Columnist’s Remarks Anger Aboriginal Community
Thursday, October 30, 2008 at 13:07
A recent article in a national newspaper is drawing fire from the Aboriginal community.
In Saturday’s Globe and Mail, columnist Margaret Wente defended International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound, who said that 400 years ago Canada was a land of savages.
Pound later apologized, but Wente says he was right.
In the article, she says Indigenous culture is often romanticized and it can’t give Aboriginal residents a future.
Wente also quotes from a book due to be released next month, called “Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry”.
She says the publication will help to discredit “mythology” surrounding the history of First Peoples.
So far, more than 1,800 people have signed up on an Internet site demanding Wente’s dismissal from the paper.
A professor from the University of Winnipeg says he can’t believe The Globe and Mail is paying Wente to make such racist comments.