Talks set to resume in bid to end native standoff

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060420/police_ontario_060421/20060421?hub=TopStories

What a headline. Not a completely truthful one though. You see the natives in this particular situation have been stepped on and ignored for a very long time. By the government, by the courts and by the media even. The media didn't even take a real interest until things were set ablaze and police moved in to "raid" the protestors camp.

Now the police pat themselves on the back and repeat often how restrained they were. Restrained?? Pepper spraying women and children is restrained? 5 police officers jumping on a lone female is retrained?? Ask yourself this readers...if this protest group was black or muslim or jewish, would the police have even raided in the first place? I think not.

The complacency and disregard for the aboriginal people of this country is well know and well documented....issues from recent memory: tainted water issue on numerous reserves, Ipperwash - Dudley George, unarmed and murdered by the police, The Highway of Tears - the murder of several native girls/women was only cared about once a white girl turned up dead in the same area. It is this complacency and disregard that has raised the ire of the native community. Talking doesn't work. The courts don't work. Only physical stands and loud riotous fighting for our rights seem to work. And if one of us should be murdered by the police under governement order...heh atleast then the media will care enough to high light our plights.

Warren Goulding, a journalist said it best when covering the trial of John Martin Crawford (convicted of murder in the killings of three Indigenous women): "I don't get the sense the general public cares much about missing or murdered aboriginal women. It's all part of this indifference to the lives of aboriginal people. They don't seem to matter as much as white people."