I'm still not sure I'm convinced that any of the mistreatment could be considered intentional or malicious in intent. I can't speak to individual cases where some Aboriginal person was stupid enough to give away their little piece of solitude to some slick talking English dude - but that should remain history and roads should not get blocked. If your ancestor owned a gold watch - and some slick talking Aboriginal dude swindled him out of it in a card game, should the Aboriginal dude's ancestors feel guilty?
At the time residential schools were implemented, I believe the intention was to help Aboriginal people flourish in the new European influenced society that was becoming Canada. A misguided intention maybe, but not malicious. Of course time goes by and now we see the social problems that resulted and millions of tax dollars later - we are no further ahead to seeing improvements to, as you say, the identifiable group who on average suffer the most. Now before you jump on my argument - what I'm saying here is that so far, throwing money at a problem has proven unsuccessful, for whatever reason.
Giving special status to Aboriginal people occurred a long time ago and it's pretty obvious how that has improved the situation of the Aboriginal people - see: Reserves. We all know how successful reserves are
Giving special status has done nothing but keep all Aboriginal people seperate from the rest of Canada - sounds like a healthy thing to me
Lastly - as a Canadian I do benefit from a wonderful free health care system, an 'ok' education system etc., and so do all Aboriginal people (since, last I heard, they are also Canadian).
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