Attawapiskat - Solutions?

Great Debates
121

Please provide a cite that proves that Indians are not allowed to build their own houses on reserves.

As I have previously explained to you, Indians most certainly are allowed to build their own houses on reserves. You are confusing land ownership with house ownership. The band controls the land (with the very odd exception), so Indians on a reserve who wish to build their own home lease or are permitted to use the land on which they build. When they buy a house, it is the house they buy, not the land under it. I realize that you don’t often see that sort of residential real estate arrangement in Burlington (I used to live on Tayandaga Park Drive), but it is not unheard of (the example I gave you previously was of my own family building a home on leased land – waterfront between St. Andrews and St. Stephen, N.B.). If you find youself up my way in TBay, I’d be glad to give you a tour of the adjacent reserve, where you will come across basic government housing, and private housing that ranges from run-down trailer homes, to well maintained trailer homes, to modest homes, to lovely waterfront homes with a view that is magnificient.

122

RickJay, it just occured to me that the Toronto Islands are a non-aboriginal example of private homes being built on leased land. There are restrictions on the sale of of these homes that are not suffered by homeowners on reserves, but the basic arrangement of private home ownership on leased land remains the same. Law Document English View | Ontario.ca

123

Here’s a simple way to look at it.

When people in Canada, be they Indian or not, and be they on reserve or not, cannot find work and fall too far below the poverty line, they can receive welfare/social assistance. Remote reserves usually have no economic base, so most of the members of the remote reserves are on welfare.

When people in Canada are too poor to be able to build, buy, or rent homes or apartments, they end up in public housing. This applies whether the person is aboriginal or not. When there is a shortage of public housing (which is the norm throughout Canada, both on and off reserve), people in need of public housing end up couch surfing or moving in with relatives. This results in over-crowding. Poverty is so commonplace in remote reserves that the ratio of public housing to private housing, and the overcrowing rate, are both significantly higher on reserves than elsewhere.

The government tries to address social and economic inequities when it comes across them, whether the people invovled be Indian or not, and whether the location be on-reserve or not. That is why there are funds going to remote reserves for health, education, and public housing.

At issue is whether or not the various parties involved with remote reserves (Indians, governments, and industries) can work though to solutions acceptable to all parties, of if the very nature and location of remote reserves make the situation hopeless.

The issue is complicated by a number of historical and social factors, the two most significant being that the very nature of the relationship between Indians and the government in most of Canda is based on ownership of the land being communally held by the Indians except where surrendered to the Crown (the government) by treaty, and being that there are some problems inherent in the Indian Act that governs reserve life that make it very difficult to economically delevlop a reserve (usually a band can lease land out, but cannot sell it, debts owed to non-Indians cannot involuntarily collected on a reserve, and band councils can prevent anyone from being on a reserve).

124

In that last paragraph, I should have said the three most significant factors, not just two. I should have set out the problem of the attempts at integration (including residential schools) having been hideously unsuccessful, resulting in a further worsening of indvidual, family and community functioning in reserves.

125

It seems to be the case on Attawapiskat. It may not be on all or even most reserves, since they all have slightly different arrangements but that fact about Attawapiskat has been mentioned in more than a few stories about the plight of the residents there.

126

The federal “Budget” is a policy statement about proposed spending changes and Government priorities, not an actual spending plan. For that, you need to look at the annual Main and Supplementary Estimates which specify the overall government and individual departmental budget amounts, and are the basis of the Appropriation Acts (Supply Bills) by which Parliament actually authorizes the amounts to be spent.

For further reading on the same site, the Reports on Plans and Priorities are the individual departmental statements of how they are planning to use the budgeted money (with measurable result criteria where applicable), and the Departmental Performance Reports are reports on the actual use of the previous year’s money in comparison to the planned use.

If you want to know how the federal government is spending your taxes, this site, the Public Accounts site, and the Auditor General Reports are where the core information is found.

127

The issue is not ancestry, it’s a treaty. The issue isn’t between you and some native or another but between two nations (even though one has only limited sovereignty). If a treaty was signed in 1763 (IIRC) with the UK, the successor state (Canada) is bound by it. Obviously even truer for a treaty signed by Canada itself in 1930.

If Canada renege on its side of the deal, then the treaty is null and void, and whatever the band agreed to give up at the time they should get back. It doesn’t matter whether or not you bought your house legally with your own hard-earned money. If it happens that this house is build on land that was given up by a treaty that Canada decides unilaterally to break, then Canada should be bound to give back your land (and logically indemnize you with taxpayers money) or pay up to indemnize the band to their satisfaction.

