[JaredMilne]

Indigenous issues have been all over the news, from the Attawapiskat crisis to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There’s also the familiar calls for Indigenous people to “just get over it”, abandon their reserves and move to the cities.

This is just the latest example of a trend that repeats itself in Canadian history, of Indigenous Canadians expected to be the only ones to take any responsibility for change, and accept all the responsibility for the problems that have come up. Apparently, it’s never the fault of the government or non-Native Canadians.

One of the most notable examples was in the Northwest Resistance of 1885. Leaders like Louis Riel, Big Bear and Poundmaker were tried and convicted for all the violence that had broken out, even when they tried to stop it. For some reason, nobody stopped to consider that Ottawa’s incompetence in living up to its Treaty promises, had anything to do with inciting the Resistance.

It was also apparently the fault of the Indigenous peoples that they and their communities were wracked with substance abuse, self-hate and dysfunction. Nobody stopped to think of whether generations of having every aspect of their lives controlled by government agents, being forcibly dragged off to the abuse and misery of residential school, forbidden from unable to leave the reserves without permission, having reserve lands unilaterally stolen from them, or being forced to pick up their entire lives because the reserve was relocated, might have played a part.

No, it was the Indigenous peoples’ own fault that they had parenting problems that led the government initiate the “Sixties Scoop” that took so many Indigenous children away from their families and put them with white ones. It apparently was the kids’ fault that they were confused and uncertain about their identities. The trauma resulting from being seized apparently didn’t have anything to do with the problems they experienced later.

Similarly, Indigenous confrontations like the ones at Oka, Ipperwash or Gustafsen Lake, were all apparently the fault of the Indigenous peoples, too. It apparently didn’t matter that non-Natives kept trying to ruin places that were sacred to the Indigenous communities, and that the non-Natives ignored the Indigenous communities’ repeated complaints and efforts to get them to listen.

Even when Indigenous people actually move to the cities, it’s their fault that they’re murdered, like Tina Fontaine in Manitoba or Neil Stonechild in Saskatoon. The poverty that they face is apparently all their fault too. Apparently, nothing past or present non-Native peoples do has anything to do with it.

Many non-Native Canadians are always ready to criticize the corruption and mismanagement of band council funds, but when the Parliamentary Budget Office has to take the former Harper government to court to get the information it needs to do its job (as chronicled by Brent Rathgeber in his book Irresponsible Government: The Decline of Parliamentary Democracy in Canada), and says that the current Trudeau government is even less transparent in how it spends money, the critics seem to be a lot quieter.

Despite all this, many non-Native Canadians seem to think that Indigenous Canadians are the only ones who have to change at all. No one ever seems to think that these non-Native actions, which affect many people still alive today, ever have anything to do with the problems.

Could it be that maybe, just maybe, they’re wrong?

[martin14]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

whitey bad?

Yep. Whitey bad.

Bad, bad whitey.

[ShepherdsDog]

Someone needs to spend some time on a reserve and talk to real band members about the corruption and BS they have to deal with from their local band governments while the federal government stands idly by allowing it to continue.

[herbie]

Or about how they're really bitching cuz its not their uncle who got elected Chief so whatever happens regarding spending isn't what they want, its what the rest of the band want.
As usual, you're hearing about the ones that make the news and not about the thousands of others who don't, and tarring them all with the same brush.

[BeaverFever]

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

Someone needs to spend some time on a reserve and talk to real band members about the corruption and BS they have to deal with from their local band governments while the federal government stands idly by allowing it to continue.

Corruption is the result of pervasive poverty. You can't end corruption until living conditions are improved. That's true even of our own recent history,where government corruption was routine and pervasive well into the 20th century.

Demanding that corruption be fully eradicated before anyone gets clean drinking water or public sanitation is really just a cop-out excuse meant to maintain the staus quo and avoid ever delivering those services.

[JaredMilne]

So all the shit with the residential schools, which continued well into the modern era, all the social dysfunction from being forced to arbitrarily relocate their communities or having their land appropriated without compensation, or for being taken into foster care because the Indigenous parents who went through the residential schools weren't able to develop the life skills that would help them take care of their families, didn't have anything to do with any of the shit they deal with now?

