John McLean was a Christian missionary who lived for nine years with the Blood (Kainai) Indians in present-day Southern Alberta, learning their language, customs and traditions. Based on this, in 1889, at the request of the Smithsonian Institution, he wrote The...
Peter Best
A Distant Canadian Mirror–The Indians of Canada
Written in 1889 by John McLean: Christian Missionary, Philologist and Ethnologist The antagonism existing between the customs, intellects, and lives of the two races, and the despondency consequent upon the changed life of the Indians are important factors in...
A Lamentable Tale of Two Colonies
During the whole of recorded history, the empire has been the most constant and common form of political organization. A basic, self-evident feature of all empire-building has been the successful occupation of the lands of the local, Indigenous inhabitants by outside...
The Never-Ending, Debilitating, Civic Childhood of Canada’s Aboriginal People
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. -Corinthians 1 It is the right of all capable, adult citizens of Canada to share the same civic rights and to shoulder the same...
Featured News
There’s Nothing Fair About Canadian Health Care
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
Canada’s Aboriginal Policies Constitute the Rejection of our Enlightenment Heritage
Richard Gwyn, author of Nation Maker—Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, a biography of Canada’s first prime minister, reported that in the 1950s—the decade I grew up in—was a time “…when Canadians came to realize and believe that a ‘new nationality’ could be...
Lacking of Judicial Principles in Writing the TRC Report
It’s a mystery why some people suddenly eschew their past principles. This phenomenon is especially notable when people of power and fame forget principles they have sworn to uphold as responsible professionals. This mystery is evident in Senator Murray Sinclair’s...
The Unintentional Racism Underlying the Indigenous Rights Movement
“God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth.” -Acts 17:26 “Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more that I can tell and I...
The Nova Scotia Lobster Fishing Dispute is an Affront to Canadian Law
The recent lobster fishery dispute shows us that, for the sake of the survival of Canada’s fish and lobster stocks, and to uphold the rule of law, Canadian governments must exercise their constitutional duty to prohibit illegal Indigenous fishing. Indigenous people...
The Grave Danger of Race-Based Law Enforcement in Canada
Canadians are angry at the passivity of our governments and police forces in the face of Indigenous lawbreaking, such as the illegal land occupations, road and railway blockades, and breaches of conservation laws. Increasingly Canadians realize that there is “One law...
Why Indigenous Land Acknowledgments are Harmful to the Public Interest
“... if it was not so serious Espanola’s declaration or whatever it is would be laughable, but it is not alone … So few realize if this .. continues some years from now it will be used in some claim.” -Retired Supreme Court Justice Jack Major. The...
Rewriting Canada’s Citizenship Oath to “Recognize Indigenous Peoples” is Wrong and Harmful
On October 23rd, 2020, Immigration Minister announced that the Liberal government will soon introduce a bill to alter the Oath of Citizenship making it “more inclusive,” and the minister says that “this bill will serve as “one more vital bill step towards...
De-Stabilizing Court Decision Further Erodes Crown Sovereignty
In December, 2018, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice released its Restoule decision rendering Canada and Ontario equally liable to pay the 21 Robinson Treaties bands their “fair” share of all Crown revenue received from sales, leases and licenses, less expenses,...