[finch1750]

Originally Posted by Ashikabi

Its ok to be racist about Indians. I dunno how they are in Canada but it's pretty ugly here. Lots of meth. And alcohol. Lots of relatively low level crime and not a single job for the lot of them. Except the ones who own casinos, but you never see them. Can't imagine they would stay here with that kind of money

Originally Posted by Cole

Hmmm... Generally the attitude towards them is fairly neutral. I've had some very bad first hand experiences with them. About 10 years ago, a friend and I went to a movie, and when we came back out, his parents car was gone. That was found on a reserve about a week later, mostly stripped and then burnt out. I was working in Winnipeg a couple years ago, and was accosted/almost mugged by a drunk native. About 2 months ago, I was coming out of my hotel room to leave for work, and there was a moaning noise coming from a stairwell. I saw that someone had clearly fallen down the stairs, I rushed down to check on them and was prepared to give first aid, but about 10 feet from them, all I could smell was booze, so I just went to the front desk and let them know.

There's a lot of shit I could say negatively about them as a whole, but that's a discussion for a less moderated place. I did go to college with 2 native guys and both of them were awesome dudes, and their family's were amazing. Even both of them had negative things to say about the majority of the natives who live on reserves.

But, yes, drug and alcohol abuse, as well as poverty are a problem for them in Canada as well. Many excuses for it, but not much action being done. Personally, I don't think the government should give them handouts simply because they don't do the same with other groups of people.

What I can say for sure, is if I had the benefits they get, I could do extremely well for myself.

There are a ton of problems and drugs and booze do cause many problems and it is a self eating cycle for many. But there is also horrible govt mismanagement of said benefits that got locked into a class action suit for 30 years as one example. The Govt basically didn't do any bookkeeping and was like we dont know how much money we owe you so we gonna just pay you a small fraction. The court even ordered the govt computers be disconnected from the internet to figure everything out. Settlement was in the billions but most people only saw a couple thousand for 30 years of mismanaged funds.

And this is just the most extreme example. Again not saying reservations are nice and full of rainbows but govt assistance to natives in the US at least is not anywhere near its cracked up to be for most tribes.

I worked for a native American legal non profit for almost 10 years. Saw a lot of fucked up shit on both sides.