I've always found the segregation of the population into First Nations and others to be as artificial and damaging to the country as apartheid was to South Africa. The fact that first Nations women lose their status when they marry a non-native seemed to me particularly abhorrent since it denied their children, grandchildren and descendants their heritage.

The number of ancestors we have doubles with each generation, and looking back over just a few hundred years each of us can count on a million people contributing to our genes. That makes segregation and racism a little pointless, somehow. The same with our descendants, whose genes are increasingly a mix of First Nations and non First-Nations.  Only those who look towards the past worry about the "purity" of blood, and at some point in the future, those who have been denied their heritage may insist on reclaiming it.  At that point the numbers may be so high that we will be one Nation again. 

And not before time.