Recently all the CAP classes have had a sharp focus on Aboriginals and the loss of their culture through colonialism. Aboriginals were exploited, oppressed, marginalized, and through this lost their way of life. Colonists did everything to eradicate Aboriginal life, in turn putting their own advantageous agenda first. After doing this week’s readings for both Anthropology and ASTU I began thinking that not only did Aboriginal colonization have harmful effects for Aboriginals but it had equally harmful effects for the rest of Canadian society. Such consequences are still present today, yet in our society we fail to acknowledge them.

By pursuing tactics to assimilate Aboriginal culture, through the amalgamation of Indian children into residential schools, the sixties scoop, dominating owned land, etc. The government failed to recognize how detrimental such actions could be on both ends. Early colonists and even the Canadian government today never gave the Aboriginal culture, and ways of life a chance. They were immediately referred to as savages or barbarians, looked at as inferior, and are typically seen today as uneducated, victims, and alcoholics. But when did anyone really try to embrace the culture? Aboriginals pride themselves on the natural world. They live in accordance with sustainability, embrace human and non-human life, they recognize the worlds resources are in fact, finite. Even more so their culture emphasizes sharing, general welfare over personal wealth. Meanwhile, today we treat the environment as it if were numb to our presence, as if its infinite and nothing our culture does impacts it. We live in a capitalist society that exploits land, and an unequal distribution of wealth is evident almost world wide.  I had read in an assigned anthropology reading that it is predicted forests will be gone in 2050. Sea life will be depleted by 2043.  While it may seem like a lifetime away right now, it really isn’t, we’ll be in our 40s-50s. Our generation and our next generation will be living with the severe consequences of our government and the unsustainable ways of the white men up top. It really doesn’t seem fair that such a fate has been chosen for us. Especially considering the land initially taken, did not belong to them. It belonged to a group of people whose culture enhanced rather than eradicated the worlds resources.

It’s never too late to look to the lost culture of Aboriginals to help better our world today. Just because the culture suffered a genocide doesn’t mean Aboriginal culture is gone forever. Like Heather said, Aboriginal culture is still very much alive today. However it can be even more alive without constricting limits such as the Indian Act. Such an act may status Indians but confines them even more. We must educate ourselves and take action into our own hands, looking at Aboriginal culture for inspiration, if we want to live healthily and happily in the future.