Canada’s Altruistic Apartheid
Sanctioned racial essentialism for Aboriginals, mandatory multiculturalism for everyone else.
There’s a charming Norman Rockwell illustration from 1959, Family Tree, of an imagined descent that includes a pirate and a señorita, a prim Puritan couple, a cowboy and a saloon dancer, and a prospector and his Indian bride; the modern inheritor of this ancestry is depicted as an all-American redheaded little boy.
Whatever its artistic merit, the painting reflects the common conceit of distant Native roots held by millions of ostensibly non-Native people. Many North Americans have cited such extraction as a conversation piece, an exotic mark of character, or just an intriguing bit of genealogy: among them are singers Cher and Beyoncé, actor Johnny Depp, rockers Jimi Hendrix and Robbie Robertson, baseball great Johnny Bench, and numerous others.
