As I have had occasion to remark before, “God save me from intellectuals!” especially right-wing Canadian intellectuals, when they take unto themselves the impulse to discourse on Aboriginal policy.

In recent years, these people have perpetrated some real howlers, whose only use has been to indicate how deep the gap remains between the beliefs and posture of Aboriginal people in Canada, and what could at a pinch be described as the thinking of many influential, fuzzy-minded, well- intentioned, ill-informed Canadians of European background.

Tom Siddon, Brian Mulroney’s minister of Indian Affairs, promised in 1990 to clear the backlog of Native land claims within 10 years. Today, not only has that backlog ballooned, but Canada’s sloth-like system of settling land claims is about to get a lot worse.

As part of our plans to celebrate CD’s 40 years of publication, our Editorial Collective asked certain writers to reflect on racism in Canada and consider whether or not it has diminished over this forty-year time span. Their excellent contributions appear in this issue of Dimension.

I am Judy. I lived at the Strathcona “Squat.” Today I am poor. In my life I have raised two children, I have loved, I have struggled and I have survived. I faced the struggles of so many Aboriginal women in a white world.

The past forty years have seen dramatic changes among the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. In 1963 the legacy of colonialism was deeply entrenched, Aboriginal peoples were seen as a ‘problem population’ within Canada, Aboriginal rights were widely ignored and unknown, there were few national voices or fora for Aboriginal leaders. In 2003 the struggle to decolonize is being engaged in a wide variety of institutions.