Of course, they could just move to the cities like people say they always should. Never mind that they can still run into problems with being targeted for murder and police violence in the cities, too-after all, it's their own fault if they end up murdered or harrassed by the cops, right?

[andyt]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

Someone needs to spend some time on a reserve and talk to real band members about the corruption and BS they have to deal with from their local band governments while the federal government stands idly by allowing it to continue.

Corruption is the result of pervasive poverty. You can't end corruption until living conditions are improved. That's true even of our own recent history,where government corruption was routine and pervasive well into the 20th century.

Demanding that corruption be fully eradicated before anyone gets clean drinking water or public sanitation is really just a cop-out excuse meant to maintain the staus quo and avoid ever delivering those services.

Before they get money just handed to them tho, systems need to be in place that ensure it is spent properly. Ie proper audits and financial supervision and the govt acts if the standards are not met, doesn't just keep shoveling the money. The cost for that should be borne by the feds tho.

Then the question arises about the viability of many reserves. The demand seems to be that every reserve, no matter how financially nonviable, be given enough money to support the residents in a comfortable life. We don't do that for Second Nations people. If you won't or can't work, you get very minimal support from the govt. The same standard should apply to reserves - if they show no sign of ever being able to get off the public dime, they get welfare, same as Second Nations.

As I've said before, it's going to take a lot of money to get FN's to a place where they are self-sufficient. We did do great damage to them, as Jared points out. I don't mind spending that money, but it has to have an end goal in sight, a time when the money stops and they stand on their own two feet. Just continuing to shovel money at them, ad infinitum, doesn't make sense.

A comment about Jared's post: it seems every place is sacred to the FN's, especially if they want it. Maybe that was the way their society worked, they saw themselves living in sacred space, but ours doesn't. So unless there's real clear evidence that a particular area was used for sacred purposes, I'm sorry, but we should deny the claim. No doubt our society would be way better off if we too saw our whole planet as sacred space where we live in harmony, but that is not the white man's way, a way no adopted by pretty well the whole planet. Too late to go back, at least until after the Apocalypse.

[JaredMilne]

andyt andyt:

Before they get money just handed to them tho, systems need to be in place that ensure it is spent properly. Ie proper audits and financial supervision and the govt acts if the standards are not met, doesn't just keep shoveling the money. The cost for that should be borne by the feds tho.

Then the question arises about the viability of many reserves. The demand seems to be that every reserve, no matter how financially nonviable, be given enough money to support the residents in a comfortable life. We don't do that for Second Nations people. If you won't or can't work, you get very minimal support from the govt. The same standard should apply to reserves - if they show no sign of ever being able to get off the public dime, they get welfare, same as Second Nations.

As I've said before, it's going to take a lot of money to get FN's to a place where they are self-sufficient. We did do great damage to them, as Jared points out. I don't mind spending that money, but it has to have an end goal in sight, a time when the money stops and they stand on their own two feet. Just continuing to shovel money at them, ad infinitum, doesn't make sense.

A comment about Jared's post: it seems every place is sacred to the FN's, especially if they want it. Maybe that was the way their society worked, they saw themselves living in sacred space, but ours doesn't. So unless there's real clear evidence that a particular area was used for sacred purposes, I'm sorry, but we should deny the claim. No doubt our society would be way better off if we too saw our whole planet as sacred space where we live in harmony, but that is not the white man's way, a way no adopted by pretty well the whole planet. Too late to go back, at least until after the Apocalypse.

Like I said in the original post, many non-Indigenous governments will talk a good game about being open and transparent when it comes to spending our money, but they are just as obfuscating as any Indigenous government-and Justin Trudeau is even worse than Stephen Harper. And yet, most observers seem more interested in getting into pissing matches about which political party is less transparent, than in demanding the parties they themselves support clean up their act.

