Dear Editor,
Dysfunctional families are families where the guardians of the children fail to promote an environment that encourages healthy spiritual, physical, and emotional growth for their children. In these types of families it is the children who suffer greatly. The children by their own means learn how to survive, and unfortunately, most often, they carry on the abuse that were taught to them by their caregivers. One form of a dysfunctional family is the codependent family where one of the caregivers is the enabler and the other caregiver is codependent on the enabler. Such is the case of the Canadian federal government, the enablers, and the First Nations people, the codependents.
This codependency between the government and the Indigenous people began when the first treaty was signed: the government promised to keep their end of the treaty so long as the First Nations promised to keep their part. How these promises were carried out, on both sides, in the end produced a vicious circle of codependency that curtailed the spiritual, physical and emotional growth of the First Nations children throughout the generations. It is still so today where Prime Minister Trudeau makes sweeping enabling promises that the federal government will ensure that all wrong done to First Nations will be made right, and will ensure that all will be done for the First Nations people to promote a healthy lifestyle. Yes, of course this will take some time, but the sad part is that the First Nations People are not seeing that they are still dependent on the government, and that this dependency has proven to be ineffective and has destroyed many children throughout the generations, and will continue to do so.
How is codependency broken? How will pride be returned back to the First Nations people? Well first, both sides must bury the hatchet meaning that they both must recognize that there were many wrongs done in the past and that will never come to a full restoration or healing for those who have suffered. Both sides must bury the enabling treaties, and then talk reasonably about the First Nations people owning their own land so that they may become solely responsible for building up strong independent communities. Will this be an easy task? No, it won’t. For the First Nations people this will mean standing on their own, like all other communities in Canada. Some communities will make it while others will struggle. But if all the First Nations people encourage each other to stand independently from the government, then it will become easier. Who knows what a first generation of independent First Nations people can bring to the future of their people and to the rest of Canada.
D. McNaughton,
Neerlandia, AB
