All Things First Nations - CF help, protests, solutions, residential schools, etc. (merged)

[Edward Campbell]

This opinion piece by Gordon Gibson, reproduced here under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, caught my eye because I think it touches on one of the most severe crises facing Canada:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070822.wcogibson0822/BNStory/specialComment/home

Is integration the better option for Indians?

GORDON GIBSON
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

August 22, 2007 at 8:51 AM EDT

Adam Keeper. Age 6. Death by bullying. Three youths, ages 7 to 9, forced him to strip and pushed him into the water although he couldn't swim.

He drowned, another sad story in a sad series of Indian deaths. Not far from his grave on the Pauingassi First Nation are three more young victims of violence in the past year; in May, two girls, 13 and 15, were charged in the beating death of a 22-year-old woman.

The Pauingassi reserve is about 320 kilometres north of Winnipeg, with no road access. Population, about 350.

More than 60 per cent of the residents are addicted to alcohol or solvents, according to the local chief. There are essentially no real jobs, save seasonal rice harvesting and a fishing camp. The money comes from the government.

The almost complete isolation and traditional ways of life of the Pauingassi continued until the mid-1950s. Then came the missionaries and government to "help." The Pauingassi School website lists the benefits - a school, nursing station, subsidized housing, electricity, a water system, residential telephones - but notes: "These benefits have been, to some extent, offset by social problems such as drinking, vandalism and gas-sniffing, but the great majority of people have adapted to rapid social change very well."

So there you are. From self-sufficiency to substance abuse. Credit/blame our government - and us. This is an extreme case of the situation of Canada's 400,000 reserve Indians, a story replicated in similar or lesser forms too often.

About 40 per cent of all residents of reserves are on welfare. Suicide rates run several multiples of the average. You've heard it before.

Now back to Ottawa. The sad story of Adam Keeper, reported last Wednesday, was greatly overshadowed by the cabinet shuffle. Jim Prentice, until then the Indian Affairs Minister and generally acknowledged as one of the most competent ministers on the Conservative benches, was moving to Industry. This was presented as being very good, because Industry is Ottawa's repository of concern for productivity.

Only policy wonks care about this because unfortunately most people see the word as code for working harder for the same wages

The other side of that cabinet shuffle was bad news, because Indian policy is the greatest moral question (and failure) in Canadian politics. Mr. Prentice, before his departure from Indian Affairs, finally was improving things.

That responsibility now falls to Chuck Strahl, an intelligent and compassionate man. It will take him time to get up to speed in his new post.

Mr. Strahl must address the central question of Indian policy: Is it a favour to individuals to foster their adhesion to a parallel society reserved for Indians, the current orthodoxy? Or would it instead be better to offer an equal choice of participating in the mainstream?

These innocent words conceal an explosive issue, because the mainstream world offers so many more possibilities for the mind, body and soul than the parallel ethno/cultural-based society. Genuine choice would almost certainly lead to integration into the mainstream, which is entirely possible without rejecting one's heritage. But there is a huge industry - political, academic, legal, financial, bureaucratic - based on the belief Indians are fundamentally different from the rest of us, and keeping them so.

"Keeping them so" means maintaining isolated places like Pauingassi, and the enormous $10-billion structure of the parallel-society enterprise, the favourite of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, most academics and most Indian elites. They may be right, they may not. But the view is never challenged.

Should the choice be up to the individual? That is what we say with most Canadians. But with Indians we say, no, the fundamental choice is up to the Indian collective, and it is those power structures that we will fund and nourish, not the individual.

You need both, but which takes priority on any given policy choice: the individual or the collective?

It will be a brave minister willing to confront that question. Until then, the Pauingassi stories will continue.

[email protected]

A couple of points, from my perspective:

1. Aboriginal Canadians constitute a major underclass in our country – a very fast growing underclass but, in the main, one which is not advancing, upwards, from its position of extreme socio-economic disadvantage; and

2. Aboriginal leaders are, almost universally, conservative: so conservative as to be almost communistic.  They hold extreme statist views and emphasize collective rights over any and all liberal individual rights – even to such inherent and natural individual rights as the right to privacy and to private property.

Any fair reading of history teaches that conservative, statist societies/nations tend to founder and collapse – further disadvantaging their members/citizens.  In the case of Aboriginal Canadians that means that their leaders have likely put them on a course leading to an even worse situation – if that’s imaginable.

