The Crown promised Canadian First Nations riches – over 150 years on, they could finally get billions

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

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  More than 170 years after a treaty with the Crown promised Goodchild’s ancestors a share of the region’s riches, his people have instead been left struggling with illness, poverty and housing shortages – an enduring legacy of the colonial project first envisioned by the British government and continued after Canada gained independence.

  The graves of Goodchild’s mother and father, are marked by lichen-covered wood crosses, and lie a few dozen feet from the banks of the Pays Plat River, which cuts through the community and opens into Lake Superior.

  Industry and towns in the region thrived, but First Nations communities were left in squalor, subject to restrictive laws, including the prohibition of hiring a lawyer or leaving a reserve without permission from a government official.

  Canada’s federal government admits that colonial efforts to forcefully assimilate Indigenous peoples, and the displacement of First Nations on to inhospitable reserves have all contributed to shorter life expectancy, poverty and illness.

  Driving through the Red Rock reserve, a community encircled by forests of fir, spruce and birch, Hardy says the long reach of Canada’s “deeply racist” policies under the Indian Act are inescapable in daily life.

  In the community of Biigtigong Nishnaabeg, 130 miles east from Pays Plat through a corridor of basalt cliffs and golden tamarack trees, Juanita Starr says the prospect of a hefty settlement is a jarring reminder how different the lives of previous generations could have been.

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