Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) has declared a public health emergency. Here’s what they want:
All of this is quite reasonable, but only touches the surface, for poverty and isolation are at the root.
Fortunately, they’re holding an inquiry. As you know, inquiries fix everything.
Granted, it’s an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, which will, I am sure, reveal many, many things you already knew, but will somehow fix that problem. Right afterwards, though, maybe they can hold another inquiry about devastating poverty on reserves, and the oodles of money they spend on hotel rooms and dinners for the talking heads in Ottawa will, of course, solve all those problems as well.
They’re also holding a coroner’s inquest into why so many aboriginal students who come to learn in TBay at the aboriginal school end up dead.
Inquiries, inquests, hearings, etc. all work toward raising awareness, which in turn leads to pressure on politicians to effect changes, while at the same time the data and arguments of these conflabs help identify concrete action that can be taken.
Whoa. Bad lifestyle decisions, stress, extreme homesickness, or something else? Not a serial killer(s), I presume.
Not serial killers.
I have to point out, with due respect, that a coroner’s inquest is not the same thing as an inquiry.
In any case, yes, you’ve presented the optimistic theory about an inquiry. Does it work, though? I ask because there have been many inquiries. We’ve already had an inquiry on missing women related to the Pickton murders (many or most of whom were aboriginal) There was a Royal Commission in 1991, the Ipperwash inquiry, and so on and so forth.
If the inquiry creates “pressure on politicians” that’s cool, but at what point will the politicians do something? Speaking as a voter, I’m really hungry for one of the major parties to stand up at election time and say “Look, enough with the talk, we’ve got a radical plan for trying to fix this.” We don’t accept this nonsense in other areas. Can you imagine an election platform of “We have no idea what our budget will be, but we’ll hold an inquiry about it?” I’m going to go out on a limb here - in fact I will bet actual money on it - that the new inquiry will drone on for many months, cost many dollars, and the government will smile, nod its head, and do nothing of substance. They will, as governments do, not tackle anything politically risky, but will cheerfully lie and saying they’re doing lots. And then a subsequent government will call more inquiries, as if the previous ones had never happened, and the cycle will repeat. Inquiries are how the government appeases the voters without having to do much.
In this particular case, let’s be perfectly frank; anything the inquiry says is something I could have heard by just asking you. You’ve explained this social phenomenon on this message board in the past. And I am quite certain Mr. Trudeau and his cabinet, who are not drooling idiots, know full well what the inquiry will say and have the budget to figure it out. So why is the government pressing into service an inquiry, the best purpose of which you say is to put pressure on…* themselves*? What? Why not just skip the $250 hotel rooms and months of talk and go straight to doing the things they already know need to be done?
So, why so little will to do something when it comes to this and other indigenous issues?
Some reports get shelved, and some get acted upon. Of those that get acted upon, sometimes there is close to full implementation(e.g Toronto police use of force), and sometimes there is only partial but substantial implementation (residential school claims). Want something done? Start with a major report and keep your fingers crossed. Don’t want something done? Don’t start with a major report.
A big part of the problem is figuring out what needs to be done. (With the biggest nut to crack being the fundamental problem of how people can live in remote, isolated small communities with no economic base and still participate in the first world.) For example, presently a lot of resources are poured into remote communities, but since the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, and since some necessary elements are not being met, a lot of these resources are wasted rather than producing the anticipated results. (E.g., water and waste water plants without trained operators. People being hired thanks to funding, but who don’t understand the need to turn up for work. Funding for a community centre without washrooms. Funding for housing but no where near enough funding to house enough people. Drunk, drug addled gas sniffing people burning their government funded homes and community buildings down. Funding for off-site treatment centres, but insufficient funding for post-treatment community support. Air ambulance flights at about $6,000 a pop but basic health needs not being met in the communities leading to greater use of the air ambulance. Police services being put in place with start-up funding, but being greatly reduced by insufficient ongoing funding. An aboriginal high-school but insufficient supervision of the students resulting in a murder or suicide every couple of years out of a student body of only 140.)
