Aboriginal People Inequalities

The inequality amongst Aboriginal people and the rest of Canadians has been a pressing issue for many years without resolution. Currently, they inequalities exist within health cares, employment and education institutions. The Aboriginal people of Canada have suffered many hardships since the European settlers had first came to the country. The colonizers exploited and assimilated the Aboriginals by the colonialism, treaties, the residential schools they established and the 60’s scoop. These situations may explain why there were inequalities in the past; however, those days have past, and society is still faced with reoccurring imbalances. It must be understood why the inequalities persist in order to ensure Aboriginal people can benefit

Colonization started when they exploited the Aboriginal people by trading resources of no value such as: mirrors for their sources of food and clothing, which were buffalos at the time. The Aboriginal people were forced to exploit their resources for the use of the settlers. When more Europeans arrived in Canada, and needed more resources; they found that the Aboriginal people were occupying the land they needed, and they did not follow the same customs as them, and they were not producing large quantities of resources that were needed, the settlers began extreme colonialism. Colonialism defined here as the exploitation of the Aboriginals in Canada done by the European colonizers. In this case, the wealthy were the Europeans as they exploited the Aboriginals labour and resources. This was the origin of the inequality problem that initiated the class conflict. The colonization held the Europeans to an upper class, and they became the Bourgeoisie. The Europeans exploited the Aboriginal people, who became and still are the proletarians. This is where Karl Marx, the father of the conflict theory would suggest a social change needed (Knuttila and Magnan, 2012,

Prior to European colonization, Aboriginal people were calm in nature, and a revolution would not have been their main course of action. They only had small violent revolutions such as, the battle of Batoche. They instead pushed for their rights to be met, which led the bourgeoisie to become frustrated. The settlers no longer wanted Aboriginal people on their new established land, and found them to be an obstacle with differing values, language, customs and traditions. The European settlers wanted to keep their positions of power, thus something needed to change rapidly. To maintain power, the Bourgeoisie needed to change the views, customs, traditions, culture and language of the Aboriginal people, which is