Commentary
The anniversary of Canadian Confederation is traditionally a time to wallow in orotund platitudes about our good fortune to have this country, and the admirable qualities of all those who discovered it, settled it, and built it. This custom has perhaps been tempered slightly by the heckling of dissenters and particularly lamentations, some of them sincere and justified and some false and defamatory, over the historic treatment of indigenous peoples. My intuition is that the Canadian tendency to emulate popular cultural trends in the United States is part of the source of the current widespread national self-criticism over treatment of the indigenous….