Well, that United Nations envoy certainly put us in our place, didn't he?
So...
Is everyone clear now on how the Rest of Us should go about negotiating with Canada's First and Foremost Nations?
One of us will propose something -- a mine, perhaps, or a forestry project that would bring much-needed revenue to our cash-strapped government for little things like, uh, health care, education, welfare or new homes in one of Canada's needy FFN communities.
Or maybe it's just a testy comeback to a bit of political grandstanding.
The FFNs, assisted by their social justice friends, will respond to this insult by running off to the mainstream media to reveal the shocking truth about the evil, colonial, rapacious and uncaring government. We will get an earful about treaties, George III, residential schools, assimilation, greedy corporations, malnourished children, inadequate funding, destitute reserves, small pox and the duplicity of settlers.
If this fails to produce immediate capitulation, the FFNs will call on their team of non-Aboriginal lawyers to ask the courts to block whatever it is that the government might ponder doing or saying or permitting to happen. They will cite a Constitution that, apparently, applies only to them.
The courts will deliberate for about ten minutes, then issue a decision that favours the FFNs, humiliates the governement, ignores the Rest of Us and sets a precedent that further entrenches the right of FFNs to most of Canada's land mass.
As these "negotiations" are happening, the FFNs will ice the cake by racing off to New York to play their newly acquired "rights of indigenous people" card. The United Nations will oblige with a scathing attack on all things Canadian. The world will tut-tut about Canada's evil, colonial, rapacious and uncaring people.
Properly chastised by our betters, the Rest of Us will give the FFNs whatever they want.
Life will go on until the next set of "negotiations."
That, folks, is the meaning of reconciliation.
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