Rue

Well he did research to find out I have the same relatives he has. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Ah the exchange of fleas between two primates. How's that?

Oh My God! It sounds like you are related to me! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Understand. Thanks. I defer to you and Postit on the archeology debate. Er someone told me I am descended from some couple called Adam and Eve. I am not sure what their last name was. From what I can gather of the family history many of my relatives were probably deranged as they heard voices and had visions and went around killing and raping and pillaging. Savages if you must know.

Lol. When you figure out why Turkeys have that pink thing that dangles let me know. Everytime I ask the question someone advises me to buy viagra.

To answer your question, technically under international law, if you take de facto possession of abandon land, and you remain in possession of it for an uninterupted period of time, you can be recognized as having sovereignty over it. So using your words, yes it would be impossible to steal something if no one else asked for it. Its interesting because if Canada doesn't show its in control of the North, the Russians, British, French, Danish to name just a few countries, will argue we abandon it and they have a right to access and use it. That is why we have to establish continuous uninterupted use of it. Ironically we depend on our aboriginals to patrol the North for us and protect our sovereignty. we deny their sovereignty but we depend on them to protect ours. I just love irony. Makes my shirts crisp.

The Ottoman Empire was a monarchy and an absent landlord. It actually had very little to do with the land it controlled. For the most part it was an absentee landlord that collected taxes from poor intinerant farmers that squatted on the land. The land was given to friends of the monarch for safekeeping and they in turn used these farmers as cheap labour and collected taxes from them and gave them to the monarch. Sound familiar? If farmers did not pay taxes they had to go into the army or their sons or daughters were taken away. So again your notion of the Ottoman Empire being how far back you should go in history is kind of silly. Why don't you go back to the Bible then if you want to pick arbitrarily a nation. How about the Israelites and Phillistines or maybe the ancient Persians? I think you missed the poster's point and that is your awareness of Middle East history is a tad selective and probably misleading precisely because you are making arbitrary assumptions as to what historic periods you have decided to recognize.

Queenslave you made several erroneous comments; "The Palestinians had their own nation till the U.N. created the state of Israel. " There was no Palestinian state prior to Israel. By the way the UN did not create Israel. In fact Israel came about by de facto recognition. What happened was the Arab League would not agree to two nations, one Palestinian and one Israeli, and forced the issue with a war hoping it would get rid of all the Jews in Palestine-so it launched a war and it lost. It then ordered Palestinians into refugee camps and used them as pawns openly stating they would be kept their as a reminder to the world until Israel was given back to them. The Arab League then forcefully expelled 900,000 Jews from Arab countries forcing 700,000 of them to flee to Israel with nothing, sealing the fate of Palestinians trapped in camps because even if they wanted to return now all these displaced Jews made that impossible. Perhaps you should take the time to find out what happened. The land disputes between Palestinians and Israelis came about because of the British and French artificially carving up the Middle East and deliberately circumventing an arrangement between Jews and Arabs that would have allowed for peaceful co-existence. Its a legacy to the idiocy of how humans try divide and conquer and seize things at someone else's expense. There are only victims in such stories, no one is right or wrong-people just suffer. You also made several comments about how far back you go to determine land rights. Well obviously in your case with Palestine you only go back to when you think this fictitious Palestinian state existed but in real life it does not work that way. In the case of Canada you go back to the treaties the confederation agreed to sign and follow. Aboriginals are not asking for anything we did not already agree to give them. Perhaps if you read the breached treaties it would explain to you what they are asking for. They are simply asking we honour the agreements we said we would. In fact if you actually read what they have asked for you would find it is not what you think it is. Their request to have access to land rights is not the kind of concept you think it is where people "own" it. Aboriginals do not "own" land, they inherit the legacy of enjoying it and then leaving it for their children and their children to do the same. The notion of fences and ownership and deeds is a Western legal one. Its got nothing to do with what they have asked be honoured. This is why in their treaties they refer to access and rights that are not attached to the land but to the earth as a greater whole. The land borders thrust on them in discussions as to how we can share the land is from us not them. If they now refer to a specific area of land its because we forced them into that particular area-they didn't ask for it, it was forced on them when we took other land away from them.