Is such a thing going to happen? Nope, obviously. But you seem to think it should be perfectly normal for Canada to walk out of her treaty obligations while keeping everything they got from said treaty. No different from you deciding not to pay your mortgage anymore but thinking that you ought to keep your house nevertheless.

You’re right in thiking that you personnally don’t owe anything to an individual native but your nation owes something to his. Even if you just became a Canadian subject yesterday (maybe even moreso, in fact), you implicitely agreed to the obligations resulting from your citizenship like paying taxes to fund Canada’s treaty obligations. Of course, in exchange, the native isn’t allowed to kick you out of your house build on previously native-owned land.

You (and a couple other posters) seem to think it’s a one-way street and that your taxpayer money is just handed out in exchange of nothing, conveniently forgetting what Canada and Canadians got (or still get, like in the case of the diamond mine) in the deal.

128

With due respect, no, that absolutely is not what I said. You are confusing me with someone else.

The treaties as they stand must be gotten rid of, but I as I have stated over and over and over again, for years now in fact, they cannot be replaced with nothing. They must be replaced with one or both of two things:

  1. Lots and lots and lots of money, or

  2. Lots and lots and lots of land, handed over to a genuinely sovereign government.

As it stands, the Attawaskipat band, to use that example, has been given essentially nothing; the settlement pretty much is the entire reserve. While they claim to have ancestral title to the diamond mine miles away, legally they have no ownership or title to it at all (for the sake of PR, De Beers does give them a pile of money and goes out of its way to hire Attawapiskat band members, but it’s to keep up appearances, not because they have to.) I’m not even sure if their claim to the mine’s valid. They could hardly stand to lose anything to lose the treaty, because they’ve got nothing to lose except a few square kilometres of clapboard buildings. I’m suggesting giving them something.

When I say hand over a country-sized country, I’m not fucking around. I’m not talking about some useless patch of land, I mean a really, really big peice, or peices, of Canada. Like half of it… most of northern Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC; all of the North, parts of nothern Quebec, part of Labrador. Create one of the world’s biggest countries. It would be exceptionally expensive, to be sure. Alternatively, buy them out of the treaties, and again, I mean seriously big bucks.

129

Well, sorry for the mistake, then.

In fact I was irritated by posters basically stating : "why don’t we just stop handing out money to them?"as if the only reasons why they get something were political correctness and “white man guilt” as opposed to obligations born from willfully signed treaties whose Canada benefitted from

130

I’m not sure RickJay would disagree with any of that. All he’s saying is that the current structure of things utterly fails to deliver decent lives to a great many of Canada’s aboriginals, and fails to do so precisely because of the way it’s structured. I find it hard to disagree with his analysis.

I’m not convinced of either of his solutions, but that’s largely irrelevant because of the complete impossibility of either of them being implemented. He’s aware that they trample all over the established treaties, and that this is a large part of what makes them impossible. He’s just saying, “This is what it would take to fix things.” As I say, I’m not convinced, but that’s not the point. The point is that at this point the treaties are part of the problem.

Okay, so the treaties are part of the problem. So shouldn’t we just abrogate them? This is seriously suggested with some regularity by a coworker of mine, who is somewhat…ah…racist. “We give them all this stuff and yet whenever there’s an issue it’s the white man’s fault. When are we just going to cut them off and let them fend for themselves?” To which I respond, “I don’t know. When are we giving them all the land back?”

Obviously unilateral abrogation of the treaties is just going to make things worse. At this stage, the only way forward is to go piecemeal, assisting individual First Nations in building economically viable communities. Sadly, this solution is only open to the select few First Nations who are situated in locations where economically viable communities are possible, which means that the Attawapiskats of our country are going to remain shitholes for the foreseeable future. I don’t believe there is a viable solution to the problems of communities like Attawapiskat, and that is a great tragedy.

131

RickJay, have a boo at s. 20 – 28, 37, 42 (2), 44 (3), 46 (1) (d), 48 (3), 48 (12), 49, 50 and 89 of the Indian Act Indian Act , which sets out how an individual Indian’s rights to land are handled on reserves. The long and short of it is that occupation certificates can be given, bought, sold, bequeathed and mortgaged between Indians, but not people other than Indians (or the band or Crown).

You in Burlington “own” the land that your house is built upon, but what this really means is that it is the Crown’s land, and you are a tenant, probably holding your interest in fee simple as a sole tenant. If you and your ex “owned” a home together, have a look at the deed from back then. It is most likely that the two of you held it in fee simple as joint tenants, or possibly as tenants in common. My point is that you are just a tenant, although you “own” your land.

