Why are the Indigenous people still fighting for better rights and for their land back,

and why hasn’t many people helped? Well, it's because of the phrase, “Why can’t we be
perfect strangers?” Means that if something happening, for example, Indigenous people
fighting for their land back or rights, and it is not affecting you, and you do not care or show
interest, doesn’t mean you should ignore it and move on with your life. Because Indigenous
have been treated unfairly and poorly since the colonizers arrived on Canada, and they have
Indigenous people have signed treaties that were unfair and were never fully promised
everything in the treaties. When colonizers landed in Canada, Christopher Columbus,
thought he was in India, but he was wrong. When he first saw Indigenous people, he thought
they were “Indians.” So, when the first treaties were made, they were labeled as “Indians.”
And this was term used by the colonizers and settlers were very rude and disrespectful to
Indigenous people. This term is still used today as it is very hard to change/remove from legal
documents and other government issued papers. After many unfair treaties, the Canadian
Government decided to roll out Residential School in hopes to assimilate Indigenous
children into Canadian Society. These schools were often cruel and used brutal methods on
Indigenous children. They also had unfair rules. These rules include, forbidding the use of
any other language use other than English, no practicing religion or cultural rituals, must
wear school uniform, and etc. Breaking these rules resulted in the Indigenous child to be
beaten, chained, starved or other cruel methods. The Residential schools also under fed
Indigenous children and many foods were pledged with worms. As a result, many children
were malnourished and sick. This caused many deaths and lots of grief to Indigenous
families when they saw that their child(s) never returned. Many of these deaths were not
recorded and many of the graves were never marked with tombs. As a result, many of these
deaths were forgotten, but now many of these unmarked graves were dug from many
Residential schools and were given a proper burial. After all this, the last residential school
closed in 1983, but Indigenous peoples were still not happy, so, they protested for the many
lives lost. The protest was later received by Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and
he formally apologized about the residential schools, but he also said, “Canada was never
colonized.” Which is a false statement as many of the land before colonized was shared and
owned by many Indigenous communities and when they had arrived, they taken it and made
it theirs without any permission. Many of Indigenous land had been taken unfairly by treaties
or they were straight up stolen by the colonizers. Many parts of Canada were unceded,
meaning the land was never given up to the government, through a treaty or agreement. After
this the Canadian Government created a day called Truth and Reconciliation, it is a day
where we reconcile the Indigenous people and how we live and learn on their land and how
they also gone through many brutal Canadian history. To sum it up, Indigenous people have
gone through lots of unfair treaties, broken promises and etc., but I have learned a lot from
them, from how we need to be respectful to the land and how they have gone through many
events that tried to bring them down, but they stood strong against them. From my
perspective we should acknowledge how they gave this land, and we should give them
acknowledgements for them giving up this land without a choice.