Mitzi Brown's letter to the Editor of the Calgary Herald:
 

Dear Editor:

 I have made reference to this article in numerous conversations with other people and have forwarded it to many. I am disgusted with your paper for running it. I thought long and hard about my response to this piece. I had to put it away for a couple of days, because I was so angry.

I copied the article which you will find below, and have made some changes to it that I think you will find interesting. Let me know how it strikes you.

This editorial is full of such blatant racism, it is the kind of racism I experienced while travelling out west on the prairies with a youth group in 1991. I am Native and coming from Newfoundland, had experienced racism before. But not this kind. While in the prairies on more than one occasion, I feared my personal safety from cowboys who would have me disappear of the face of the earth. 

When I saw this article, I had a similar gut reaction to the cowboy incidents.

The piece is driven by clear hatred for all Native people. It makes blanket statements about Natives. It is full of stereotypes and in this day and age a newspaper shouldn't be feeding this kind of hate propaganda to Canadians. Truth and common sense seems to have eluded your newspaper. How dare you print this crap. If this was written about another race of people, heads would roll. It is unacceptable that you run this kind of hate- mongering about me and my people. It is tantamount to kkk and white supremacy tactics.

Get some class.

The big problems with it, I shouldn't have to explain but I will because obviously you need some education:

- The "forebears" you refer to were not "well-intentioned", they wanted to and did kill Natives in Canada. The concept was terra nullius, or empty land. That is how Canada was founded, on Native blood. There are all kinds of proof in history like the Beothuk in Newfoundland, people were paid to kill them and they were totally obliterated.

- The residential school system, adoptions and forced resettlements were all policies of assimilation, but were not well-intentioned because as we all know, had horrendous outcomes.

- Canada has been for many years, been condemned by the world human rights commission for its treatment of Native people.

- Not all Native people are status Indians. Many, as am I, are not tax exempt and have no special status. For those who are status indians, their forefathers signed treaties with the government of Canada and are legal binding agreements. Like it or not.

- There are many Native professionals who are as hardworking as other Canadians, we are not lazy people as you would have everyone believe. I myself am a writer and small business owner.

- No more money goes to the average Native than does a white Canadian. The quoted dollar figure in the article means nothing.

- The high birth rate mentioned in the article and the reason for it, you are going totally by assumption. There is no basis in fact that the high Native birth rate is driven by welfare payments.

Calgary Herald, hire some educated writers who aren't racist hate mongers.

Mitzi Brown 

By Dennis Stark

Dolphin paints racism, and NOT a solution

 The Calgary Herald should know better.  In a province where 10 percent of the population is Aboriginal, if not a little bit more, this is a bigoted and racist attack on Aboriginal people.  For the senior editorial staff of The Herald who let this be in print, it is a slap in the face to their credibility.

 Ric Dolphin, who is a senior reporter at The Herald, needs a history lesson.  Since when did his forbears ever conquer anyone let alone any of the Aboriginal peoples of the Prairies?  Perhaps he should look up the definition of treaty.

Treaties are binding legal agreements.  When Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Tordesilla in 1494 eventually made Brazil a Portuguese colony.  The rest of South America became Spanish-speaking because of the demarcation line of the treaty.

The Aboriginal viewpoint of treaties is much the same.  Our ancestors signed land surrenders but received certain concessions like hunting & fishing rights, negotiated annuities, gifts and other inclusions and adhesions because they knew what they were giving up.  Treaties, in the Aboriginal perspective, were subject to renegotiation when circumstances changed.  They change with every generation.

 Dolphin goes on to state Treaty Indians receive billions of dollars a year.  The Department of Indian & Northern Affairs Canada budget is well over six billion dollars a year.  But just how much of this actually filters down to Aboriginal people.  Most of it is eaten up by the bloated federal bureaucracy that Indian Affairs is.  They have major regional offices in seven provinces and the territories plus national headquarters in Hull, Quebec.  Yes, part of that money is annuities paid to Status Indians.  These people receive four dollars a year for allowing the federal government to claim it as their own.  That is a cheap price considering I pay considerably more for a place in Toronto.

The federal government spends a lot on court cases like the “Shilling v Her Majesty” income tax case on Treaty Indian off-reserve income tax rights being fought by Roger Obonsawin and the Obonsawin & Irwin Group.  The government does not care how much it spends as it prints the money.   No matter how many times it loses in court, it can afford to appeal.  Lawyers get rich here, not the Indians.

Dolphin points out many of the social problems Aboriginal people are facing.  There are just as many non-Aboriginals, if not more, facing the same problems.  Maybe he should find out just how much money federal, provincial and municipal governments dole out to non-Aboriginals on welfare; and all the non-Aboriginal women who have several children by one or more fathers.  TANSI is willing to bet more goes into non-Aboriginal welfare hands.

As for the cause of these social problems, let TANSI suggest his grandchildren (if he has any) be removed from their home and have the English (or French) language beaten out of them; that they suffer abuse emotionally, mentally, physically and sexually from the hands of European religious institutions; tell them their religion and cultural ways are doomed to extinction; keep them removed from their families for years; feed them little more than bread and water; and teach them a foreign language.

Then we’ll have those same European religious organizations do it to his grandchildren’s children and his grandchildren’s grandchildren and so on for about four or five generations, just like the federal government did with Aboriginal children in the church-run Residential Schools.  Let’s see if they come out like little perfect geniuses and unscathed from any trauma.

As for his solution, to pay each and every Aboriginal off to the tune of $100,000, some of us Aboriginals have talked this over and have a better idea.

Maybe Aboriginals should get the government or churches to put all of his family and all those other western racist-minded people who share his point of view, on an island in a northern Alberta lake, give them fishing and hunting rights, tell them they can’t vote for 100 years, and put them under the same restrictions the Indian Act did and still does to Aboriginal people today.   He will also receive a whopping four dollars every year as his treaty payment.  Maybe the Chiefs will cost-share to provide for him and his like-minded friends to have a special Non-Aboriginal Status Card.

Mr. Dolphin will not be allowed to leave the island unless the Aboriginals say he can!  

Common sense and dignity wouldn’t allow me to correct Canada’s wrong with one of a similar nature. 

But Dolphin can emigrate now if he doesn’t like the situation here.  It is a free country after all -- unless you are an Aboriginal and live under the Indian Act.