The Relationship Between the First Nations and the Canadian Government

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The relationship or interaction and communication between “The First Nations of Canada and the Canadian Government” is both complex and fragile. Today, the Canadian Government is attempting a new found partnership with the First Nations. Their hopes, together, are to build stronger First Nations Communities. However, looking back over centuries, the level of poverty, lack of education, forms of abuse, emotional turmoil, and psychological damage unleashed upon the First Nations, first by established colonies, then, later by the Canadian Government, have shown to be difficult for the First Tribes of Canada to forget. To broaden the topic and touch on the psychophysical effects, we can look at the Indian Reserves and how they’ve become dangerous environments not only in a physical sense, but in a psychological sense as well. The unrelenting stresses of colonization have impacted the reserves with such negativity, they are the reason the remaining reserves do not reflect a meaningful notion of community and why life on the reserves is characterized by a much higher degree of violence, hate, and aggression driven substance abuse than in other communities. In reaction to colonization, one of the most damaging aspects is the inward turn of self-hate and the negative energy that accompanies it. Lee Maracle refers to this as “systemic rage” and states it’s commonness among colonized peoples. Colonialism consists in such things as resource exploitation of Indigenous lands, residential school syndrome, racism, expropriation of lands, extinguishment of rights, and welfare dependency. What makes colonialism real in the lives of First Nations people is when these impositions become causes of harm to them as people and as communities. When oppression is experienced over centuries like this, it negatively affects people’s minds, bodies, and souls. As Eduardo Duran

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