except the swine flu doesn't seem to be racially segregated and the people it seems to be killing are a young, heathy demographic that killing off might hurt the economy.
Small pox literally wiped out 90% of Indigenous people in B.C.
I spent some of my summer in Bella Coola where there used to be over 35000 Nuxalk (newhawk) but after the bay on contract from the canadian government introduced those blankets there was less than 300 left to defend their land, heritage and children.
If you go to the smithsonian museum in the states, they actually have a better idea of who the nuxalk people were because they came in (through philanthropists and art collectors) and took everything they could find. Leaving only scraps and a very few elders who were outlawed on penalty of jail (which for the average native was a death sentence) to talk about their history.
It would eb a lot harder for the residential schools to teach the indian out of the indians if the elders and artifacts kept reminding the children of who they really were and where they came from.
I saw a famous picture in Bella Coola of a government indian agent digging up a child's grave marker, you can see that marker in the smithsonian archives.
If this swine flu is anything like what canada did wth small pox, tey are getting more merciful.
|