Native Canadians

I read that the Canadian government is considering a new holiday to commemorate the abusive residential schools.  I think they should call it Healing Day. (They could have it on the first Monday in August when provinces have all these different names for the holiday!) But the Beothuks will never heal:  they should build a memorial to them next to our Jewish Holocaust memorial.

I've been doing some editing work for Miriam on her memoirs.  One episode has her as a cook on a ship visiting the Haida nation in B.C.  One evening she had a vision of this dog coming out of nowhere, and apparently that's common with them!

I come from the Maritimes where the main First Nation is the Micmaq.  I can see a bit of their language in place names:  "gnish" clearly means beach, and "missi" means river. (Maybe I should learn some more of it.)

I first learned of some First Nations issues from watching The Beachcombers!  There was an episode where Relic found an old totem pole and Jesse Jim was angry because he planned to sell it to a motel as a tacky tourist decoration. Another time someone talking to Nick referred to Jesse as "your Indian," which didn't go over well.  In another episode Jesse was tasket with organizing a potlach. (When they outlawed the potlach in the 19th Century, that must have been like banning Christmas!)