Frances Widdowson is a racist and how much longer until the Post goes bankrupt?

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It's amazing that the National Post can publish editorials by Widdowson, and still wonder why they are hovering on the verge of bankruptcy. Who wants to read it? Well I fought down the bile long enough to skim through her latest article "The aboriginal healing boondoggle" which attacks the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF).

Widdowson clearly has no idea what the AHF actually does and she flops from one topic to another like a fish on dry land trying to grasp onto something to criticize. For example, she points out that several individuals at the AHF have prior professional experience related to their jobs. But far from being a good thing Widdowson's twists job experience into an evil conspiracy: the "Aboriginal Industry," which she described in her book of paranoid delusions last year. In an attempt to shock her readers she points out that a number of high-level professionals at AHF are well-paid. Of course these salaries are on par with what their peers earn in other government departments. So I am not sure where she's going with this, unless she believes aboriginal workers should be paid less than their non-native peers for the same work.

Widdowson continues to spew ignorant arguments based on her unique brand of thinly veiled racism. For example - towards the bottom of her article she says Aboriginal people (here I think she really means FIrst Nations) found the transition from hunting to wage work difficult, which is false. The fur trade started failing at the turn of the century in the east, later in the West. Within a few decades First Nations were successfully working as lumberjacks, in high steel, ran a number of successful farms, earned wages fisheries and canneries, or during the wars, worked as soldiers. She could walk into any library and crack open a book (some of them even have pictures) to get this information. In reading through Widdowson's writings once finds most of what she writes is baseless, false or based on carefully manipulated half-truths.

Make no mistake though, there is an aboriginal industry. Here is how it works based on real facts, histories, political sciences, newspaper articles (in REAL newspapers, not the Post) all of which are available either online, in public records or public libraries.

For any nation wealth is based on an ability to access resources. Over the last century First Nations were slowly cut off from resources they once harvested, traded, or sold such as gold, trees, fish. First Nations were cut off from exploiting new resources on their land as they were discovered: oil, diamonds etc. So everyone else gets their cut - federal, provincial and municipal governments who earn millions in taxes, and the corporations who get to exploit these resources. However, not a single red cent goes to First Nations. An that is why First Nations have to go hat in hand to other governments and beg for money to provide basic services like schools and water. When First Nations ask for their cut, to either exploit the resources themselves, launch land claims, or ask for revenue sharing agreements, governments fight tooth and nail, spending millions of taxpayers dollars on lawyers to keep First Nations poor. That is the REAL aboriginal industry. It's not good for First Nations, and it's not good for Canadians. The sooner we all fight back and express our desire for change, the sooner it will all get better.

Widdowson is part of this aboriginal industry. She is their cheerleader and their PR. She earns a living promoting racist ideas. You see Widdowson not ignorant or stupid. She has been to a library. She is well-read. She knows all the same facts we know. Her brain is healthy and perfectly capable of interpreting and analysing the data she reads. So when Widdowson pounds her keyboard, purposefully spitting out falsehoods like a viper spitting poison, she does so fully aware that she is twisting the truth and ignoring the facts. She writes what she knows is ugly and untrue about an entire race of people because she wants to. That is why I call her writings racist.

Fortunately, the majority of Canadians see through it. That is why they don't read the Post which seems to specialize in poorly researched opinion pieces that border on hate crimes. That is why it is about to go under. The world will be just a little bit prettier when that happens and people who want to spin hate have to go back to hertiage front chatrooms. I think we should all help it along. We should each call or write one advertiser in the Post and let them know we will ban their products so long as they continue to support such a nasty paper.

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