To Jefer; "Rue, no one is saying that there is no use for oral history. Of course there is. And in some situationas it can be very useful as an aid to historical research as well. But it is hardly ever an example of concrete evidence. " As clarified above I concur and that you for stating in the above manner. That was the only point I was trying to make too. You said it better and more susinctly. "You seem to labour under the assumption that people on the other side of the argument have the same hang ups with history" I am simply saying we all have cultural biases that flavour how we view historic value and importance. " none of the whiteys alive today were alive when colonialism happened and neither were any of the natives today." I am not sure what you are inferring from the above. Do you think we can ignore the past? Could it be you feel this way because of a cultural bias flowing from someone who asssumes his status in life is justifiable and so will not question it and just assumes its there because it should be? In law, when we discuss aboriginal rights. we state that aboriginal legal rights preceded confederation and continued after confederation and precisely because of the fact they preceded confederation's existence, the federal government inherited the responsibility to honour the treaties entered into by the Crown prior to Canada's existence. When we formed a nation we gave our word that the treaties signed with the Crown preceding confederation would be inherited by our government and honoured. However we legally breached most of them. Now you say you shouldn't be responsible and no one cares? I think polls have shown in fact the majority of non aboriginal Canadians do care. Gallup polls have shown time and time again Canadians acknowledge there are beached treaties we need to remedy. The fact remains the government that breached these treaties is OUR government and so we legally inherit its collective responsibilities and the consequences of its past actions and have a moral and legal obligation to resolve them otherwise what are we? For me, you can't have it both ways. You can't expect to call yourself a Canadian citizen when its convenient but not accept the responsibilities that go with nationhood that are not always self-serving. Nations have many things we inherit not just the things that are convenient to us in the present tense. Funny how I find the same people that lambast immigrants of being crass opportunists who just want to use medicare and contribute nothing are the same people that take their citizenship for status and just assume its their right to retain things that do not belong to them. As a lawyer and as a fair person and like yes most Canadians, I believe our federal and provincial governments have a legal and moral responsibility to remedy all the breached treaties otherwise we live a legacy and in a nation built on a legacy of lies and theft. Am I responsible for the breached treaties because I was not born a hundred years ago-why of courser. If I continue to support a government that provides me rights that come from illegally taking them away from others what does that make me? Can I live off of the avails of theft and say well I didn't steal them they were just here when I was born? Yah I have heard the Swiss bankers make that arguement for refusing to return billions in stolen money and property from Jews from all over Europe. Excuse me but it doesn't god own to good with me. Me I definitely think all of us collectively as Canadians if we claim to be a nation can not in good faith ignore the legacy of history of the native peoples and pretend we can simply ignore it. Thanks but when I travel to Britain and France and see their museums and government institutions filled to the brim with stolen property they call their own do you think it makes it valid simply because they won't return it? Its a legacy and living monument to theft until its returned and call me crazy but I think people who possess stolen goods are condemned to imperfection and negative consequence until they balance the imbalances and return things to where they rightfully belong where possible. I also think some of the posters mistake what it means to precede by trying to argue we are all immigrants. That misses the entire point. Everyone comes from everywhere. We all concede that. The point though is that aboriginals did not proceed us, they preceded us and their collectives and societies that lived before ours did not own and possess property. That is a Western notion. Aboriginals did not establish their collectives by wiping out life and then imposing their own as we did. If aboriginal collectives have treated each other unfairly, they cleansing and healing rituals to resolve such imbalances between them. They practice what they ask us to do. What I am saying is to call aboriginals immigrants just like anyone else is idiotic. They preceded all of us. Trying to pretend that is not so with fictional arguements as to where we come from does no change this fact and its a transparent way to try evade it. The fact is our society continues to enjoy certain collective rights at the present that come from theft and dishonesty and its those I want cleaned up because yes if I live off of the avails of theft, I am a thief and no trying to argue I just ended up with them is to me a gutless way to deal with consequences. " I think with your last few posts it is obvious who is stretching science and archaeology for political reasons." Look Jefferiah I agree I may come off quaint or childishly romantic to you - but I am quite serious. Many people like me also feel the same way. we want to do the right thing. As for the archeology and science, you refer to I have not engaged in any reference to archeology and will not. Tnanks I pass on archeology and these debates as to where we come from. The last time I looked we all came from a woman's pelvic region. Modern hospitals and modern science are not stretching anything when they incorporate and learn from aboriginal traditions. They actually find them quite compatible and beneficial.