I believe that young, poor, poorly educated Aboriginal Canadians represent a major security threat – at least as dangerous as young, poor, poorly socialized Muslims in Canada.

I have no idea about the right answer to Aboriginal Canadians’ plight.  I am worried that the ‘solutions’ proffered by Aboriginal leaders and most Canadian politicians are wrong.  I am also fairly certain that any solution will be hideously expensive – think of a sum roughly equal to the defence budget being required year after year, for decades, to provide redress for real grievances and to provide real long term opportunities.

 

[geo]

IMHO, the problem was, the problem is, the problem will continue to be that the Gov't (at all levels) wrings it's hands wondering what can be done, throws money at the darned thing and moves on to other important issues... such as lunch ( me cynical?)
So the Gov't pays for a bunch of new houses, on a new reservation, and places the same people (Amerind) into the place - so the place can get rundown just like the last one.
Change is required.  Giving aid the way it's been done is not the cure, it perpetuates the cycle.

People need to work, people need to feel that their contribution to society is an important cog in the big picture machine.  So long as you give something for nothing, nothing will change.

(rant off)

 

[Roy Harding]

I live in an area with a significant native population (Terrace, BC).  I don't have numbers - perhaps I'll dig some up later.  Suffice to say for now that the presence of the Nisga'a people is a significant factor in this area.

In the past, I've lived in urban areas (Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon) where my only exposure to native folk was the stereo-typical drunken bum on downtown streets, and to a lesser extent the native gangs prevalent on the public transport systems.  Since moving to Terrace, I've been exposed to a different side of native people.  Many of the businesses that I deal with locally are owned and operated by native folk.  They are a significant proportion of the work force.  As cliche as I know it sounds, many of the friends I've made here are native.

I've made the following (unscientific, and purely opinion based) observations:

• 
  Those natives who choose to remain on the reserve seem destined to continue the drug riddled, poverty stricken, welfare lifestyle - it is they who are the local hooligans and n'er do wells.
• Those natives who have chosen to leave the reserve, and make a living - either through entrepreneurial endeavour, or joining the mainstream workforce, have achieved the same middle class lifestyle that I enjoy.  They worry about the same things I worry about, and whine and moan about the same things I whine and moan about.

Many of my friends here travel back to their homes on the reserve for a visit - in much the same manner as I used to travel back to my great uncles farm.  They attend cultural events, and have formed culture based clubs in town - they have, in many cases, a much more profound and in depth understanding of their culture and history than their fellows who choose to remain on the reserve, under the thumb of the band council.

My point is that I think E.R. Campbell is generally correct.  As long as natives continue following leaders who are conservative - their lot will not improve, and the society which exists on the reserve will continue to foment radicalized, unthinking, troubled young folk.


Roy

 

[geo]

I witnessed an interesting social experiment a number of years ago when the Quebec Gov't did some land claims settlements for the James Bay accord... whereby the Provincial hydro authority got hold of & flooded a large part of ancestral hunditn ggrounds.

Amerindian communities got their fair share of the $$$, kept some $$$ and divvied up the rest between the families that lived on the reservation.  Some new houses, lots of new cars & trucks & apliances... then nothing.

Inuit communities formed the Makivik Corporation to take and administer their $$$.  No individual got a cheque.  The corporation bought out and began administering businesses (eg; Air Inuit) they started up businesses that would build the houses, provide water services to the communities, provide sanitation & garbage disposal, etc.
In some communities, they hired hunters to go out & bring back fish & meat for the infirm & old people in the villages. 

I can't say it was perfect but, from what I have seen, the Inuit still have their $$$ nest egg while the Amerind don't

 

[3rd Herd]

Anyone remember the Rena Virk case ? I was just getting into teaching when that occurred and was in a school adjacent to the school involved. I throw this out as the case has made it's way through the system and through the media. The immediate impact in the school system was a lot of soul searching and then a mad scramble to get what ever psych demi god in to give lectures/presentations to staff or students. And yes all for a fee.

