I see. OK then, I guess.
As long as we're talking hypotheticals, I could theoretically see, in a not-near future, that if we continued on with our reconciliation journey, that we could potentially create new subnational units that were based on or inspired by Indigenous nations. I honestly have no idea how that would work legally or constitutionally, but I could see it as something our nation undertook, someday.
I don't think we're anywhere even remotely close to that today, especially when you look at how many Canadians get angry any time anything related to the topic of Indigenous rights or land claims comes up.
I don't, however, think we're going to be, for example, splitting Saskatchewan into "Upper Saskatchewan" and "Lower Saskatchewan" "just because".
Several years ago there was some ballyhoo when some indigenous wanted it to be illegal for any city or town not on indigenous lands to have any part of their names related to indigenous words. Since my city, Red Deer, is a mistranslation of a word meaning Red Elk, we'd have to change our name. The subdivision I used to live in, Waskasoo, would have to change its name.
Then there was the opposite point of view in which every city and town that
doesn't have an indigenous name, would have to acquire one, and they promptly began arguing about what to rename Calgary.
I see the point about European cartographers just renaming indigenous landmarks without regard to what their indigenous names are. But honestly, some of those names are either impossible to pronounce, impossible to spell (letters not in any European language), and I doubt this is ever going to happen.
As for the land claims and anger... I've told some of them on social media that I'll gladly vote for indigenous claims-friendly politicians and write letters and sign petitions in support of those UNLESS they come at me with hostility and ranting that I'm a "colonizer" or "settler".
I personally colonized nothing. I personally settled nothing. I was born here, and nobody asked my permission for that. Ditto with my parents. We can't help that our parents/grandparents/great-grandparents chose to come here and homestead.
I personally did not put the residential school system into place, and I've made it very clear to anyone who yaps on about what a "wonderful" MLA we have here in Red Deer North that she's a residential school denier who hired another residential school denier to oversee the social studies portion of the first curriculum she tried to shove in everyone's faces. She's like that senator who was finally kicked out of the Senate for posting pro-residential school content on her government-paid social media site.
Unfortunately, that's not enough to get a UCP MLA kicked out here in Alberta - nor is the fact that she approved a "field trip" to bus high school students to Edmonton to participate in an anti-abortion rally.
So getting back to the indigenous question: Lump me in with the people who are the real enemy, and then you'll find that my level of willingness to engage drops to very low levels. Depending on the school system, some of this wasn't on the curriculum when I was in school in the '60s and '70s. I didn't hear of the Sixties Scoop until
decades later, one night on the news (have read up about it since).
So when they say, "Why didn't you do anything about it?" my answer is you can't do anything about something you were never taught. And afterward, I use my constitutionally-guaranteed right of voting and freedom of expression the best way I can. I can't wave a magic wand and make it all not have happened.