CANADIEN

Canada is not a corporation, it is a country. The Crown is not a corporation, it is the embodiement of Canada as a country. Like it or not, all land not privately owned, or owned by a First Nation, belongs to the Crown. Like it or not, canadian laws apply to Aboriginals. Interesting btw that you come again with the absurd notion that all land in Ontario belongs to the Six Nations. Even if the notion that all land belongs to the first Nations had any merit (and it does not), one can only laugh at the idea that let's say communities along the shores of Hudson Bay belong or have in the past belonged to the Six Nations, or were subject to their authority. Better luck next time with your attempt at rewriting history.

I forget. You'll tolerate Blacks if they were born here... as long as they stay away from your neighbourhood. I stand corrected. Let me quote my first posting on this thread AGAIN (and as a bonus, I'll even correct my typos);

Too many? I count two so far. Griz and you.

Congratulations. You just called the makers of the Merriam-Webster dictionary insane. That's the same people whose definition of predilection contradicts yours, btw. Guess dictionaries are not your forte.

Including Blacks born here, right? What is funny is how poor your reading skills are. Here's what I wrote previously:

Spare us the racism and the stupidity, will you?

Now the comparison is with Apartheid era South Africa. What's next, Nazi Germany?

Good, can Quebcers renegoociate the 1763 treaty, you kknow THAT one? Yet the blatant unfainess that was imposed upon first Nations by those treaties is ignored, and one minor detail, to do with the way the grossly inadequate payment is being made, have people in a knot.

If the situation was the same, I would.

Feel free to slide deeper and deeper into the absurd. I shall not stop you. Ineresting, considering that almost all treaties were negotiated by the CROWN in a positionb of force, in which they dictated the terms. Not the other way around. So, the tax exemppption is far from being as prevalent as some would claim. Which is why First Nations leadership is demanding a greater autonomy. So now it's the first Nations' fault when governments drag their feet and will not re---open treaties to make them more equitable for the FN?

Indeed. I DO of course enjoy denying things that do not exist, like the so-called similitude between slavery and payments as per legal land transactions... or absurd claims that sych payments are punitive when in fact the sum does not even reprent one hundredth of one per cent of the value of the land in question.

You (conveniently?) forget that First Nations were and are still forbidden by law from selling land to anyone but the Government. Payment as per the terms of a contract is not a set of special rights, not by any stretch of the imagination. BTW, you know of course that Aboriginals pay taxes on goods they purchase off-reserve and (in most cases) on work they do off-reserve, right? And that non-status Aboriginals (that is those not covered by treaties), Metis and Inuits do not have any tax-exemption status? And that Aboriginals do not even have ownership of their own on-reserve houses? And that recent treaties with BC First Nations call for the phasing-out of any tax exempt status and the phasing in of taxation by First Nations on the reserves?

Keep digging yourself in a hole. As long as we found a way not to pay far value for land err I mean as long as the "interests of the majority" were respected, right? A payment is still a payment, and nothing more, whether it's paid in one installment pr in perpetuity, whether it is a cash payment or in the form of a tax exemption.

Not based on a fair market assessment of the value of the land, as is the case with most expropriations. Guess equality only goes so far... Excellent idea. Let's start wit clauses that made Aboriginals wards of the states, and denied them the rights to manage their own affairs the way they see fit. Oh, but I gorgot, that's not what we are talking about. That's not racist enough. Priviledges indeed. Aboriginals in this country live shorter lives, are poorer, are more likely to end up in jail, live in far worse sanitary conditions, than other Canadians. I hate to see how things would be if they didn't enjoy all those Privileges.

Nice try. Ownership of land is not the same as ownership of people. But thank you for confirming that you have no valid argument to rely upon.

The dishonour is in the argument that contracts signed in good faith can just be discarded as a whim under the false pretense that it creates an unequal relationship. There was no protest when treaties and their provisions were used (and abused, and ignored) in order tp create a state of dependency among Aboriginals and to destroy their societies and cultures. Paying "Injuns" a pitance for their lands was fine then, living up to the terms of those agreements now suddenly becomes wrong. Unless of course the sense of justice exhibited by some here extends to re-opening all clauses of the treaties, including those effecting land tansfers. After all, if the agreed upon price can be rennnnnnegotiated, so can everything else, right?

I have seen co-outs, but that one is for the ages. Comparing treaties with First Nations with slavery? As for your statement that those treaties are incompatbile with an egalitarian democracy... that's just too precious coming from someone who has just argued that democracies means that the rights of members of minority groups are only those granted by the majority.

Yet, you feel free to substitute your own non-sense. As in The treaties were signed between (theorically) equal parties, and the Crown (that is the Government) is honor-bound by them. The claim that honouring treaty commitments is some sort of unequal treatment is ignorant at best. Actually, denial of the rights of members of minority groups is nothing democratic. It's nothing more than a dictatorship by the majority. By your definition, pre-desgregation Southern US was a model of democracy, and Quebec language laws are a model of democratic law-making... not by mine.

Now, now, now. I would be the last one to claim that determining the validatty of Aboriginal land claims is an easy process. Unless the key criiteria is "How can we scr*w the Injuns?". One word. Treaties. Now, you are not suggesting the Government reneges on its word, right?

Let me help you pack so you can move back to Europe then. Find that statement of mine ridiculous? So do I. But then, I am only following your logic.

Agreed, for the most part. By signing treaties, Aboriginal nations accepted all that came with it, including British (and now Canadian) sovereignty.

A bit simplistic, I am afraid. A Mohawk who rejects the auhority of the Canadian government does not consider himself/herself a Canadian, and from that sense that person is not a Canadian. That person certainly cannot claim the whole of Canada as hi/her homeland. But land inhabited by the Mohawk NATION and legally owned by that nation is that person's homeland. The right of Aboriginals to hold land and to consider it to be their homeland, the place they come from, was not abolished by European conquest, and has been implicitly recognized From the Royal Proclamation of 1763 to recent Supreme Court decisions. That being said, as far as I am concerned, any First Nation who claim they are not subject to Canadian laws is welcome to mandatory third-party arbitration on their land claims, followed by them paying for patrolling THEIR side of the BORDER - yep, let's treat them as any other foreign country.

Agreed absolutely. This will not prevent some morons from arguing "this is my land, my great-grand-father came in from Birmingham 100 years ago, so all the non-white and the Indians can leave".

Let's put it this way. If 4th generation Canadians can say that this is their homeland (and they're right), people whose ancestors were here 20, 100, 1000 generations ago can most certainly make the same claim.