Comment by gerbilly

And what you just cited should be taken in context, and that context is that native people in Canada have been subjected till very recently to a program of forced assimilation.[1]

Some people call it cultural genocide.

Basically we tried as hard as we could to "take the indian out of the indian."

They would come into villages, as late as the sixties and take all the children away from their parents and put them in "residential schools" where they were beaten for speaking their language.

Thousands died in these institutions.

So perhaps another way to read it, is from the positive side. That is to say that some native people of Canada can remember their traditions and are attempting to practise them despite a hundred and fifty years of persecution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...