>Brad: Hate to break it to you but the issue of status is a done deal thanks to Bill C31. Intercultural marriage cannot aborgate or derogate status. As of 1987, the politics are a non-contender when all FN Bands decided their membership criteria. Your naysaying is about 15 years behind the hot Aboriginal issues of the day.
Hate to break it to you, but I'm not looking into the past or the immediate future. I'm looking ahead a couple or few generations. Do I misunderstand the critics of C-31 in that two successive generations of extramarriage (ie. one parent not registered or registerable under the act) disqualifies descendents from status, leaving it ultimately up to individual bands to decide who will and will not be qualified to exercise aboriginal and treaty rights? If so, what irrevocable limitations are there as to who a band can and can not include on its list? I predict that there will be people who can claim aboriginal descendancy (a simple matter of documenting a family tree), wish to identify as aboriginal and to claim both status and membership, and will be denied on the basis of rules. That is a recipe for increased politicization. I also predict that as time rolls on, they will outnumber the pure laine as defined by either the Act or individual bands. A majority should be expected to eventually have its way. Wildlife and resource management issues are going to be entirely different when every third or fourth person in some regions is free to exercise aboriginal and treaty rights; when governments step in to deal with the resultant crises, there will be further politicization.
>since it's been there for oh...5000 years and I suspect it'll last a few more generations but thanks for your concern. Sheesh first, third world monikers now ghost towns, is there anything else some of you fellows would like to predict?
What's important isn't the span of time, but the rate of social and technological change over time. I suppose you must recognize that for most of those 5000 years, there were very few disruptive changes. Instead consider the sustainability and survival of villages and settlements since 1600. Which communities don't you think would disappear if the money to support life with a modicum of modern conveniences (housing, heating, plumbing, electricity, transportation) were not provided by external sources? Who do you anticipate will remain to preserve the blood true?
I've visited one of my "ancestral homelands" in northern Norway. The old family farms (from my grandparents' generation) outlying the townships are deserted and used only as vacation properties by the subsequent generations, if at all. The smallest of the communities still exist in part because of government injections of money, but more importantly because people are free to come as well as go and the newcomers will be equal members of the community. Otherwise, I would expect newcomers to be fewer and the net outflow of the succeeding generations to the larger urban centres to be the eventual demise of the small settlements which existed for centuries past.
