In the Globe and Mail, there was recently an article that brought out the racism of Canada in its comment section. This is a quote from one comment that particularly bothered me:
“And if we were to give the North Americas back to the aboriginals they would complain about their likely still stone age life style, absent treaty monies”
My reply to this comment was:
This sentence is exceedingly condescending. It presumes that aboriginals complain more than the author. It presumes that aboriginals lived a stone age life style. It ignores the joys aboriginal people would have moving out of the confines they currently experience. It forgets that the aboriginal people once had a flourishing trade system. That aboriginal people had many clever inventions like syringes, snow shoes and canoes. That there were permanent settlements along the coast and that the agriculture practice of using the three sisters (maize, squash, beans) was spreading into Canada.
Biologically speaking, all humans are the same and thus all humans innovate and all humans complain.
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Here are some links that I used when forming my reply:
https://manitobamuseum.ca/main/a-brief-history-of-indigenous-agriculture/
(indigenous agriculture in Manitoba)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)
(“among humans, race has no taxonomic significance”)
https://tigerpapers.net/2011/10/24/diamonds-guns-germs-and-steel/
(didn’t use this page, but the resource is too good to loose track of)