As to the issue at hand my last teaching assignment or second to last was in three schools fed by five different reserves. In one reserve the adolescent suicide rate was/is 60%(Ahousit). Our guidance counsellor who was a wonderful lady retired early after years of battling this problem. The problem, no hope. I also wound up covering for another teacher for a couple of weeks on a remote island were they bring the entire family for six weeks. The adults are put through detox and a spectrum of counselling, job skills, quality of life skills. The children brought six weeks of work, assignments etc and had a normal school day in a two room school. Try teaching k-12 all at the same time, multi tasking at its finest. Then after the school day had either individual counselling, or group counselling much of the same content as the adults. After dinner there was counselling with the families as a whole. If my memory serves me right I think they had a 93% success rate. There were students/families from across Canada. Noticeably there were several aboriginal groups absent, again referring to memory I think Six Nations. When I asked how come, the elder "Grandfather" relpied they have it together and rhymed off a dozen or so other groups that were the same. Their Band councils saw the writting on the wall and changed things. But the problem with some Band councils is the "traditional aspect" particularly on the West Coast and the "Divine Right of Kings" attitude. Potlach is an example of that. So if you cannot change things because since time began this is our heritage the resulting effect is No Hope. On the positive side of things should I get back into teaching the first place I will seek employment is going to be at a reserve school. It just got kind of hard not knowing if that homework assignment was going to be turned in on Monday morning, despite all the intervention skills we used. Just as an after thought for those in the social work field I have the contact information for the island program and references to another very successful program in the Williams Lake area.

 

[geo]

Hopelessness
This is what happens when you marginalize a segment of society.

The gov't toke a number of Innu children out of Hopedale (?) a couple of years ago.  They were gas sniffing & lost to the world.  They went thru a native detox centre in Manitoba (?) came thru with flying colours.... and then they went home.  Although the entire population was moved to a shiny new village, everything went back to what had been.... pert much all of the kids were back on Gas fumes, parents on the booze.... Hopelessness!!!

 

[Edward Campbell]

... The problem, no hope ...

Bingo!

And hopelessness breeds despair and despair breeds outrage and outrage breeds violence, and, and, and ... which is why I think disaffected, disadvantaged, dis-everything else Aboriginal kids pose a HUGE threat to our internal peace and security.

 

[3rd Herd]

geo,
that is why I tossed the reference of Williams Lake into this. The whole reserve went dry and got their act together. Again memory I think it was a three year task. Having said that nobody is perfect especially with addictions but they tackled the issues as a whole and insured the necessary resources were in place to deal with relapse. Somewhere in the orange kisks(s) boxes I use as my filing cabinets I have a CD they produced which is priceless.

 

[geo]

Short of dismantling the $$$ handouts AND the Reservation system, I have serious doubts we will see ourselves clear of this problem anytime soon.

 

[Roy Harding]

Short of dismantling the $$$ handouts AND the Reservation system, I have serious doubts we will see ourselves clear of this problem anytime soon.

EXACTLY.

 

[geo]

3rd
Towns going "dry" is nothing new.  When I was travelling the Great White North (77 to 85), there were many Inuit communities in the Baffin and Northern Quebec that ran their plebescites, gave direction to the RCMP to inspect incoming goods for "contraband".

As stated above, the Makivik corporation has given the oportunity to able bodied people to work & earn a salary.  Augmented by what he hunts & the handicrafts he might carve, there is hope, there is a reason for living.

 

[zipperhead_cop]

Short of dismantling the $$$ handouts AND the Reservation system, I have serious doubts we will see ourselves clear of this problem anytime soon.

So why not go for it?  Set a dead line and stick to it.  I seem to recall someone forwarding an idea with regards to a sliding scale system for getting natives to end up buying and owning their own land on the existing reservations.  Set up whatever counselling/detox/safety nets you need and then give them a goal; get your crap together, because the boom is going to drop.  Give it ten years?  Then that's it.  The Indian Act gets struck from the books. 
Doubtless, there would be people who would "slip through the cracks" and would turn out poorly.  And the land grabs disputes would still have to be resolved (albeit this solution would take scads of cash, so I'm sure the Fed could come up with some brilliant plan, ala Dolton Estates)  But I can't see this turning out with any expectation of success without some sort of "tough love" solution.  If they could do it on their own, would that not have happened some time in the last forty-odd years?  Might seem harsh, but it would be better than the sad, lingering death they are experiencing now. 

