Why Does Canada’s Open Society Embrace Tribalism?

Commentary Even many ostensible conservatives buy into the indigenous iconography of a pre-industrial Garden of Eden—and so-called reconciliation under the U.N.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). It’s enough that misplaced romanticism condones the transfer of untold billions of dollars without accounting for where it goes. That said, these questions remain unanswered: Should Canada enable next generations for the high-tech economy? Or should they expect to live according to some presumably modified traditional lifestyle? The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples’ 1995 report on suicide, “Choosing Life,” stated the challenge: “Aboriginal youth described both exclusion from the dominant society and alienation from the now-idealized but once-real “life on the land” that is stereotypically associated with aboriginality. The terrible emptiness of feeling strung between two cultures and psychologically at home in neither has been described in fiction and in art, as well as in testimony. … This inward-looking subculture may reinforce hopelessness and self-hate, and their exits may appear to be the oblivion of drugs and alcohol—or death.”...