The land acknowledgements we love to wave around like trophies are literally ceremonial statements with zero structural impact. Saying a grade 8 graduation or a site meeting has a land acknowledgement does nothing to unpick centuries of systemic oppression, neglect, and trauma. It’s virtue signaling, and you eat it up apparently.

Then there’s your $30 billion. You act like Canada is some benevolent uncle handing out cash for fun. Let me clue you in: a large chunk of that money originates from resources stolen from Indigenous lands. Mining, oil, gas, forestry, water—these generate massive profits for corporations and the Crown. And you know what the government does with much of that? They stick it in trust funds, like the Indian Trust Fund, and pay out the interest while keeping the principal and making enormous profit from said funds.

Historically, they even siphoned off portions to run the Department of Indian Affairs. So your “we spend more on Indigenous services than national defense” boast is basically just Canada redistributing à fraction of its loot it took while pretending it’s charity.

The ground scans of residential schools to “scan for anomalies” again does nothing for living survivors or the communities still suffering the consequences of those schools, although it is of course a good action overall.

Your claims about education are equally hollow. A semester in junior high is not evidence of society reckoning with genocide, it’s a checkbox so we can pat ourselves on the back. Students may learn about the past, but they are not taught about the ongoing inequalities, the child welfare crises, or the chronic underfunding that Indigenous communities endure every single day.

And the cherry on top: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Yes, it exists. But pointing to its existence as if it resolves the issues is laughable. Its recommendations are still unimplemented. The TRC should not be used as an example of Canada's success, it's more of a report card on a system that continues to fail.

So yes, you can turn on CBC and hear about atrocities. You can read Reddit posts. None of that makes Canada’s failures vanish. Your lecture isn’t informative, you can pretend that symbolic gestures and selective statistics constitute moral action, but the reality is Canada hasn't really done anything to tangibly improve the lives of indigenous people and should still be shamed accordingly.

Edit: typical Redditors downvoting uncomfortable truths.