 

[Kirkhill]

The tribal chiefs' only "power" is in representing a body of people.  If they have no clients then they have no reason to exist.  Much like a lawyer from Regina I could name that has made a practice of sucking up government funded class action lawsuits..... nuther story.

The chiefs are the problem.  Louis XIV solved his version of the same problem by turning them into Gentlemen of the Bathchamber and putting them on a pension.  The Hanoverians allowed the Lairds to keep the land and ship their tenants to far away places (Canada and Manchester) so that the Lairds could make money raising sheep and running shooting parties.

Get rid of the chiefs in the equation.  Co-opt those women that claim that the Chiefs are a Whiteman's Mistake in any case.

With the best will in the world an individual "leading" a band of 80 or so, half of whom live in town in any event, is NOT a leader of a nation.

 

[krustyrl]

Much like a lawyer from Regina I could name that has made a practice of sucking up government funded class action lawsuits..... nuther story

  =  T.M..?

 

[Kirkhill]

No Pack Drill.

 

[a_majoor]

You can hear the howls of outrage now:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=08ef1454-987a-423a-b6b7-102e6a2c37ee&p=2

Off the reservation
The reserve system is Canada's worst moral failing. Let's do the right thing and get rid of it

Jonathan Kay
National Post

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

In an ongoing series, National Post writers are being asked a simple question: If you had the power to change a single thing about Canada, what would it be? In today's instalment, Jonathan Kay proposes a radical reform to our native policy.

---

When it comes to what needs fixing, every problem in this country pales beside our signature disgrace: the state of Canada's native reserves. The worst are bastions of truly Third World-style poverty and decrepitude, infectious disease and stomach-churning social pathologies.

In strictly numerical terms, the problem is not large. There are about 400,000 natives living on reserves -- just 1.3% of the Canadian population. It would be a simple thing to cap this wellspring of misery if we had the right policies in place. But that's the problem:We don't.

Every time the native file makes the news, the proposed solutions are the same: more money and more self-government. Each year the federal government spends over $8-billion on reserve-resident natives, or $80,000 per reserve-resident household (a statistic I never get tired of quoting, because it puts to rest the idea that natives are somehow being nickel-and-dimed under the current system). We have handed over all sorts of powers to native bands, even creating a new extra-constitutional order of government in the process.

None of this has worked, and the reason is simple: Our policy of propping up reserves with massive government subsidies flies in the face of three well-observed empirical truths learned the hard way in societies around the world. - The modern global economy is driven by cities, which serve as hubs for high-value knowledge industries, skilled workers and transportation networks. Rural economies have been dying since the Second World War. No government would pay white Canadians to confine themselves to the jobless outback, hundreds of miles from the country's universities and job centres (unless, perhaps, they lived in Atlantic Canada, a subject for a separate "Fixing Canada" column). Yet that is exactly what we do with our native population. - One of the great lessons of the 20th century was that collective land ownership is a recipe for economic disaster. Behind the Iron Curtain, agricultural productivity exploded once people were given the right to own their own parcels of land outright, and sell the proceeds for profit. As Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has definitively shown, denying land title to slum dwellers is one of the main impediments to prosperity in poor societies.

Yet almost two decades after the Iron Curtain fell, our reserves are still run--literally --like Marxist workers' collectives (to the extent anyone actually works). Every once in a while a Canadian reporter wanders around a reserve and writes shocked dispatches about the run-down quality of housing stock. Question:Would you pay good money to take care of your house if you couldn't sell it, couldn't use it to acquire mortgage financing and you knew someone else would build you a new one as soon as the old one collapsed? - Welfare destroys societies. Temporary government entitlements such as EI are fine for helping people get back on their feet. But when they become the permanent income source for an entire community --be it an inner-city American ghetto or a Canadian native reserve--civic life unravels. In a welfare society, the discipline and pride of workaday life are absent, men lose their social function, alcoholism carries no price (the cheque arrives whether you're drunk or sober) and people are encouraged to view government as nothing but a platform for doling out booty.

All three of these principles have guided Western policymakers for generations. Yet when it comes to natives, we pretend we never learned them. Many aboriginal advocates claim that racism is the main barrier facing natives. I would say it's the opposite: We somehow have convinced ourselves that native societies have the collective, superhuman ability to resist the gravitational socioeconomic forces governing every other society on Earth. Like all utopian experiments, this one has led to disaster and heartache -- played out in everything from water contamination to glue-sniffing to abused children.

