EDITOR:
Professor Peter McKenna’s recent letter to the editor (‘Disagrees with Mill River court decision,’ Nov. 23) states a widely known fact that P.E.I. is the inherent home of the Mi’kmaq First Nations and has been for the past 12,000 years. It is this 12,000 year fact that Dr. McKenna suggests that the court should’ve granted the Mi’kmaq people their claim to the Mill River resort, but due to the powers of colonialism, the courts ruled otherwise.
There’s absolutely no doubt that colonialism has decimated Canada’s Indigenous people and we regularly hear this from academics like Dr. McKenna. Undeniably P.E.I. is colonized land that once belonged to the Mi’kmaq people, yet it is still being colonized through government implemented immigration programs such as the infamous PNP or widely embraced multiculturalism.
I wonder if it has ever been considered the fact that colonialism is still a significant aspect of contemporary Canadian society functioning through the guise of generous immigration policies and multiculturalism that see hundreds of thousands of new settlers come to Canada each year?
James G.E. Mitchell,
Charlottetown