AN APOLOGY TO THE FIRST NATION: National Chief Phil Fontaine

AN OPEN APOLOGY TO THE FIRST NATIONS

WELCOME TO ONE HUMAN FAMILY
My intent with this blog is to open a forum where, from one human being to another, we can pour out our tears regarding the horrendous, inconceivable acts of unnecessary violence and inhumanity carried out by some Europeans against the innocent FIRST NATION, the MILLIONS of peoples living on the American continent when the English "discovered" this "new" land. It wasn't "new" to the peoples who occupied it, but it's a nice way to put it in the history books so that the white offspring of generations to follow have NO REAL IDEA of what went on in this country. I'm white and until I watched 500 Nations and digested what really happened to our darker skinned brothers and sisters, I just didn't really understand why I would get the cold shoulder by some American Indians. NOW I UNDERSTAND! Like the Tibetans in China, it is very very hard to swallow that your country was stolen by some stronger peoples, and that now you are living on the very fringes of society, barely surviving. Every day you visualize how life used to be, how it still should be, your customs, your beautiful streams and mountains, the ancient traditions of generations before you. GONE. LOST. DEAD. And now alcohol is killing what's left of it. And your one river is drying up. And you don't know how much more land will be taken from your children. It makes me seriously sick to my stomach to realize what our ancestors did, how they used and abused and lied and cheated and deflowered and murdered using their CHRISTIAN GOD as their excuse. They killed just to kill at times, just to kill...in the name of God...just kill the "heathens"! If I didn't know sweet, wonderful, sincere, loving Christian people I would HATE CHRISTIANITY! There is NO DAMN EXCUSE for what they did when they had other options, which was most of the time. It was just easier to erase them. These sort of white men make me want to erase them from the face of this world. They are the ones who should have gone down. There were other ways to settle here. We didn't have to wipe out so many tribes, so many innocent women and children. We didn't need to kill other human beings. We didn't have to have the best land for ourselves. We didn't have to take ALL the land, kill ALL the buffalo, take their children away from them to make them into little Christian Europeans. I cannot believe this took place only 100 years ago. I'm sickened and appalled. I am compelled to stay up all night to set up this blog, to apologize a hundred million times, which can never be enough. Please help me heal this wound in the hearts of the FIRST NATION. Please apologize here and now. We owe them at least that much!