As for the end goal, that would be to actually fully develop their own communities' economies in their own right. However, to do that Indigenous communities need the same kinds of legal tools that the provinces do, namely a say in things like resource development and actually ensuring that some of the revenues stay in the community and develop it over the long term. Writers from George Manuel to Harold Cardinal to Jody Wilson-Raybould have all pointed this out-see part two of my essay on the "reserve paradox" at Vive for some more details. This has happened in a few different areas, notably in B.C. as noted by Art Manuel in his his book Unsettling Canada.

That way, with Indigenous communities as full and active contributors to the economy, and with their own governance and Treaty rights properly recognized (and before anyone says, I agree that we probably need to update our understanding of the Treaties, including what ties Indigenous peoples have to Canada as a country), we could really get rid of the Indian Act once and for all.

[andyt]

I think there are many reserves who don't have a hope in hell of developing their communities economies because there's nothing there to develop. And I can't swallow the concept of 100's of extra provinces in Canada. Imagine what that first minister's meeting would be like.

[JaredMilne]

andyt andyt:

I think there are many reserves who don't have a hope in hell of developing their communities economies because there's nothing there to develop. And I can't swallow the concept of 100's of extra provinces in Canada. Imagine what that first minister's meeting would be like.

It doesn't necessarily mean hundreds of extra provinces-that's something that would have to be addressed in an ongoing discussion, along with issues like how and when Indigenous communities participate in the larger country, how and when they're represented, that sort of thing.

As I've said before, I have the same issue with Indigenous separatists that I do with their Quebec counterparts-while they insist on their sovereignty and independence, they still seem to expect use Canada's currency, network of embassies and relationships, and other things if and when it's necessary. Of course, as one of my old Native Studies professors pointed out-if you still have to rely on all these things, you're not really sovereign, are you?

Doesn't mean we shouldn't recognize the spirit of the Treaties, and do our best to live up to them in practice...which we haven't come anywhere close to, for the most part.

[andyt]

BC has very few treaties, so I'm not that familiar with their spirit. But a spirit of continual dependence doesn't seem to be one to want to practice. I would like to just buy out the FN's, in some reasonable fashion. Of course it would never amount to what they would get if they sold Canada to us now, but it would be a good sum, that they can use for healing and development. No more reserves, no special rights except access to a lot of money for therapy and education or business ventures, etc. End goal - FN's are like any other Canadian, except they've had a hand up to get out of the hole they are in.

[herbie]

$1:

FN's are like any other Canadian, except they've had a hand up to get out of the hole they are in.

Exactly what they have now, and everyone seems to be bitching about it.

The biggest difference is natives have ACTUAL concern for their communities. None of this "oh well it's a business decision, we'll just have to abandon it and move where the jobs are" BS that's plagued mainstream N America.
A history of rip shit out of the ground, leave a hole in the ground and move on. Centralize in the name of greater profit and let the mills and factories rot. Abandon any ideas of sustainability (like apurtenance) in poorly thought trade deals.

[andyt]

Ok, fair point. But, they sure seem to want all the mod cons that our fuck sustainability lifestyle gives us, but also live on their traditional territory and do what they want. Natives certainly haven't been above despoiling their land or over hunting and fishing. If they really were content to live in traditional ways, ie off the land and off the grid, I'd say let's try to make that happen. Won't do much for the ones living in or near urban centers of course, those would have to adopt our unsustainable ways. Mostly many natives seem to have the dream that they can just charge us rent. That way they can claim to be one with nature will still getting a good cut of the money that raping the land brings.

[ShepherdsDog]

$1:

The biggest difference is natives have ACTUAL concern for their communities.

Really?? Some do...many, too many, don't. It's naive, and bordering on racism to say that they all think and behave the same way. They're like everyone else. Some are altruistic and compassionate and others are greedy scum...just like you find in any community.

[Freakinoldguy]

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

others are greedy scum...just like you find in any community.

And why does it seem that it's always those types who end up in power.

Fixing the leadership issues on alot of the FN's reserves would go alongway to fixing the problems. Just look at what good leadership and a decent location can lead to.

http://oibdc.ca/