Talk:Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Canada)

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Members of First Nations are officially known as Indians, so I removed the quotation marks from Indian in the last paragraph. I agree that it may not be the most desirable name, but I'm also not persuaded that First Nation, as it has developed, is a good substitute. As I've noted elsewhere, I think in Indian reserve, it's used confusingly – it may designate a people or it may designate a reserve housing a community of that people (Munsee-Delaware First Nation is an example; it's only one of three reserves in Ontario on which members of the Munsee-Delaware First Nation live). And it seems to me that First Nation is promoted mainly as an attempt to make non-Indians feel good – we don't act as if they were nations, except insofar as that entitled them once to sign a treaty turning over their property and their lives to our negligent care.

Anyway, what is needed here is not so much acceptable nomenclature as a discussion of the inadequacies (and adequacies) of the Indian Act and the reserve system. In the beginning, for example, the reserves in southern Ontario probably seemed like a good idea – the Indians would have a home and they could support themselves by hunting in the forest which then covered southern Ontario. The forest disappeared 150 years ago, but we still haven't got round to doing anything about fixing the system. So if anyone qualified to do that would do it I for one would be impressed. John FitzGerald 16:52, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)