The difference between your estate in your land (the bundle of rights that you have with respect to your land), and an Indian’s estate in his reserve land (the bundle of rights that he has with respect to his reserve land), is that you can transfer or encumber your interest in your land to anyone, whereas the Indian can only transfer or encumber his interest in his reserve land to other Indians, to the band, or back to the Crown. He is just a tenant too, with his estate in his land being similar in nature to your estate in your land, but much narrower in scope due to his being restricted to dealing with other Indians while you are free to deal with anyone.

Since there are strings attached to an Indian’s estate in reserve land that prevent the Indian from transferring or mortgaging his estate to a non-Indian, and that remove all of his interest in the land should he no longer be entitled to live on the reserve (and remember that Band Councils can turf anyone, including their own band members, permanently out of their reserve – although the law is not fixed in this issue at this time), it has become commonplace to think of people off reserve as owning their land, and Indians on reserve only having open-ended leases that can be transferred to other Indians. Technically, this is not correct, but it is a very good analogy when holding conversations in which the participants are regular folks who casually think of only in terms of ownering and leasing.

Quite simply, the reason that most Indians in Attawapiskat do not build their own houses there is because they are too poor, not because they are prohibited by law, just as in Burlington most people do not build their own houses because they cannot afford it, not because they are prohibited by law.

You stated that with respect to Indians not being allowed to build their own houses on their reserves, “It seems to be the case on Attawapiskat. It may not be on all or even most reserves, since they all have slightly different arrangements but that fact about Attawapiskat has been mentioned in more than a few stories about the plight of the residents there.” Just because something is reported does not make it true. There are some big misconceptions that people and the media sometimes spread about. This business about Indians not being allowed to build their own houses on their reserves is one such misconception. Other misconceptions include the sometimes voiced belief that Indians are required to live on reserves (when in fact they are free to live wherever they chose but do not want to leave their family and community – you and I have already covered this point), and that everything is free for Indians because they are Indians (when in fact the so-called handouts to bands and individual Indians are for the most part based on the government trying to deal with poverty as opposed to there being an inherent right to handouts – as I have coverd up-thread).

132

based on your well constructed summary (thanks) it’s not specifically an Indian problem but it’s exacerbated by anyone of Indian decent who wishes to live on reserve land.

So Canada has an indefinite time limit on welfare? The United States took a stab at ending long-term welfare although a portion of the money was just sent back to the states to fund other social programs. It’s hard to track and compare social relief money on a timeline.

I’ve always wondered if treaties should be disbanded but it would be tough to divide up the properties because everybody of traceable lineage would come out of the woodwork. That wouldn’t change anything the level of poverty except maybe to force people out in the middle of nowhere to locate closer to government funds. There’s be a small savings there.

133

Muffin, excellent explanation of how we “own” land in Canada. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess that you were my first-year property law prof.

134

RickJay
I understand about the issues with maintenance and really wasn’t thinking of a “big ol’ cinderblock apartment building.” That would be inappropriate for the climate and futile for a variety of reasons. Disregard for maintenance is a common problem with tribal/primitive types. The Middle East is very similar in that they love high tech gadgets and machinery but have zero interest in maintaining them. The result is early failure and the tribal type declaring that his dead widget was a piece of crap. Their response to the failure is to buy another gadget instead of wondering why their own gadgets seem to fail so quickly but last for people in other societies.

I agree with everything you said. Many Indian tribes are nothing more than organized, multi-generational Welfare leeches with no desire to contribute or better themselves or improve in any way.
My goal was to do two things, prevent them from starving/freezing this winter, and at least make a start on destroying this stone-age tribal structure that keeps them in the hellhole reservation and on welfare.
The first part, keeping them from starving or freezing, is obvious and necessary and, as you say, will get done anyway.
The other part is that, as I understand it, the tribe is allocated government money to do certain things, build housing, maintain roads and sewage plants, keep the streetlights burning and similar infrastructure-type services. This money is presently being pissed away by the chiefs to keep their families and supporters happy. As Muffin pointed out, something like 90% of the money vanishes before the housing gets built.
Some of this will be in the form of inflated salaries for their followers. Some of it will be in inflated prices for travel and lodging and other “Administrative costs.” Other pieces will disappear when the tribe decides on the contractor to do some of this work. The one that gets the bid will probably be the one that “donates” money to some tribal fund or other that is controlled by the leaders. The bid winner will also hire a lot of local labor that rarely if ever shows up for work. These local hires will, strangely enough, be supporters of the present leaders. It’ll just work out that way. The contractor’s price will, of course, be jacked-up accordingly.