Consequently, there is a movement to get the various stakeholders to work with each other, rather than each galloping off in their own directions. Thus the need for ongoing collaborative work, including meeting after meeting after meeting, study after study after study, and report after report after report. It ain’t easy, but it is necessary.
I think a lot of it comes down to money, and some of it comes down to out-of-sigh out-of-mind.
Joe Q. Public does not want a lot of his hard earned money taken out of his pocket and given to people who are not productive members of society. In most of Canada, it is usually possible to live in a physically and socially functional community, attend functional schools, and work your way out of poverty in that community or one a regional centre. That’s what we get for our taxes that go to health care, infrastructure, education, and social services. For the government to provide similar standards for remote communities it would take a lot more money per capita, not just because of the remoteness, but more significantly because of the existing problem of societal collapse, for on remote reserves major social problems are so common that the communities are severely dysfunctional. When faced with paying a hell of a lot of money to help a relatively small number of people who are not part of mainstream Canadian society, and who’s economic model is based on permanent government support and continued social and physical isolation, a lot of Canadians are not willing to have their taxes raised. Many figure that since the root of the problem lies with isolation, money will be thrown away if used to help people on remote reserves.
The last issue is the most significant - but it goes beyond mere isolation. It is support for an entirely separate infrastructure, based on long-established treaties and legal rights and responsibilities.
There is a widespread feeling on one side of the debate, with whatever legitimacy, that the dysfunction visible in native Canadian reserves is a product of the system of maintaining native Canadians as a legally separate category - hence that more cash pumped into the system may Band-Aid over particular problems, but will not make the system less dysfunctional overall.
The other side of the debate, on the other hand, is of the opinion that the system is both necessary and just - natives are separate nations and deserve more sovereignty and resources, not less; to them, it is the restrictions imposed on the system by Ottawa that are the problem. They point out that the native nations have, in many cases, had the land and resources they need to prosper yanked out from underneath them - and reparations for that have been inadequate.
The truth, I fear, lies somewhere between. Native Canadians were robbed blind by the government. However, even if they weren’t, Native Canadian reserve locations and treaties were originally based on ways of life that, in the modern world, are not economically viable. Continuing the status quo - even with massively enhanced resources - will not solve the problems, which have to do not only with poverty, but with what amounts to pointlessness: merely existing on a dole, however much that dole may be, however well deserved by historical reparations for past depredations, is never a fully satisfactory way of life - particularly given isolation etc.
Not that all is doom and gloom, some native communities are doing quite well. However, they tend to be the ones fortunate in their locations and levels of entrepreneurial leadership. Unfortunately, that is often seen as a sort of assimilation.
In a nutshell, there are some uncomfortable truths no-one likes to face all at the same time:
(1) For one side- that the Canadian government has treated natives shabbily and stolen resources and land from them;
(2) For the other side - that life on permanent dole sucks however rich that dole is, and that getting off that dole in effect requires what amounts to economic assimilation to Canadian society - in that it involves natives taking on business leadership roles (as some have done) and giving up the pretense of living a wholly separate lifestyle, and perhaps moving to where economic opportunities exist, rather than living where their ancestors lived; and
(3) That separate sovereignty, and resistance to assimilation in any form, is hardwired into the current system by both law and inclination - in large part as a reaction against failed ham-fisted and cruel attempts to “assimilate” native Canadians by force through such measures as residence schools.
The current call for inquires etc. is led by people on the side that is fully aware of point (1) but will resist to their last breath point (2), and takes for granted point (3).
So…?
Which is why change is highly unlikely. You’ve identified the root cause correctly which is some Canadians have different rights than others. Along with those rights come expectations that, in most cases, are unworkable in the modern world. People want control of their ‘nation’, but they don’t have the skills to manage it or the people and resources to support it. The locations themselves are unsustainable such that if it were any other community, it would have ceased to exist long ago.
The people on these reserves resent outside interference, but those on the outside see people living in poverty, being abused, and a myriad of other social dysfunctions and want to help. These competing interests result in few useful long-term solutions.
