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After Conrad Black wrote in these pages last week that “even the First Nations should be grateful that the Europeans came here,” aboriginal people across Canada angrily denounced him for rejecting the idea that they were the victims of attempted cultural genocide (‘Shameful, but not genocide,’ June 6).

However, there was a notable exception.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Stephen Maher: Not genocide? Ask the Beothuks Back to video

No Beothuks complained. That’s because Shanawdithit, the last of the Beothuks, died of tuberculosis in Botwood, N.L., on June 6, 1829. She was likely not grateful to the Europeans. They drove her people away from the coast, into the forests and barrens, where the ones who did not starve to death were hunted like animals.

[np_storybar title=”Conrad Black: Canada’s treatment of aboriginals was shameful, but it was not genocide” link=”http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/conrad-black-canadas-treatment-of-aboriginals-was-shameful-but-it-was-not-genocide”]I yield to no one in my fervour to make amends to the native people for violations of treaty rights and other mistreatment, but the phrase “cultural genocide,” as I wrote here last week in reference to the Chief Justice of Canada’s use of it in a speech given in honour of the Aga Khan, is deliberately provocative and sensational. We might as well accuse Canada and the United States and all countries built on immigration (ultimately almost all countries) of cultural genocide, of the natives or the arrivals, though of course immigration is voluntary. All words bearing the suffix “cide” refer to physical extermination: suicide, homicide, genocide, regicide, etc.