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27 According to the rcap Report that studied the Inuit relocation, their “needs and aspirations ... were routinely minimized,”28 as a by-product of the “broader view that involved making what were considered to be the objectively right decisions for a people who could not make the right decision for themselves. ”30 Status Indians, the only Aboriginal people to have a separate branch of government devoted to their affairs, were an administered people. They were in a colonial situation. Indeed, the very language used to describe them for the first century after Confederation could equally have been used in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

121 Native deference can no longer be assumed. The larger picture, of which the preceding are simply vignettes, should not be lost from view. 124 The acerbic exchanges that follow portrayals by outsiders that are judged to be detrimental to a group image or its political objectives underline both the politics of representation and the transitional era in which we exist. These exchanges, and the efforts to increase Aboriginal input are struggles over cultural power – over who will shape the images that condition how we treat each other.

50 The end of empire should not be thought of by Canadians, therefore, as a purely external phenomenon – as something that happened elsewhere, when the British “lost” India, the Belgians the Congo, the Dutch Indonesia, and the French Algeria – events in which Canadians were only vicariously involved because of their British links, or in the imperial era, were simply sitting in the audience while Europe subjected much of the globe to its dominion. Non-Aboriginal Canadians, although few would have used the label, were also imperialists, proudly taking part in the expansion of European civilization at home.