Darren Thomas at Brantford Laurier

Darren Thomas works in Community Development Work and works for the university at Laurier as well is a student there in psychology. He is involved with suicide prevention, aboriginal sensitivity training and aboriginal history. He educates on the rights and violated rights of Aboriginals in Canada and North America using history and treaties as a guideline as well as examples from today. He explains that Status Indian is only for a raise of people and has been taken away by many who do go outside their boundaries. For example, aboriginals who volunteered to fight in World War Two lost their status. In history, aboriginals were often not allowed to wear their own clothing, raise their own children, and have a lawyer until 1964. Although there have been many improvements with aboriginals in Canada, there are still many rights restricted to them and apologies are needed to be made by the Canadian government for issues such as Residential schools where basically abused aboriginal children and making them victims.