I appreciate the distinction and points you made.

As you are aware and many of us are the police in certain countries such as Brazil are a world to themselves. This is a country where the police still go out at night and murder children on the beaches. This probably was deliberately done. Brazil most certainly segregates based on gender. Someone probably did this because they are sick and wanted to deliberately kill this girl slowly. Part of me wishes we could take the man who made the order to put her in the cell be raped for over a month but I appreciate this is not a rational response.

I have heard some articles say as high as 20 million. It can never be forgotten or it will be repeated again. To try even define Stalin with human words is impossible. Evil is the only one I will muster.

Monsier Le Dance there is an often repeated assumption that oral tradition is less legitimate or credible then written tradition. The problem is that is a cultural assumption you make based on your own cultural bias. I am trying to be serious here and engage you on this without being insulting or sounding self-righteous. Look at our Bible. It is written but we know its anything but reliable. Many things written down have been like the Bible re-written and re-edited and changed so many times they lose credibility. In fact certain oral traditions have more safeguards in place to prevent distortion precisely because they are not written. If you did look at some of the oral traditions of just some of the native collectives you might find anthropologists and geologists and botanists and many other scientists have found their oral traditions very accurate and capable of being proven through conventional science. The oral traditions for example dealing with herbs and plants to be used as medicinal properties is widely respected. Aboriginal knowledge of geological properties or environmental evolution is widely used. Modern science has embraced and looks to these same oral traditions you might find lacking in credibility as valuable teaching guides. You might be suprised what you could learn from aboriginal oral traditions that our zoologists, biologists and animal behavioural scientists are looking to for assistance. It gets frustrating seeing what I consider intelligent people make such assumptions which with due respect are based on what this stereotype that when people speak it gets distorted? Everything we write, say or do can be subject to distortion-its more then the form it takes that must be considered when we consider whether its distorted or not and for starters we can look to our cultural biases as one of the biggest factors in how we distort things. That and I suspect testosterone.

I have grown up and as a result I do not have a childish compulsion to suggest I am superior-I look at myself and I am capable of criticizing it and being humble about it. Before you tell me to grow up ask yourself why you still feel the need to tell people you are superior and ridicule them. Maturity usually is evidenced with a balanced reasoned debate to someone you disagree with, without name calling. I am deadly serious Scott, some of us consider what we do in the West deadly and killing us and unless we mature and evolve we are destined to extinction. We do not think our lifestyle is superior we see it as flawed and defective and that does not make us ungrateful but adults because we know if we do not take responsibility for what we are doing our children and their children have what? In my opinion an adult looks to those behind him and says is what I am doing in their best interests-should I just live for myself and not worry about future generations? One of the principal reasons there is a clash between the aboriginal and Western experience is precisely because we in the West live in the here and the now dettached from the past or future while aboriginal experience is holistic and sees them all temporal and connected. As well for me Scott for anyone to think the Judeo-Christian culture is superior to anyone else's is absurd. I can find good and bad things about anyone's culture but to suggest one is better then another? See to do that one must be selective and ignore the parts of their own history they care to skip over. My people had their share of violence and tribal wars and still struggle and yours? Just how long ago was it people were being burned at the stake or tortured because they would not repent. Come to think of it if Keng represents your culture are you not worried it is in a state of turmoil and regressing? Nyah nyah goo goo to you too but Scott I am again serious, some of us defer to abroiginals as superior to us in terms of spiritual development and as spiritual guides not because we heroworship them or feel guilty but because we acknowledge parts of their cultures that ours have forsaken-that is all. Living in a world of material value to some of us is something we want to criticize constructively. We know the planet is limited in what it can offer and we want to find ways to acknowledge those limitations before we destroy it. The yip yip you hear is me choking on pollution and garbage I want to find a way to deal with.

