Playing the Indian Card

Everything you think you know about Canada's "First Nations" is probably wrong:

1. First Nations are not aboriginal or indigenous.

2. Most Canadians have Indian ancestry; most Canadian Indians have European ancestry. The Indians are us--all of us.

3. Life before contact was no peaceable kingdom. It was nasty, brutish, and short. We are blinded here by the romantic "Noble Savage" myth.

4. No land was stolen from the Indians. No Indians were harmed in the making of this country, Canada.

5. There was no genocide of Canadian Indians; there was no attempted genocide.

6. First Nations had no special interest in or concern for the environment. They did not believe the physical world was real.

7. What we think is "native spirituality" was invented by non-Indians in the 1960s and 70s. Real Indians are Christian, and more devout than other Canadians.

8. The residential schools are a scapegoat. They were wanted by the Indians themselves, and there was nothing particularly wrong with them.

9. There has been no hostility towards Canada's First Nations on the part of the majority population. Indians have almost always been revered. They have always had a good press.

10. There has been no attempt to force Canada's First Nations to assimilate. There has been no "cultural genocide."

11. What we think we do to help "the poor Indians" has been killing them.

Read the truth, based on the real evidence: mostly on original historical documents, recorded by those in first contact: explorers, missionaries, and the Indians themselves.