Canada’s arctic on front lines of climate change, Opinion, Sept. 30

If one has a person in one’s life who has harmed them and that person admits the harm and even asks forgiveness, we trust they will not impose the same harm again.

When they do, it is difficult to have any trust or respect for the one harming us.

This is what we have done to the first peoples of this country.

I am saddened, no, appalled, that not only are Inuit Canadians the ones most affected so far by the climate crisis, but we are still not listening to how we have and continue to harm their very existence.

As a white privileged person in this culture, I implore those of us whose ancestors were the first to abuse native Canadians, that we find elected officials who will put Indigenous needs ahead of everyone else, so they might at least expect to live in conditions the rest of us take for granted.

Asking for forgiveness without being willing to change our behaviour is at best dishonest, at worst narcissistic and pathological, lacking civic responsibility and even empathy.