Dear Editor:
Mr. Oppal got two things right. We must put an end to endemic poverty, and we are all responsible.
Ending poverty among indigenous peoples is easy enough: end two centuries of injustice: accept aboriginal title and rights. Using their own resources on their own terms, indigenous nations can generate an economic base in their homelands. Create jobs, ease poverty at home, and women don't have to hitchhike; look for work in the city, in spite of racism; risk the sex trade.
Using their own resources, native nations can ease the inter-generational damage done by residential schools; by 200 years of enforced poverty and powerlessness: the abuse of lawless occupying forces.
Aboriginal title and rights are enshrined in British colonial law, in our Constitution, and in international law. Yet from its robber baron beginnings, B.C. refused to recognize land and resource rights: took every resource, all lands, without compensation, as our own laws demand. We have been illegally forcing poverty on the indigenous peoples - and we still are.
The treaties we offer - unilaterally - reduce sovereign nations with legal and moral right to all their territories, to municipalities under the control of non-native governments. So talks have stalled; and native nations "owe" the Treaty Commission hundreds of millions of dollars - to give away 95 per cent of their territories; to see remaining communal lands become fee simple, available for sale.
We are committing cultural and human genocide. We are all responsible. Our governments carry out these atrocities.
H. Bechler, New Westminster
