{"id":63544,"date":"2019-03-20T07:49:17","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T11:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huntsville.dopperonline.ca\/?p=63544"},"modified":"2019-03-20T07:49:17","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T11:49:17","slug":"snc-lavalin-has-overshadowed-earlier-concerns-with-jwrs-extreme-views-on-indigenous-rights-hugh-holland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/snc-lavalin-has-overshadowed-earlier-concerns-with-jwrs-extreme-views-on-indigenous-rights-hugh-holland\/","title":{"rendered":"SNC-Lavalin has overshadowed earlier concerns with JWR’s extreme views on indigenous rights ~ Hugh Holland"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I seldom agree with Conrad Black, but he is a keen student and writer of history and his March 16, 2019 article in the National Post, SNC-Lavalin is a sideshow to the real Wilson-Raybould issue<\/a><\/span><\/em>, made some sense. As he states, the idea that perhaps 200,000 native peoples who travelled nomadically through a largely vacant land actually owned that land is ludicrous.<\/p>\n

The best guess of anthropologists is that perhaps a million homo-sapiens survived the last ice age in central Africa and all modern societies gradually migrated from there around the world. They believe that about 14,000 years ago, the earliest North Americans migrated from Asia during a lowering of the level of the Bering Sea. They now think of themselves as the indigenous peoples of North America.<\/p>\n

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Land ownership is based on laws that define how to claim and prove one owns the land and the ability to enforce the ownership through courts, and if necessary, police and military action. None of that existed when the Europeans came here. Saying that the descendants of those 200,000 nomadic people own Canada today is like saying each of them is entitled to 12,330 acres of land and all the natural resources within them, and that all settlers that migrated later from around the world, and built Canada into one of the best countries in the world, are entitled to nothing.<\/p>\n

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Since there were no laws or records of title, the early Europeans used the established laws of France and England. The land was designated as crown land or public land and was parceled out to natives and settlers according to an organized system. Even today 89 per cent of Canada remains as crown land or public land (41 per cent federal and 48 per cent provincial) which includes all the resources existing thereon. Anyone wishing to access those resources must buy the land from the crown or pay a royalty to the government (us).<\/p>\n

Certainly, the first peoples and their descendants had and still have many legitimate grievances which must be addressed. To appreciate their feelings, how would Canadians feel if the USA depletes their oil reserves in about 20 years and then decides to annex Alberta instead of just paying a fair price for Alberta oil? Like the first peoples, we would be very upset but unable to stop them militarily.<\/p>\n

The question is how best to resolve the grievances of our indigenous people. What are the alternatives?<\/p>\n