Each morning, after bowing several times in the general direction of Ottawa, I thank the Great Spirit for the Great White Father residing there. I must not be remiss here and leave myself open to accusations of gender discrimination; we once had, for a few short months, a Great White Mother by the name of Kim Campbell.

Without the Great White Father (interchangeable with, whenever we might have another one, Mother) what would I do? He is there to tell me what to do on a constant basis. He directs my life from the cradle to the grave, and always has my best interests at heart. By the way, I also give thanks for the fact that the Great White Father, by limiting his beneficence to us Native Canadians, no longer discriminates. His generous, paternalistic works now covers all! Are you properly appreciative? Fine, let's continue.

For those of you who are new to the experience, there are many wonderful advantages to having a Great White Father. Being a novice, you will soon learn that he is there to love you and to do things for you, which he has deemed you incapable of doing for yourself. Now don't get your back up and say you don't need the Great White Father doing things for you and loving you. Of course you do, you dunce! I get really peeved when people don't properly appreciate the Great White Father's benevolence and love!

To help with the task of giving us what we need - whether we deem it a need or not is immaterial - the Great White Father has many uncanny abilities. For instance, he can read our minds and give us the programs we demand. Now, don't be stubborn and pretend you never demanded programs. You must have. How else would we have got them? If your somewhat baffled here, I bet you must have done what I did - demanded them in your subconscious! Unfortunately, this does not give one any recollection of having made a demand and, therefore, we sometimes try to deny our demands. You see, now, the error of your ways?

Now, let's go over a few of the things that the Great White Father has done for us. He uses 31 cents from each dollar collected in federal taxes to pay the interest on the national debt. This expense, as you know, is the result of our demands for programs. Heavens! Are you argumentative, trying again to state that you never made such demands! The cheek!

Appreciate this! The Great White Father has demonstrated how much he truly loves us, via the great and well-thought-out things he has given us. For example, he has given us a seat-belt law which, he has decreed, will reduce our chances of being a motor vehicle fatality. I know that some of you ungrateful people will argue that it has also increased an accident survivor's chances of spending a great many years in a nursing home bed, totally immobilized. However, you ingrates don't appreciate this fact: since the seat belt law came into effect, the highway death toll has been substantially reduced. Now, now! Don't come back with the retort that this turn of events might have had more to do with the construction of first-class highways than with the seat-belt law. It just won't wash. Why? Ask the Great White Father - he knows!

For those of you who are trying to fight against the tide, there is no questioning the fact that the Great White Father knows what's best for us! This declaration is exemplified by the fact that he saw through the plot by the American Country Music Channel to undermine our culture, and took as a remedy the brave step of banning it from our airwaves. As a result, we have had a new Canadian channel called New Country Network rammed down our throats. This should cure us of any tendency to neglect our cultural heritage!

What? How dare you question the wisdom of this move! Oh, well, I suppose you can be forgiven. After all, you are probably as ignorant and stupid as I once was. I, too, thought that country and western music was part of North American culture and not belonging specifically to either Canada or the USA I shudder to think of all those who have profited from this error of judgement. Perhaps we should now consider a move to confiscate the gains made south of the border by Anne Murray, Paul Anka and so on. After all, they made vast fortunes from involving themselves in the evil, and anti-Canadian, American music industry!

You know, if I tried for several moons, I could never write enough columns in praise of the Great White Father. I grow weak when I think of his love and devotion - its awesome! No one can argue in this regard - his paternalistic devotion to us is a great thing. Appreciate how lucky we are!

We have the Great White Father telling us to buckle up, to listen to the right music, to register our worn out and heirloom shotguns, etc, etc., etc. However, I do hope I never catch him hanging around my bathroom with a roll of toilet paper. Even for me, a person who dearly loves the good works of the Great One, this would be too much!

Daniel N. Paul