Neither wants to admit the reality that cultures change over time. Some even go extinct. Artificially sustaining cultures help few and hurt many.
Unfortunately, the only real solution will be to remove those special rights and make all Canadians the same. Whatya think the chances of that happening are?
I’m from Thunder Bay although I don’t live there anymore. I haven’t followed the inquest too much but I can tell you this, kids who come from the northern reserves to school in Thunder Bay face a lot of challenges and hardship. I can look up facts to support this at a later time, or Muffin will have th bit these are just some of issues.
There is an inordinate amount of racism in Thunder Bay mainly directed at the first nations population, which is the fastest growing segment of the population. Thunder Bay is a large city and very spread out. Public Transit is less than optimal, and kids may walk a lot to get to or from school or friends places. Isolation from others happens and loneliness cab lead to unhealthy coping methods.
Many of these students are the children or grandchildren of residential school survivors, the families may not be supportive of them attending. There can be addictions in the family and some of the troubled kids also turn to drugs and alcohol.
There are overdoses, suicides, but there are also situations of bullying, kids found in water and allegations they were pushed.
It is a sad and complex situation. We as a society are failing these kids.
And yet, we seem to keep giving them more and more money but nothing changes. Where the money is going is worrisome. We’ve all heard stories of chiefs driving Escalades and distributing major funds to council members, who coincidentally are family members, while the rest of the band lives in shitty conditions. I’m no expert in this, but we all can do better as a society. Personally I think excuses are being made. It’s an easy life to live on the dole, while watching satellite TV and blaming everyone else for your poverty. And it’s easy for the rest of us to just not care.
25,000and it’s not even March yet.
Well done!
All you have put forward is true. But at the same time there have been some major successes, and for every person making excuses, there is someone stepping up and making not excuses at all.
Two steps forward, one step back, trip into the gutter, claw back up again, and make those two steps forward.
Mona Lisa Simpson, check out today’s C.J. story on homelessness in TBay: 74% aboriginal. Note that TBay is about 10% aboriginal, depending on how you make the count.
That number speaks volumes concerning both levels of need and levels of support.
Ten years ago I was working on my BScN (as a single mom, working full time and living in County Park (and going slightly nuts) The Determinants of Health was basically the whole first course I took. At the time "Determinants of Health" was the major theory and focus of the ciriculum. At the time something I read/heard was 66% of the homeless were aboriginal. Such a leap in ten years is so sad.
My projects for that course and my final exam were so easy. It was my life, my neighbours’s lives, and the differences between those of us there temporarily and those who had grown up on the next block and were living in an endless cycle.
It won’t happen because too many hopes and too many resources have been invested in the status quo, which is why this conversation will keep repeating.
My prediction is that additional resources poured in (without significant structural change), and additional inquiries (structured in such a manner as to support improvements in the status quo, but not significant change to the status quo) will lead to some minor improvements in the symptoms, but no essential change in the disease.
The frustrating part is the sense that the more resources, inquiries, studies, panels etc., the more entrenched the status quo becomes, and so the more intractable the problems: at best, this current system, improved and brought ‘up to code’ so to speak, will produce isolated reserves that are not horribly deficient in the necessities of life - but they can’t make functional communities in places that have no economic rationale for existing, and they can’t artificially sustain a sense of cultural purpose and dignity from the outside. The best will in the world, and the highest level of subsidy possible, can’t do that.
One gets the impression that those actually interested in native Canadian affairs are typically wedded to the status quo, and see fundamental change to it as, essentially, either overt or covert enmity to native Canadians - a sort of cultural extinction or assimilation, akin to the horrors of the Residence Schools and other paternalistic attempts to eliminate native Canadian identity. This makes any serious discussion of such issues difficult, as no-one, and certainly no politician, wants to be seen in that light.
Fundamental change would have to come, then, from native Canadians themselves, not imposed from outside. Unfortunately, this seems unlikely on a large scale (though there are lots of small-scale examples of just that happening).
Malthus, you nailed it in one.