Before the Age of the Donald - by Dave Jaffe: Part Eighteen.

       Before the Age of the Donald -Part Eighteen


          By 1900 or so, most indigenous Canadians had been moved off their territories that they used to wander on. Now the lands of Canada were turned over to other more powerful interests. Canada's natural resources ended up in the hands of rich white men. 12 of the largest resource companies  in the world have their head offices in Canada. Yet the wealth of these firms has rarely gone to Canada's first inhabitants.
    Often First Nations people left their reserves where it was impossible to make a decent living. Many of them today work at jobs like other Canadians. Others have drifted into inner city areas in places like Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Regina and Calgary. Here, many of them end up doing illegal drugs or drown their sorrows in alcohol. They also face racism from white people and violence sometimes from the police.
    Some Indian women who live in the inner cities become prostitutes and white murderers like Robert Pickton in B.C. stalk them and kill them. Meanwhile across Canada, in the 3100 reserves
where many indigenous people live, life goes on. Rodger, a well-travelled Canadian lives on Vancouver Island, near two or three reserves. "I've never seen such poverty and squalor," he said after canvassing for votes on a nearby reserve. "It really shocked me."
   Hundreds of kilometres to the east, across the Salish Sea and over at least two mountain ranges, you can find the Okanagan area of British Columbia.This is where the Westbank First Nation has its home. This is a prosperous community where people run businesses, children attend decent schools and many people have done well.
   Other reserves have also enjoyed the prosperity that has swept across Canada since the Second World War. Still many of the reserves across Canada are mired in poverty and just stagnate. At this time, First Nations people and indigenous people have woken up. They demonstrate, start court challenges and square off against governments and corporations that have hurt them many times. Now there are indigenous lawyers, activists, anthropologists, and other educated aboriginals. These people can go head to head with white officials,
      An anthropologist I'll call Stanley got a Ph.D in anthropology by writing his thesis  on a native band. Then he turned around a few years later and testified against the band's right to get back its ancestral land. "We know of quite a few anthropologists like that," one First Nations activist told me. "But these people can't do that anymore because we have our own anthropologists now."
    Donald Trump nor his government are responsible for the treatment of native Americans or of First Nations people, Inuit and Metis in Canada. Yet it's doubtful he would support their struggles to reclaim their lands or their dignity. We must remember that before the Age of the Donald there was racism, poverty and social justice. He didn't invent these things. He may make them worse or maybe even better. Yet he is not responsible - at least not yet - for their persistence.