With due respect the Statute of Westminster did not and never intended to grant sovereignty to any province. Only the federal government has sovereignty. In a federated system only the federal government on an international basis has the right of sovereignty. I think you are mixing up the concept of exclusive jurisdiction designated provinces under the Constitutional Act with sovereignty. Even exclusive jurisdiction is subject to federal laws that can over-ride them in the event of national emergency. Technically the only legal entity other then the federal government with sovereignty are the aboriginal nations. Since their legal power pre-dated the confederation they have been recognized by our Supreme Court of Canada as a sovereign or parallel collective to the federal government so they are in fact sovereign and deal with federal government as a sovereign equal which is why legally they can but are not compelled to negotiate with provinces or municipalities. Now the exclusive jurisdiction a province has over certain areas is pretty much just that but you have to remember if the country declared itself in a state of war or emergency it can suspend just about any law in theory. Given the Charter of Rights and subsequent legal developments its highly unlikely a War Measures Act type law could last for too long unless a continuing present danger coulld be shown. All that said technically no province is sovereign because it can not supercede or ignore aboriginal legal rights which vest in the crown not the province. In a federated system, its very nature divides legal jurisdiction between two or more levels of government-it doesn't mean its granted sovereignty, just specific powers. Provinces are considered equals to each other but in practicality regional economic disparity makes that impossible and the reason we have equalization payments and certain provinces doing much better then others. Ultimately all business and commerce because of globalization is controlled by the US who we export 90% of our goods to and world economic markets such as China and India.

I am sure we can all agree Senator Romeo Dallaire is someone not even ScottUSA can disparage although I am sure he can if he wants to. In April of 2007 Sen. Dallaire stated that Canada's treatment of its aboriginal children is a" national total disgrace". Canada ranks among the top five countries on the UN human development index, but Canada’s aboriginal population is in 78th place. There is acute poverty, poor health, high suicide and school dropout rates. One of two aboriginals is not graduating from high school according to Ottawa's Centre for the Study of Living. Senator Raynell Andreychuk, the Senate human rights committee’s chairwoman, reported that half of the 22,000 children in Canada currently waiting to be adopted are aboriginal while aboriginal people made up only three per cent of Canada’s population in the 2001 census. You can make all the belittling comments you want about aboriginals and pretend it aint so but the fact is the Catholic, Anglican and United Churches played a principal role in engaging in a federal policy that tried to force assimilation on aboriginals by forcefully kidnapping their children and placing them in residential schools. It is a fact aboriginal children were deliberately exposed to tuberculosis. It is a fact they were systemically raped, molested and beaten and many starved to death. All you have to do is have the integrity to look it up instead of denying it. It doesn't make you or I a strong person, a superior person, a tough person to engage in taunts and pretend it aint so. The fact is our Supreme Court of Canada acknowledged it. Antonio Lamer the former Chief Justice who just died, stated so openly and called on our legal system to address the injustices by assisting in the creation of aboriginal self-government and in settling the outstanding land access conflicts all flowing from the federal and provincial governments deciding to breach treaties. You know to say to someone they are living in the past when they grew up in residential schools or are the children or residential school survivors is as ignorant as it gets. Tot ell someone they must ignore their history and and their past means what? Do you not find it interesting the same people who belittle aboriginal people for living in the past are the same people who scream and have tantrums that their own culture is being forgotten and replaced by inferior cultures? Oh my now. Those brown skinned types are watering us down. We need to whiten our skin. Perhaps we should call Michael Jackson to get tips. But yes in the meantime, we can pretend aboriginals were not treated as they were by our federal system. We can engage int his fiction that we placed them in reservations not so we could steal their land for our own use and try assimilate them but as one poster said to protect these people from US! Am I a bleeding heart, no just someone not afraid of Canadian history and its implications and someone who believes if we do not learn to look deeply at our failures and genocides and learn from them, we will continue to repeat them again and again. Before some of you judge and belittle, look at your own lifestyles. No you aint perfect by any means and the legacy you leave behind may not be as noble as you think it is. In fact I doubt your grandchildren will have much to want to remember if they manage to survive your leaving them a polluted planet and legacies of hatred and discrimination. Trust me they won't be building any monuments to your beliefs. I am like the vast majority of Canadians cognizant of our past, admitting to be open about our mistakes and wanting to find a healthy way to learn from and coexist with our aboriginal peoples because like many, I believe they have many things to teach us that will help us and unlike some of us, are not so quick to hate us as some of us do them. I am not racked by guilt for the past. I think its a useless emotion. It to me ranks right up their with hatred. I am compelled to make the negative positive like most of us Canadians are and we have and continue to build this country based on respect for aboriginal peoples and other peoples not hatred.

