BillBoards Along Vancouver Bridges

There is screaming all over the Vancouver media today about the Squamish Native Canadians plans to erect huge billboards beside the approaches to several to the city's bridges. I have two questions about all the fuss.

1. Why is it a surprise?
2. Are the folks who are so upset the same people who have pushed for native rights for the past several years?

As a little background, I know that a couple of hundred years ago when Canada was a huge forest with rivers for highways and the land was owned by England, France and the Hudsons Bay Company, many treaties were signed on behalf of the British crown which recognized extensive rights to the native bands who occupied the land at that time. At the time, these treaties made a lot of sense and were the right thing to do. The only other option was to try to take the land by whatever means necessary. That would have been the wrong thing to do, but has serious effects on Canadian current events.

Since those days, Canada has become a proud nation and taken its place proudly on the world's stage. Both during the time when we had a system of British comom law and more especially since P.M. Pierre Trudeau gave us a constitution and a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we have cherished the notion of equality of all our citizens, or at least so far as our rights and obligations as Canadian citizens is concerned; unless you happen to be born a Native Canadian. We have the Indian Act and all the treaties signed so long ago.

In more modern times, Canadians were absolutely indignant about the condition of black people in the United States. We received them by the thousands as they escaped slavery in the US and even into the 1960s we worked to help abolish segregation.

Likewise, we worked very hard on several fronts to eliminate apartheid in South Africa in the firm belief that separation of the races is wrong.

Flash forward to Canada today. Many battles have been won by the native Canadians in the courts to verify and prove the rights granted by treaties signed in the days long ago. Our courts have granted that the treaties are valid and legal to this day and our native Canadians have standing as "First Nations" with powers of nations on a par with Ottawa. As a result, we have defacto apartheid here in Canada today, not inflicted on the minority by the majority, but on the minority by the "First Nations" themselves.

Now, today, in Vancouver, the Squanish Nation owns the land under your bridges. It is their land, they will do with it as they want. They have decided that huge billboards on tall steel poles erected on their land is in their interests. Well Vancouver citizens, you have supported and encouraged native rights to be nations of their own as opposed to being Canadians who happen to be aboriginal. The Squamish Nation has the right to the billboards to block your views of the north shore mountains - live with it.