It's very easy for us as Canadians to think we've got a better country than the Americans do (well, we do, actually ) or better than many other nations that are less well off than we are.

In many respects, "better" is a relative term. If you want to praise our country for the freedom we have, the peace, the variety of natural beauty in our land, the vast quantities of natural resources (both renewable and non-renewable), well certainly we've got the best deal on the planet.

But some of that is due to our geography, and due to the relative lateness in history of our development. If our land had been a centre of cultural development like France, Italy and England in the Middle Ages and through the Reformation and the Renaissance, our land would have a much different look, and I'm sure our history would have been much different.

Here's the thing, however; there were peoples here through those years. Our land was not empty or bereft of people or wildlife. The buffalo filled the plains here until they were hunted to the edge of extinction, and the First Nations people lived here, generation after generation. Various tribes dominated different areas of our country, and today the remnants of their culture live on parcels of land our forefathers shoved them on to, to get them out of the way of "the rest of us" who built the villages, town and cities of Canada and the United States.

And what have we done with the original residents, the indigenous peoples, of this continent? We have treated them shamefully. Not only did we intrude ourselves onto this land and steal it out from under them, but we used larger numbers and strength to push them aside and treat them as lower-class citizens. We set up residential schools to hopefully assimilate them into our culture, rather than the other way around - assimilating ourselves to their ways.

Now, after all we have done and all that's been said, we've issued a latter-day apology for our rude and intrusive behaviour in terms of the schools; we have yet to apologize for turning their reserves into ghettos, some places of pure abject poverty that is rarely seen even in the biggest cities of our land.

At least we've taken the first step and made some effort as a people to bridging the gap (of our own making) with our aboriginal brothers and sisters, but it must surely be recognized that we have a long, long ways to go.

This being said, it was nice to see Weyburn host an event for National Aboriginal Day. The event was hosted by the members of CUPE Local 5999, for which they brought in dancers, drummers and singers from the Ocean Man First Nation, and each dance was explained in terms of their significance and origin.

To me, it was a very fitting way for people to go into Canada Day on July 1, when Canadians proudly celebrate one of the greatest countries to live in on Planet Earth. I hope, though, that as we stood for O Canada and beamed with pride over our country that we kept in mind that there are some residents of our land who are not filled with pride - people who should be given a hand, or at least, have their dignity and respect restored so that they can have pride in living here.