Unfortunately Postit, sometimes the kind of people most likely to respond to these kinds of posts do so because they feel empowered by insulting others. It unfortunately is typical of primate behaviour and in particular alpha males. In the baboon pack the one with the most inflamed red butt usually strutts his stuff the loudest-the more inflammed and red it is, the more attractive he is to the females in his pack. Primates chatter and bear their teeth and make loud noises and jump up and down but its usually because they are frightened - they have a primal fear of life forms other then their own. I quite frankly think the most effective way to deal with this may not be reason but a banana. I say that not to insult, just be realistic.

I am kindly asking you to refrain from this kind of purile response. Debate the issue. Engaging in deliberately racist taunts only belittles yourself. Please stop. I am asking you to do what you do best and that is reason and make your points using reasoning. You know I respect you. Please don't lower yourself to some others on this forum.

I am the first to defend you even when I disagree with your opinions and not assign you racist motives but when you lower yourself to resorting to such racist taunts I will be the first to call you out on it and call you ignorant and spiteful for doing such things. Either debate the topic or shut the f..ck up with the taunts. Before you belittle what you think is someone's characteristics or expressions look at your own. While you are at it explain why a culturally superior person such as yourself feels the need to engage in racial taunts.

In response to ScottUSa's isms; "There are also those who believe that western civilization and all its attributes are superior to 6th century dark age pathologies, caste based mythologies, and stone age tribalism." " I'm one of those too, but that involves a belief in cultural superiority, not racial superiority." Of course your references to what you deem superior and inferior is something some of us laugh at. Some of us find people like you with notions of cultural superiority simply deluded by your own biases. Oh take for example alleged "Western" civilization. what do you refer to-the pursuit of materialism? The method of defining human value based on how much material we accumulate or the power we can impose on others? Oh but wait-we are modern and superior with our lifestyle-why because we have intoxicated the planet with poisons and pollutions and threaten ourselves with extinction from epidemics of cancer and heart disease directly related to our lifestyle. But wait there's more, we are superior because we do not respect the rules of nature and other life forms? Oh but wait there's more, our medical science is superior because we treat symptoms not root causes and because we think if we pop a pill we can ignore our health. Yah superior. We are spiritual gems in the West. Beautiful people. At one with our spirits and the world around us. We share. We care. We live and let live and we certainly do not harm the planet. Nah not us superior Westerners. And don't forget our instant milk and aspirin. "Whitening one's bloodline is a millenia old practice all over the globe.." Geez silly me. I thought it was limited to teeth. Guess not. You know what, tomorrow I am going to find me a female albino and ask her if I can procreate with her.

So now you are not just an expert on Christianity and sexual morality you are an expert on aboriginal needs and affairs. Your expertise is astonishing. As for suggesting others are deluded and nonsensical, hmmm, where have I seen this theme before. Tell me Keng any chance such descriptions could apply to you? Nah. Can't be possible.

