Re: “There are no uninvited guests here,” commentary, Dec. 24.

Exactly when did the Lekwungen, ­Esquimalt and Songhees people, who resided here before us, invite the British to build their city on this land?

The British and those of us who ­followed them were not invited guests. We were invaders, out to conquer the world and control trade far and wide.

We were occupiers who plopped ­ourselves down in the middle of villages and nations all around the world, and what we could not purchase with beads and booze, we stole under the auspices of cultural protection or took by force.

The historic peoples of this place were always kind to the pillagers, rapists and cultural thieves who inundated their lands, even accepted us as brothers.

Today, they are being kind to us, using such a docile term as “uninvited guests” to define the trauma they experienced as a result of our colonization over the past few hundred years.

What is truly great chutzpah is the viciously loaded argument in the commentary.

Nobody is demanding that every visitor “wear the accusation.” Heck, you don’t even have to read the plaques and statements if you don’t want to.

What we are being asked to do is acknowledge the truth of the past and to be respectful going forward. That’s all.

The insinuation that we are somehow being browbeaten is the epitome of entitlement.

And even if we are being ­browbeaten, the fact is, compared to what our ­Indigenous friends have had to ­experience over the past couple of ­centuries, a browbeating is the ­equivalent of a slap on the wrist, and not a very heavy one at that.

Will Webster

Victoria

So, is that it? Is it the final surrender?

The separated bike lanes have appeared on Esquimalt Road, one of the last arteries of traffic left unchoked by the retrograde forces of biketoria — that dark fantasy of the woke mob. Does it mean unconditional surrender?

I guess the writing on the wall........

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