amount as the whites, but they really didn't have cancer, and they really didn't have arterial sclerosis, which is coronary disease or heart disease, and the like, strokes.

I'll admit, I come to this conversation as a First Nations chief, a law graduate, and a British Columbian, but neither my identity nor my education settles any of this debate.

Aboriginal and treaty rights are constitutional realities.

Reconciliation is a political project.

Political projects do not receive unlimited trust, unlimited taxpayer funding, or an exemption from scrutiny.

It should not be, nor should it ever be, a loyalty test.

Worrying about private property does not automatically make someone a racist.

Defending Aboriginal title does not make someone- mean someone is secretly planning to steal your house.

Criticizing DRIPA did not- does not erase the constitutional rights that existed before it, and invoking reconciliation does not answer every legitimate question about how public authority should be exercised.

That's what the first floor was.

There was a big area too with Native American, Native Canadian display as well.

I'm trying to think.

One floor, I forget.

But no, no, we don't rub other nations' noses in their failings.

We don't talk about things like the schools where the Canadians took Native American children, they're native up there, Native Canadian children, and shoved them into government schools, and they did what their new buddies, the Chinese communists, are doing to the Uyghurs.

They beat their culture out of them.

They forced them to speak the dominant language, and when they died, they threw them in a hole and didn't even mark the grave.

Back in 1972, Frank Calder was appointed to the BC cabinet.

This appointment made him the first Aboriginal Canadian to hold a cabinet post in Canada.

In 1987, sprinter Ben Johnson set a new world record of 9.83 seconds for the 100 meter dash.

The record was later erased from the books after he tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.