Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to the nation's First Nations people in "a sad chapter in our history" for a century of forced assimilation at residential schools. In the apology, physical abuses and cultural damage were acknowledged.
Like the United States, Canada has had a past where the original people of the land were abused and no treated well. But Canada has done way more than the U.S. with trying to make up for lost time.
One intriguing difference between the two countries. In much of the U.S. coverage, the references were to Canada's "Indians." Well, they aren't Indians in any sense, and Canada refers to them as First Nations people. In the U.S., we finally struggled to say Native Americans. The U.S. has a horrible legacy of sports team nicknames that go back to offensive terms:
Redskins (first Boston later Washington), Braves, (first Boston, then Milwaukee, and finally Atlanta), Indians (Cleveland, featuring Chief Wahoo), Fighting Illini (where a white guy dresses as an Illini brave and does a fake dance. And oh yeah, one of the most evil things in sports: the Tomahawk Chop. Started in Florida State (home of the Seminoles, with more white people dressed as a Native American) and made popular by Atlanta Braves fans. The chop, along with the offensive stereotypical chant, is horribly degrading.
The worst example you can find in Canada is the CFL's Edmonton Eskimos. The "Eskimos" are actually Inuit.
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