If your land got taken away from you and the people who took it made you fight for them and promised to give you land in return lied and didn't after you died and killed for them how would you feel? In Chief Laforme's poem I Love this Land there is a very strong and touching message about how the First Nations fought side by side with the white Canadians but as the dust settled and the war came to a close the promises that were made to the First Nations did not hold up leaving them empty handed. “Oh, we still stood shoulder to shoulder in the parades, but the government thought that your life was more valuable than mine
So you were given land property, while I waited and waited,” (Chief Laforme). The Canadians who fought side by side with the First Nations received gifts for their sacrifices like property while The First Nations who went through the same hardship received nothing but a thanks. “Valuable”. The way the government saw Canadian soldiers was valuable in addition, they showered the Canadian soldiers that fought in WWI with gifts like land, however the government didn't see the First Nation soldiers as valuable although they have been through the same war so the government didn't give any land to the First Nations. “I bled, I died, I killed” (Chief Laforme) Chief Laforme used a list of three describing what the First Nations soldiers went through to convey the torture that they and their fellow soilder had to go through just to get to the light at the end of the tunnel and nothing was there. Most of the poem uses an enjambment, Chief Laforme did this on purpose to presentate his anger and frustration to the government because of the lies that they told him and his people. Another interpretation could be that the government didn't value the lives of the First Nations and saw them as inferior and weaker than the Europeans and therefore did not honour the promises made to them. In 1914 residential schools act was going strong and for the government to give the indigenous land would contradict the promises of land through the residential schools.
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