I only agree with 90% of what you write, but I enjoy it all.
Thanks and keep up the good work.

There are 2 sides to many of these issues, Peeter. Residential schools were set up by the government and churches with good intentions but were in reality a disaster to our native community. Canada's aboriginal peoples were still living in the stone age until fairly recently and our government tried very hard to pull them into the modern era. The Canadian government, much to its credit, never attempted to exterminate our natives like the Americans did. There were many attempts at getting them to start farming like Europeans did but they had little interest in this kind of work. Most Indians were illiterate and it was hoped that by sending them to these schools they could be taught some of the skills needed to survive in our modern world.
While I support minority language rights and applaud the Native community for recently introducing their languages into schools, we must also consider that most languages spoken by aboriginals did not exist in any written form and could not be taught in school for that reason. We can not compere the residential school issue with the closing of German, Ukranian and other schools which was a true act of cultural genocide against these communities that had established school systems that in many cases had higher standards than English schools.
Even today many natives still long for a return to their previous existance and believe in all kinds of prophecies about floods that will wipe out our big cities so that things will return to the way they were. I do not know of any other group that is so bitterly against the modern world. As a result of this failure to adapt, alcoholism and drug use are rampant in their communities which often live in 3rd world style poverty. This is a difficult issue with no apparent solutions.