That may be part of the problem–there is no responsibility. Any call for accounting of responsibility is met with, “Well, this is how we’ve always done it in our culture; it is our culture and heritage; if you don’t like it, tough; we’re protected by treaties that you agreed to years ago.” In actual fact, it is what we would call an oligarchy–rule by a small group–where a single family is in charge of the native band’s finances. If you’re a part of that family, or in good with them, you’re sitting pretty. If you’re not, sucks to be you. Since most natives are not part of their band’s ruling hierarchy, they suffer. The band in question may have received $90M from the federal government, but I’m pretty sure that most of the band members never benefited from that grant. My guess would be that it was spent in graft and corruption paid to the ruling family.
Yes. My Aboriginal lawyer colleague was viewed as a little bit of an odd duck because he pursued education, unlike many of his peers. As he once said to me (paraphrased), “It would have been so easy to stay on the reserve and stay paid by the feds thus allowing me to stay drunk.” But he did not want that. He is engaged in Aboriginal law issues now, trying to do the best he can for his people in what is basically a “white man’s world.” He did not say so in so many words, Nava, but you’ve summed up his challenges well when you say, that it is a “cross between moving mountains and herding cats.”
Its unfortunate, but the fact is, you cannot live a aboriginal lifestyle today. If these poor people lived as hunter/gatherers, there would be a few hundred of them, and no town. The federal welfare is what made these people into town dwellers, and there is nothing for them to do in such a place.
And really, the “old” lifestyle wasn’t a very good life-short, nasty and brutal.
The Natives were in control of the $90M. How is it anyone’s fault other than their own? Unless you say they should have been given, say $180M, or a billion. If it was a billion and they still lived in shitholes, would it still be the federal governments fault?
No, the Natives don’t control the money. For ten years, they’d been on the second level of intervention called co-management. They couldn’t spend any money without approval from Indian Affairs. (Third party management is the next level of intervention, and Attawapiskat was put on that only in response to the recent shitstorm.)
A lot of that money doesn’t go to the community but to outside sources like contractors who come in to work on houses, schools, roads, etc. and then leave with their pay, about 80 percent of the cost IIRC. Suppliers of construction materials and ongoing necessities like food and fuel have to charge exhorbitant fees to get their products into an isolated location. None of that money goes into the community to get recycled as it would in an urban centre.
Simply assuming the Indians are to blame, when the system is broken, is pretty insensitive at best, and racist at worst. The Harper government has a lot to answer for for its knee-jerk reaction.
It’s a waste of human lives. There could be doctors, lawyers (well, maybe we shouldn’t encourage those), theoretical physicist, people that can contribute to modern society, but instead they sit around talking about the good old days when they hunted the great buffalo.
I’ve just read through the Wikipedia entry on this community, which doesn’t give me much knowledge of this community but more than some of the posters here I gather.
The current crisis appears to stem from two disasters: First a spill of diesel oil under the primary school in 1979 which caused health problems leading to its closure in 2000. Since then the school has been housed in temporary buildings. Plans for a new school were shelved in 2007. Second a massive sewage flood in 2009, since which 90 people have been housed in (pretty nasty sounding) temporary buildings.
No doubt the children would like X boxes but the need for a new primary school with facilities on a par with the rest of the country seems a reasonable desire. As does the need for replacement buildings to rehouse those made homeless by the sewage flood.
Whatever can be said about the history of this community and the direction of future policy the fact is that there are people there, now, living in dire conditions in a wealthy first world nation. Oh and they are right next to a diamond mine, so somebody is making money in the area.
So, while I don’t know enough to consider long term solutions, I would say sort out the immediate problems with schooling and housing because some little kid freezing in a tent and going to school in a hut is even less likely to grow up to be a lawyer than otherwise.
I’m trying hard to picture why the government’s response - attempting to put a manager within the community itself- to a system everyone states is “broken” is of necessity “assuming the Indians are to blame” and “racist”.
In may well be the case that the poverty and terrible conditions there are due to a lack of money, or due to the fact that vital funding decisions are made by people in Ottawa thousands of miles from the problem. If the latter is the case, isn’t moving the decision-maker to the community itself a step forward?
The other possibility is to loosen federal control by delegating more to the band administration on the spot.
The lease payments for the mine are going to the government of Ontario, even though it’s on Attawapiskat land, so that’s not helping the community any.
