Far from enjoying privileges, Native people in British Columbia and throughout Canada have faced systematic oppression and discrimination since their lands were stolen by the British and French colonial rulers and many forced onto reservations. Since then Ottawa's Department of Indian Affairs has sought to maintain the racist subjugation of Natives, often through brutally violent means.

Today, while most Native people who continue to live on the land face extremely high levels of unemployment and deplorable living conditions, the majority of Indians have gone to the cities in search of jobs and access to better housing, health, education, and other services. However, there they face discrimination in hiring and housing, as well as racist cop brutality. While a significant proportion of Natives have won unionized jobs, including in the industrial unions, on average they are much more likely to be unemployed or among the lowest paid.

The oppression of Native people, Quebecois, other oppressed nationalities, immigrants from semi-colonial countries, and women is used by the ruling rich to drag down the wages and working conditions of the entire working class and undermine its collective capacity to fight back against the bosses and their governments. The racist campaign being waged against the Nisgáa is part of the cultural war led by rightist forces against the oppressed aimed at reversing gains they have won through decades of struggle and dividing and weakening the working class as a whole. They seek to foster resentment of the gains won by the oppressed portraying them as a threat to the jobs and rights of other workers.

The labor movement needs to join in support for the fight for the rights of Native people, explaining that Indian demands for land, fishing rights, and self-government are just and should be supported. The call for a province-wide referendum on the Nisgáa treaty should be rejected; Native people have the right to freely decide their own future.

At the same time labor should look to the example of those unions that have demanded affirmative action for Natives in hiring to fight against the systematic racist employment practices of the bosses. This could be combined with campaigning for jobs for all through the fight for 30-hours work for 40-hours pay and a massive public works program. It could provide decent housing, schools, health facilities that are needed, not only by Indians, but all working people. Most importantly, such a campaign would greatly strengthen the unity and fighting capacity of the entire working class.  
 
 
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