When I was little, I was scared to death of Indians (as we called them back then). I'd never actually met one, of course. When I was somewhat older and no longer afraid of them, they came to seem "cool" to me, the sort of thing that often happens with boys.
I eventually came to see how criminal the treatment of First Nations by North America's white communities has often been. Take something like the potlatch. Pacific nations had an understanding that once you get to a certain level of riches, there isn't much point in getting any richer, so you may as well give it away and get props, then start over. This giveaway culture horrified bourgeois Victorians, and the B.C. government outlawed potlatches. For the Indians that must have been like banning Christmas!
When I was young I was introduced to some of these issues by the TV show The Beachcombers, which had an Indian character called Jesse Jim. In one episode a guy talking to Nick referred to Jesse as "your Indian," which did not go over well. In another episode Jesse was angry that Relic had found an old totem pole in the woods and wanted to sell it to a motel as a tacky decoration. And there was an episode where Jesse had to organize a potlatch, including trapping a bear.
One of the worst things we did to the First Nations was declaring them human dinosaurs. A century ago semi-educated people viewed Indians as a "vanishing" race which would inevitably be left behind by human evolution. (This was the age of eugenics, of course.) But today Canada has more Indians than ever. Maybe surviving is the best revenge.
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