America’s game of catching up to Canada’s preferential treatment of indigenous people is a reminder of our neighbour’s treatment of its aboriginals.

In 1884, Theodore Roosevelt, a well-educated and ambitious reformist politician who later became his country’s 26th president (1901-1909), uttered the following despicable words: “I don’t go so far as to say the only good Indian is the dead Indian. But I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely about the tenth.”