[Note: Some words have been edited to prevents freaks arriving here from search engines.]

Let’s pretend that there exist two long-oppressed minority groups. We can further pretend that one of the groups are Aboriginal Canadians, and the other is the Jewish community. We can safely assume that their history of mistreatment is well-documented and not in question.

Given the above, would it be fair to make a general deduction? I’m going to: The Aboriginal and Jewish communities, at least on a broad level, have a mutual understanding of being treated poorly and would tend not to lash out at other minority groups.

In this particular scenario, you can toss those deductions out the window.

David Ahenakew, former head of the Assembly of First Nations and Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, fought for the rights of his people. He also fought for his country as a war veteran. He was so well-respected he received the prestigious Order of Canada.

He delivered a speech on health-care in Saskatchewan last Friday, concluding with the following remarks:

“The Jews damn near owned all of Germany prior to the war. That’s how H.i.t.l.e.r came in. He was going to make damn sure that the Jews didn’t take over Germany or Europe. That’s why he fried six million of those guys, you know. Jews would have owned the goddamned world. And look what they’re doing. They’re killing people in Arab countries.”

Pardon?

I watched him struggle through a teary apology today on the CBC, but found it very difficult to muster any sympathy. There are things that can be taken out of context, and those that’s can’t.

There’s no doubt he was sincerely upset about the whole affair, but I suspect it had more to do with the fact that he was forced to resign his positions of public influence. It was interesting to see an entire country back-peddle like hell to distance themselves from his words. That includes the people he supposedly represented.

To show you that I’m not a hard-hearted man, I will give Mr. Ahenakew the last word. A quote from the mid-80s relating to an overheard racist utterance by a Tory senator:

“Nothing is innocent when you are talking about a people, and especially genocide.”