Spare us. Its bad enough you make negative generalizations about gays and Jews, now native people? Your ignorance as to Canadian history and the treatment of aboriginals and what the reserve system was used for should not surprise anyone. As for your slur that "chiefs" were, "selling of (sic.... (looks like you blanked out at this point) to fuel their addictions" is pathetically racist. You know nothing about the aboriginal elders and their leader or even their names and what they believed or believe in but you just can't resist engaging in racist slurs that smeers all chiefs as dishonest addicts. Once again you demonstrate to anyone who has the misfortune of reading your words you are a hateful person.

Cancer? Tar from cigarettes? Bacterial infection? Gangrene? Say Shark if I am not mistaken the human body's organs come in all colours BUT never black unless diseased or decayed and I have been told the liver is not really black but a tinge of dark blue to grey. Also I think people's skin colour should be referred to as ice cream flavours to assure greater accuracy. For example black people are brown. Even when they are really black they are more like eggplant. So I say we should call black or brown peoples eggplant or caramel or chocolate or coffeee and white people bubblegum or strawberry or vanilla or cocanut or when we have hangovers or have not been out in the daylight pistachio or mint and if we have oxygen problems blueberry. Asian people should be called butterscotch or mango or lemon. I am leaning with heavenly hash for aborginals since it has all kinds of shades and I will go with neopolitan for gays as its the closet thing for a rainbow in ice cream flavours. This way no one is offended and the point is everyone should be eaten at least once. I was told this by my favourite French teacher and he always had a lot of girlfriends. Then again he smoked Gitanes cigarettes so I am sure he was black inside.

Lol. Have to agree with you. p..s. I suspect Jack Lord, remember him in Hawaii 5-0, I suspect he was gay because he always had neat hair. Him and Efram Zimbalist Jr. from the FBI. There hair was always perfect no matter how windy it was and they always looked neat and clean. I aqlso figured it out with Marcus Welby M.D. and his young sidekick motorcycle driving partner who of course marries Barbra Streisdan in later life. Also for sure that movie Good Fellas, of course they were all gay. Finally I would like to say all centers in football are gay. There I believe that summarizes this post and we can move on and spread rumours about why Hulk Hogan's wife is leaving him. Oh come on. He and the "Macho" Man fooled no one.

Lol. I am not sure if there is a gay lobby that sits around deliberately trying to say peole are gay although I do it a lot and I am straight. I am convinced for example that Steven Harper is gay. On a more serious note, I doubt children will have any vision or give 2 shits whether Dumbeldore was gay. Why do I say this. Because I grew up with Lassie and Lassie was really a male dog. How about Mr. Rogers, Pee Wee Herman. Come on you think kids cared they were flamers? How about the Lion in the Wizard of Oz, clearly gay. Batman and Robin and those tights and the sliding up and down on poles. Robin the Boy Wonder. Of course. Come on there was Aquaman and Aqua Boy, Flash and Kid Flash, Green Arrow and Speedy, the Green Hornet and Kato. Did we care growing up? What about John Wayne? We know why he walked that way and used the word "pilgrim". Come on no one cared. How about Gilligan and the Skipper? Did it bother anyone? No. He always was calling him little buddy and did anyone freak? No. We knew why Gilligan ignored Ginger. So what? How about Mary Tyler Moore? Everyone knew she was doinking Rhoda. No one cared. Seriously, we all knew the Brady Bunch father whether on the show or off was gay. You could tell by his sideburns and the way he kissed Florence Henderson like he was Rock Hudson with that sort of side fake kiss where his tongue never moved. Puhleeze. Jay Leno, gay. Peter Mansbridge, gay. Lloyd Robertson, gay. So what. Does it matter? Hey Peter Pan was as gay as they get. He was this chick in drag seducing some young girl man, So what. we survived. You know when I found out Clint Eastwood was gay o.k. I said, Dirty Harry and that Magnum of his had new meaning, but it didn't bother me. The only time it sort of floored me was when I found out God was Jodie Foster and she appeared in a vision and said " You fool move on." Also you should keep in mind the burning bush in the bible was a reference to std's and that is why Moses told everyone to get cut and cool it with their peckers and other stuff.