OK, since this work is now being done by the Army, for purely compassionate reasons, there is no need to give money to these tribal chiefs. Take the money away from the tribal chiefs/elders/honchos. Don’t let them handle a dime of it, they obviously aren’t good at it and there is no need now that someone else is doing the work. Audit the fuck out of them on anything they DO manage to get their hands on, target them as the sleazy political scumbags that they are. Prosecute the fuck out of them when they do something sleazy and jail them whenever they step out of line. Same rules as any other public servant, no more tiptoeing around and excusing this shit because “It’s part of their culture” or other whiny crap.
In the meantime, the government does the job itself, properly and promptly, and KEEPS THE MONEY. Any local hires are competitive and both retention and pay is based on performance and attendance, no free lunch. The chiefs start having problems keeping their followers since they now have no money for favors, there are no contractors giving them kickbacks, no budgets for “Administrative expenses” and no juicy government funding lines to milk. The chief would get his (small!) monthly check from the government just like everyone else and that is all the funding he would get.
Doing this would accomplish several things. The present power structure would be destroyed, a worthy accomplishment in itself. The people would also get their welfare checks or whatever they are called in Canada. Those checks would go a lot farther if they moved South. Not as a tribe, just John Doe Indian deciding it would be better to live in Ottawa or somewhere. Maybe they get a few bucks for training and moving allowance, but not as a tribe or group, just individuals. Eventually, I think the tribe would simply disappear, not today or tomorrow, but soon.

Regards

Testy

135

Correct, the poverty problem is exacerbated by the reserve system. It has resulted in remote communities with no hope in hell of ever being economically self-sufficient, which when combined with the effects of programs of aggressive assimilation (for example, residential schools), have resulted in truly horrifying social problems in remote reserve communities.

Correct, there is no time limit on welfare in Canada. It is based on need.

Assimilation was the goal back in the days of Duncan Campbell Scott (a major Canadian poet who was the President of the Royal Society of Canada in addition to being an uber-civil servant in Indian Affairs), when in 1920 he addressed the Special Committee of the House of Commons examining the Indian Act amendments:

(Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent General of the Department of Indian Affairs, testimony before the Special Committee of the House of Commons examining the Indian Act amendments of 1920, National Archives of Canada, Record Group 10, volume 6810, file 470-2-3, volume 7, pp. 55 (L-3) and 63 (N-3), as cited in The Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996.)

To say the least, the previous attempts at aggressive assimilation (as opposed to cultural adaptation) have not worked to relieve the poverty of remote reserves. “A few bucks for training and moving allowance” does nothing of any significance to deal with the problems Indians from remote reserves face when they land up in urban areas, or when they return in failure to their reserves, or when they are so down by their own situations and by what they see of those who return that they prefer to live in squalor on their reserve.

136

That’s not going to happen. It would be easier to change the constitution. Additionally, Canada would cease to exist.

Now creating governments less than sovereign is something that I think might have a chance and have long thought would be a good solution. But the conditions on who can buy and sell the land have to be removed.

137

Muffin
Thank you for this. Ya know, while I was reading the thread, I started wondering. What is our goal? What is it that the Indians want? What do the rest of the Canadians and Americans want?
If we are forbidden to try and forcibly assimilate them they remain as aliens in the country where they were born. Going back to the good ol’ days is obviously out, there just isn’t enough countryside to allow that.
So what is our mutual goal?
We can’t roll back the clock and we are forbidden to treat them like any other citizen then what are our options? The government can’t and won’t pay them the kind of money it takes to bail them out of something like Attawapiskat, not forever.
They seem stuck in a dreary cycle of subjugation and ignorance and poverty and there seems no way to fix that.

(On re-reading this it sounds snarky. I did not have that in mind at all, it is meant as a serious question.)
Regards

Testy

138

No, that did not come across as snarky at all. It addresses the problem head on.

I don’t know what the steps toward improvements will be, but I think that the Indian Act needs to be radically reformed or scrapped altogether.

139

I was thinking about this when I was writing my previous post in this thread. What would success look like? And I realized there’s probably no agreement on that point, which no doubt contributes to the ongoing failures.

Wholesale relocation/assimilation is not desired by the Indians themselves (and who can blame them, given the history of these policies?) and yet if economic self-sufficiency is any part of the goal at all, then huge numbers of communities, particularly in the north, are simply not viable.

140

It seems rather selfish to declare that people are wasting their lives if they aren’t contributing to modern society in some way. To what extent should we be drawing the line of such waste, even in principle? I’m not a doctor or lawyer or any of those things, and I doubt my contribution to society is massive. Is my life wasted?