Racism Growing up in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Canada I have always been aware that a majority of our population is in fact Indigenous. In a regular class room (in high school) about half of the class would be made up of Indigenous students. For younger years it was different since they still went to school on their reserves. Now seeing as I myself never co-mingled with Indigenous children they seemed foreign to me and I sadly admit that I never tried to befriend them on my own. It was programmed into me before I can even remember that the Indigenous were a minority of Portage and that they didn’t matter as much. Racism is the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. Clearly I was brought up thinking that I was superior to the First Nations people. Unfortunately these feelings are mutual among all people of Portage. I currently work as a supervisor at our local Tavern United and I witness a lot of this racist treatment hands on almost every night. We are currently staffed with 7 servers and bartenders where all but one girl are not of Indigenous ancestry. If a group of First Nations comes in to drink the server assigned to that section will always try and not serve them either by passing them off to someone or by allowing them to go up to the bar and serve themselves. It has become such known arrangement that often they go straight to the bar, grab their drinks, then sit down not wanting service. Now it is not just the non-Indigenous against the Indigenous as I have had many an issue with racist slurs. We judge them as much as they judge us and this is a weak relationship that bonds our community.