This. Eithier live (and die) off the land in the old fashioned ways or get with the program and join the 21st Century and or move. You CAN be a doctor/lawyer or whatever and still eat like your ancestors and dress like them and and worship like they did if its that damn important to you. But you can’t have it both ways in terms of living the modern lifestyle and still wanting to be hunter/gathers. And I say that as a person who actually has their “indian papers” so to speak. This concept of living like your ancestors and living where they did or you disrespect them is a stupid meme that needs to die. For the most part, it wasn’t some grand master plan by them. It was what they could do with what they had because they had no better choices.
Sure, but it can’t be easy for a group to give up what little sovereignty they have.
My understanding is that most treaties don’t take the form of “we’ll give you $90MM per year if you give up your rights to X, Y and Z”. Rather, they look more like “we’ll give you free education and health care and hunting and rishing rights in exchange for X, Y and Z”.
I thought that the only way that First Nations got no-strings-attached money directly from the government was through land claims settlements.
Because the NDP and some of the Liberals will lose their shit because of their bleeding hearts?
The government is stuck between a rock and a hard place: they can try reform, but it will result in a PR shitstorm, but then they get bitched at for the conditions on the reserves anyway. Nothing they can do will please everyone.
And now some reserves are figuring out how to monetize themselves through casinos and resources, and those bands have the money to fight the government, which is why I suggested fewer, larger reserves outside of the remote communities.
In 2006, the previous Liberal gov’t and Native leaders signed the Kelowna Accord, an attempt to try a new approach to the problems Natives were having. Three days after the signing, the Conservatives won their first election, discarded the plan and said they were going to deal with it their own way, which turned out to be simply throwing money at the reserves which benefitted outside business interests more than the communities. So yes, the gov’t of the day can be blamed for it.
Do many of the people on the reservations exploit the tourism angle? Survival in the wild is very popular these days with Bear Grylls and the like, I can imagine some tourists paying top dollar to live like a Hunter-Gatherer with a First Nations guide for a few days. I suppose though those who do exploit it are on more accessable reservations.
So, they have control. Unless you can prove that IA was in the habit of not approving requests.
Reality. Nothing anyone can do different on this, well, other than the fact that none of this is rocket science, building a house, a road, schools, to stop the ‘uneducated’ natives from doing it. In a community of 1800 there has to be someone who knows how (or can learn).
Reality. They can move if they don’t like it. BTW, it costs more to live in Canada for similar reasons. Solution: don’t live there.
Simply assuming the governments are to blame…
When the natives are waiting for their next welfare check, return of the buffalo, the white devil to go back over the waves, etc doesn’t relieve anyone of having to get off their asses and help themselves.
I agree. Get rid of it. No more money, welcome to the 21st century.
Yeah, I guess they should have sent more money instead of someone to determine where the last bit went.
If mismanagement of money was the problem, sure. But sending an accountant to control spending that’s already controlled by the gov’t cynically ignores what’s happening there. Putting him on the reserve only means that the government’s condescending attitude is there in person. A heavy-handed attitude by arriving when the reserve’s leadership was away at meetings and demanding to see the books didn’t help either.
In this case the government (and I don’t think the party in power matters ATM) is damned if the do and they are damned if the don’t.
The government gives the community a good deal of money over a few years, but there is no oversight on what the community does with the money. All of a sudden the community declares an emergency and everyone wonders how the government could let things get so bad. So the government, wondering what happened to the $90 million, decide to send in somebody to find out. Now, the people who were wondering how the government could let things get so bad are offended at the idea that Ottawa should mess in the affairs of the community.
I don’t imagine that $90 million solves the problems in the community, or with reserves in general. However, even in the middle of BFO you should be able to get a few decent homes built for the sort of scratch the community had been getting. Conditions should not be anywhere near as bad as they have become.
The Kelowna Accord essentially amounted to “we’ll spend a bit more money and hold more meetings.” (And it really wasn’t a huge amount as compared to the existing budget.) If you think that would have fixed the problem, I don’t think you’re giving the size of the problem the appreciation it deserves.
The commitments in the accord amounted to about $5 billion over ten years, which represents an increase of somewhere between six and ten percent, depending on whose definitions you believe, in First Nations spending. I cannot take seriously the idea that he solutions to these problems is an extra buck for every ten that was already being spent. That’s just risible.