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Good deeds not enough to re-elect MP

RE: Cooper denies allegations, by Jennifer Henderson, Saturday, June 22, 2019, St. Albert Gazette.

RE: "Cooper denies allegations," by Jennifer Henderson, Saturday, June 22, 2019, St. Albert Gazette.

Canadian society’s principles are detailed in treaties such as the Royal Proclamation of 1763 with Indigenous Nations, partly Aboriginal oral histories and partly Canadian Constitutional instruments.

Section 35, Constitution Act 1982 recognizes and affirms existing and Indigenous treaty rights among the supreme laws of Canada.

Both Aboriginal oral histories and written constitutional documents carry equal weight of two cultures walking side by side as detailed among linked beads on wampum belts, acknowledged as law by Canadian Courts.

Our society is not founded on Judeo-Christian principles, a term first used October 17, 1821, in a letter from Alexander M’Caul and subsequently by George Orwell in 1939.

Instead, treaties with Indigenous peoples can be traced to what the English had dubbed a Covenant Chain by 1676, as they subsequently continued and recognized earlier conventions and protocols between the Dutch and Haudenosaunee peoples as agreements for mutual benefit, (peace, economic, defence) between nations in the state of New York in the early 1600s.

The concepts of land ownership and lies were as foreign to socially and politically sophisticated Aboriginal societies who recognized a Creator, as was the religious proselytism purporting to “civilize” or convert “savages”, which led to paternalist governments “educating”, isolating and “protecting” Indigenous peoples. Those good intentions resulted in near extermination and genocide of generations of Aboriginal peoples, whose land is now the home that all immigrants to North America enjoy and hope to own, as one would own the sky, rivers, lakes and air.

To all those blind to the absurdity of St. Albert-Edmonton MP Michael Cooper's statements before the justice committee on May 28 and his subsequent statements to the CBC on our society's purported “Judeo-Christian principles”, his ignorance of Canadian and North American history, and his ignorance of Canadian Constitutional law, I submit his alleged good deeds are insufficient to warrant re-election as our MP.

In North America and in Canada, good intentions have almost exterminated the original peoples recognized under Canadian law. Michael Cooper has not appeared to notice their historical existence or their legal recognition as our equal partners in Canadian Constitutional law. Wow! He may have attended law school and passed the bar exams but what he didn’t learn is both astounding and troubling.

Randy B. Williams, St. Albert

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