Creating an accurate understanding of the past is the best way to address the residual effects of this distortion, and part of our work as a Commission has been to attempt to understand and communicate both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal perspectives on that history. As with the telling of history, so too with shaping the governmental structures and institutions that control Aboriginal people s lives. The culture and values of the mainstream are recognized in the institutions of Canadian society, but indigenous cultures and values are not. In this way, the colonization of Aboriginal nations has become an institutionalized reality. But Aboriginal nations themselves are also a persistent reality.
Aboriginal nations deny that they ever surrendered their sovereignty.
With considerable historical justification, they argue that Aboriginal voices have been excluded from the Canadian narrative, that non-Aboriginal people have simply refused to recognize Aboriginal nationhood, and that at the core of Canada s fundamental contradiction is a racism and ethnocentrism that rejects the viability and value of Aboriginal cultures. Laws and structures founded on assumptions of cultural superiority continue to form the basis of the relationship between our peoples. We believe most Canadians agree that the time has come to overturn the false premises on which the relationship has been built. Canada has already demonstrated some willingness to leave this legacy behind by questioning the Indian Act regime and some of the more offensive policies that have been pursued in its name. But Canada must go further.