Aboriginal "Rights"

The "aboriginal rights group" Idle No More is protesting in Ottawa, including a hunger strike by Theresa Spence, chief of the Attawapiskat First Nation. Top of the list of their demands:

[Idle No More co-founder Tonya] Kappo worries that new laws outlined in Bill C-45 would clear the way for aboriginals to sell plots of their land to non-natives, threatening traditional practices and eroding their language.

“This guarantees the end of reserve lands,” Kappo told Postmedia News. “The kind of life my parents live, the kind of live our people live is only possible because of the reserve system. It’s ironic that the same system created to assimilate us is actually what has allowed us to keep our way of life.”

I don't think that word "rights" means what they think it means. The Conservative government is trying to give Natives more rights, by allowing them to sell their land to whoever they want, just like non-Natives can. Idle No More is protesting to prevent Natives from having the same rights non-Natives have always had.

To make this even more disturbing, near the end of that link, Spence talks about how she is willing to die and has even said her farewells to her 17-year-old child. She is willing to starve herself to death to deny her fellow Natives the same rights non-Natives already have. With friends like that...

Perhaps it should be no surprise that, with Spence in charge, Attawapiskat receives some $10,000 per member per year from the federal government, yet the people live in squalor and last year the government required Attawapiskat to temporarily turn over their finances to a third-party manager. The surprise is that the people of Attawapiskat put up with Spence in the first place.