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Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

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Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#111
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your thoughts are interesting, but I am having trouble seeing how this relates to the Wikipedia article. The Wikipedia article is about police murdering a number of Indigenous Canadians. I am not sure what the connection is to a "virus" of drugs and anger spreading among Inuit people. I believe that none of the men in this Wikipedia article are Inuit. Wikipedia reports 2016 census showing the following Indigenous pop…

First, the practice of "Starlight Tours" wasn't isolated to Saskatoon. It was, and is speculated to still be a practice in many communities, with verified occurrences in Montreal and Winnipeg, as well as claims of it happening in many other small communities. Second, the genocidal practices of the Canada towards it's indigenous population included the Inuit. There is a laundry list of genocidal tactics: * criminaliza…

Thank you for this. Especially your first two paragraphs I agree 100% and I think those points are closely related to the Wikipedia article.

Along these lines I could add that in Saskatoon, despite at least three men being murdered by police and many more kidnapped by this practice, only two officers have ever been convicted (for unlawful confinement). There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of things to say about this story.

Which is why I found it surprising that the top comment was about drug use and violence in Inuit communities. As I measure it, this is at least two logical "hops" from the topic of the 'starlight tour' story in Saskatoon. Furthermore these topics are extremely sensitive in this context. Violence and substance use have been (and still are) used to justify the practices that you described above--in particular separating children from parents.

I don't know how to say well what is in my heart now. In what I have written, I am afraid of sounding like a person yelling accusations on the internet. This is not my intention. I am bringing this up in a spirit of honest dialog. I often choose to say nothing rather than risk saying the wrong thing, or even saying something in the wrong way. I think in a perfect world we would discuss these topics without fearing the shame of feeling this. Even as I type this, I feel a thin film of sweat on my hands. I am again afraid of saying something wrong. People on the internet might yell at me. I am equally afraid of giving anyone else the feeling of being yelled at. I wrote and deleted, rewrote, and redeleted this comment and my earlier comment a number of times. But I click "reply" with the hope that we can all somehow make a better world, and that we won't get there unless we try to talk about it. I am trying to learn my history, I am trying to learn how to talk about it. I hope I have written this in line with what is in my heart, which is a desire to better understand and be understood. And for every one of the comments on this topic, I am glad that so many people clicked the same "reply" button to openly share their thoughts.

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#112
This partly explains the tough attitude of the government and the police towards the recent trucker protests.

Coincidentally, Saskatoon is in Saskatchewan, which has the highest demand for truck drivers in Canada.

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#113
post #7

When I read about Inuit culture of non-violence in the 20th century [1], and wheb I read about them today [2], I have this disgusted feeling that Western culture of drugs and anger is like a virus that spread into their completely non-immunized population. A bit like the diseases brought into the new world in the 19th century, but this time psychological. [1] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674608283…

"Western culture of drugs and anger?" That entirely discounts all the positive aspects of the culture. If you have disgusting views, you're likely to be disgusted a lot. If you find a population that largely lives somewhere where drugs don't or can't grow, the results should be obvious once they do become available. Whether through a "culture of drugs and violence" or a "culture of drugs and love" or mere "natural ma…

I think its interesting that your two examples of 'uninitentional' eradication both have demonstratively been used intentionally to do just that.

Smallpox US: https://daily.jstor.org/how-commonly-was-smallpox-used-as-a-...

Smallpox(Or Other) in Australia: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/w...

CIA and Crack. https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/...

Australian Colonialists paid Indigenous workers with alcohol and tobacco. https://cspm.csyw.qld.gov.au/practice-kits/alcohol-and-other...

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#114

I hesitate to post this, but Canada is in a lot of ways a museum of the American West. The first time I visited BC, I turned on public radio and heard a story about tailings ponds collapsing into rivers. The logging is beyond what you get used to in modern OR, WA, and MT. The boarding schools that tried to eradicate native languages in the 1900s were like the ones the States had a few decades earlier. It’s a hard lan…

Funny you said that. Slavery, for instance, was abolished in Canada ~30 years before the USA.

I guess it can go both ways.

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#115
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad grew up in the region around Ladakh. His village got a single paved road in 1982 and a single electric connection in 1985. Relatives would have to walk MILES in the cold and high elevation to get an elementary education, and child malnutrition and mortality was significant (my grandmother and a number of her peers had lost at least 1 child to diseases like typhus, cholera, etc). All this happened before the de…

Thank you for your contribution. I understand that viewing it from said perspective doesn't account for the complete picture. That said, I believe we can agree that both sides can be true simultaneously? Standard of living is improved and worsened in certain regards. OP and the reference I'm sharing discuss some of the negative impacts to local cultures.

I can agree that some aspects of development may appear negative, but at least with regards to the negative aspects described in the Local Futures documentary (which btw is not something I'd treat as a reliable source - being a linguist trained under Chomsky doesn't make you an economic analyst for example) were already common before globalization came through - drunkards and opioid addicts always existed, the disparity between haves and have-nots always existed, and the traditional local power structures were inherently exclusionary. A lot of these kinds of documentaries tend to look nostalgically to some form of a utopian past, but if you have rose tinted glasses on, you don't see the red flags.

PS - I wouldn't extrapolate this conversation about indigenous communities in Inner Asia with those of the First Nations. There are a bunch of different political, economic, and social dynamics that cause this to be an apples to oranges comparison.

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#117
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your contribution. I understand that viewing it from said perspective doesn't account for the complete picture. That said, I believe we can agree that both sides can be true simultaneously? Standard of living is improved and worsened in certain regards. OP and the reference I'm sharing discuss some of the negative impacts to local cultures.

I can agree that some aspects of development may appear negative, but at least with regards to the negative aspects described in the Local Futures documentary (which btw is not something I'd treat as a reliable source - being a linguist trained under Chomsky doesn't make you an economic analyst for example) were already common before globalization came through - drunkards and opioid addicts always existed, the dispar…

That's a fair point, thanks for shedding light on it from a closer perspective.
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