My fix for Canada is to make life better for natives by treating them like real human beings who are governed by the same empirically observed weaknesses and incentives as the rest of humanity -- not Rousseauvian noble savages.

A proper native policy would be guided by the three principles listed above. The most decrepit and remote reserves, such as Kashechewan and Natuashish, would simply be torn down -- their inhabitants installed at government expense in population centres of the residents' choice. The hundreds of millions of dollars that go into running these hellholes would be used to teach job skills, detox the drunks, educate the children and otherwise integrate the families into mainstream Canadian life.

Those reserves that have a fighting chance at developing a self-sustaining local economy -- either through proximity to urban centres, tourism, agri-business or resource extraction -- would be reorganized as municipal corporations. Land would be privatized and turned over to individuals, who would then own it in fee simple. Natives would stay if they chose -- but only if they could find the employment necessary to feed themselves: Aside from treaty-mandated entitlements and regular government social programs, they would be cut off from the dole.

Self-government would be possible, but only in the same limited way that any Canadian city or town is self-governing. The conceit that native reserves can be reconceived as culturally distinct "nations" would be given up in favour of a model that promotes integration.

All this, of course, would represent a massive legal and political undertaking -- requiring not only the destruction of the Indian Act, but also, possibly, a rewriting of the Constitution. Even the act of parcelling out reserve land to band members would itself be a decades-long exercise, requiring armies of land surveyors and bureaucrats to accomplish. This is a radical fix I am proposing, and I have no illusions about how wrenching the experience of cultural dislocation would be for the affected communities.

That said, it is a trauma that need only be inflicted once -- as opposed to the status quo, under which every generation of reserve-resident natives suffers under our dysfunctional system afresh. Which, I ask, is the more inhumane?

[email protected]
© National Post 2007

 

[medaid]

Thread hijack!!

Since the MSM is always such sticklers for PC, I believe that they should start addressing the First Nations people as what they are, NOT as 'Indians'. Indians as we ALL should know are from yup, you guessed it INDIA! The people of India are not East Indians, but just Indians. Now I say this because my better half corrects me when I make the occasional mistake since she's IndoCanadian she feels that it's her duty to correct my mistake.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

 

[geo]

In french we refer to native americans as "Amerindiens" (American Indians)
We will use the term "Autochtone" when refering to all native people - be they Amerindiens, Innu or Inuit.

 

[UberCree]

That is a good article.  People on my side of the 'fence' (the Native side) need to be more open to views that may be contrary to theirs.  Argueing that anyone that believes in dismantling the reserve system is racist serves no one any benefit.

I disagree with Jonathan Kay however.  I feel the best approach would be for the federal government to take the same approach the IMF is taking with third world development.  Money shoud be tied to good governance practices.  There should be a sliding scale of federal support for reserves.  If a community practices good governance, accountability, transparency, economic development, etc. (developed in their own way as long as it meets a minimum standard) then their funding should reflect their success.  If a community fails to develop any good governance structures then their funding should reflect their lack of willingness to move forward.  As an example if a band were to collect income taxes (no such thing as 'sovereignty' without taxation) then match the amount collected and slowly phase out the amount until the community could support itself.

The IMF program was described by Colin Powell in a past issue of Foreign Policy, but I cannot remember what it was called.

In some cases all it would take is for a chief and council to ratify provincial legislation through a Band Council Resolution (BCR) - such as Provincial human rights acts which are non-applicable on reserve.  In other cases communities could develop their own legislative practices that promote good governance (what we are TRYING to do in my community). 

The approach taken by the federal government currently promotes dysfunctional leadership.  They encourage 'negotiations' that involve flying chiefs around and spending money on modern day trinkets.  Some chiefs are rarely if ever in their communities ... they are away negotiating with the feds.  The next chief comes in full of piss and vinegar, then the travel bennies begin again.  As an example education funding has not been adjusted since 1996 - yet representatives from the AFN have been 'negotiating' to increase the base education funding level since 1997 ... usually in nice hotels in Ottawa of course.  No one wants to fix the problem, they just want their turn at the perks of 'leadership'.

 

[Greymatters]

A very honest opinion, Ubercree, didnt know that that was happening withthe Chiefs...