Culture and tradition are part of everyone's history, but they should not be an inhibition to the understanding of and participation in a changing world. If the world around us were completely static what a terrible place it would be - and it would be doomed to extinction. The most stable and static state of a person, or of a society, is death. To separate Aboriginal peoples from the opportunity of advanced education is a formula for maintaining their dependence on others - for making people subservient to a predefined community. To separate Aboriginal people from an elementary and secondary education that is common to everyone else is to make post secondary education inaccessible to Aboriginal peoples.
Assimilation is the wrong word - it is a political word.
We all need to understand each other, to integrate ourselves into a peaceful understanding of our past and the way that past can help us help each other to deal with the future. We have to fix East Road, of course, but where does the money come from - not from our Provincial taxes, they are busy building fast ferries that are slow, buying failed businesses and providing political pensions. The word is out that we may not receive our small community grant this year and if that happens our local tax hit will definitely have to go up. The idea is that you, me, each of us pays for the service we get, based on that amount of that service we use. Water is an example.