Sammie, if you bothered to read this whole thread you would have seen that I posted about Chief Clarence on page 1.
I am very pro-economic development.
You also mention the Irish. Last time I checked they still had a country and a language. If I wanted I could immigrate to Ireland, send my kids to Gaelic school and they would "become" Irish. Can't do that on a reserve. Thanks to the Indian Act, if you move off the reserve and marry out, your kids cease being native and relinquish all rights.
We are denied our land and denied our self-determination as a people in the hope that we'll just fade away and be assimilated.