Boyden on Aboriginal Quality of Life in Canada

I'm still in the process of preparing a response to Leo's thoughtful and sensitive reaction to Three Day Road. Leo's comments about cultural politics and history (aboriginal and, by extension, Chinese-Canadian) make me think of Boyden's response to an interview question, when he was asked what life is like for Cree people in Canada today. (For the remainder of the interview, please visit www.josephboyden.com; look for the Book Club guide...) In the meantime, here is Boyden's response:

Many Native languages are faced with extinction or are already
extinct, but Ojibwe and Cree remain two of the healthiest surviving
Native languages in North America. I think this is due, in
part, to many of these peoples’ living in more remote geographical
areas, places where the English language doesn’t necessarily
dominate every aspect of life. These remote areas are often
completely out of the spotlight and off most people’s radar
screens.

Often, a lot of poverty and violence and drug and alcohol
abuse exist here. And these are the stories that trickle down to
the rest of us. But there is a lot more to these communities that
we don’t hear about. Many of them are actively dealing with and
slowly excising the ghosts created by contact with what was
often the worst of Western culture. Most often, it seems to me,
the source of a lot of Cree and Ojibwe pain comes in the form of
residential schools. We must remember that residential schools
forcefully removed children from their families and communities
and tried to integrate these children into the dominant
culture by any means necessary. Abuse in all its forms became
rampant. These schools remained until the 1970s, leaving many
generations of Cree and Ojibwe to try to pick up the pieces of
their culture and to try to learn for themselves once again who
they are. The shock waves of the residential school system are
still clearly visible today, but the Cree and Ojibwe are resilient
people. They’re survivors.