With reference to the letter to the editor (Western News, Sept. 9, Sheeple).
War on drugs? Right. Take a severely damaged child, add a dose or two of dangerous drugs and let him get off his skateboard and die. Our society is so broken in places that children don’t receive the help they need. First Nations mental health workers are paid one-third less to live and work in the far north, where everything costs more. Two mental health workers are being added to the team at Attawapiskat. Two.
So, let’s get a little perspective. Our new residential schools, according to McLean’s magazine article (Nancy Macdonald, Feb 18, 2016) are our jails, built to house First Nations men. When our illustrious white forefathers came to this country, we brought closed barrels of Smallpox-laden blankets and gifted them to First Nations people and we’re still handing them out by expropriating and poisoning the land, putting the men in jail, taking children away and putting them in homes that are sometimes damaging them worse than their traumatized families would have.
We try to change them by not teaching them the truth of what happened to their people — still, after all these years. We shame them into turning their backs on their culture. And that’s just a few of the problems in First Nations’ communities. In white communities, it can be almost as bad.
And you don’t want to give safe injection sites and clean needles to addicts. They may get clean with help. Or, they can bleed the system by ending up overdosed in hospitals.
Remember “faith, hope and charity?” Charity begins with trying to understand the less fortunate.
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but Christian values are about helping the helpless, feeding the hungry, giving a hand up to the needy, which would include those people who are mentally ill or addicted to drugs or sleep on the streets because no one wants them. Maybe we won’t save many but maybe a few. How Christian is it to promote hate crime? I’m wondering if we read the same Bible.
John & Lynne Greene
Penticton