Saim wrote:Speakeasy wrote:I suspect that it matters very little to the indigenous peoples of Australia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Americas which language, culture, religion, and administrative rule they were subjected to, and I doubt that they would have expressed a preference amongst the numerous impositions other than something approximating, "no thank you, we're just fine as we are."
I'd say it kind of does matter. In Canada where there are two main settler groups there's already a multilingual framework (both in terms of attitudes towards multilingualism and the legal framework) within which one can recognise indigenous languages. In Australia and the US this simply doesn't exist.
Canada's government has an incredibly damaged relationship with the Aboriginal population. It's been an issue on the very forefront of Canadian domestic politics for quite awhile now. Canada's treatment of its Indigenous peoples is just as horrible as any other country's unfortunately. It seems we're finally starting to take steps to foster the relationship again, but there is oh so much needed to be done. Please don't hold us as a "standard" when it comes to these things.