Oh, hell, as long as you stay in the Southern side of the city it’s fine. I’ve got a friend going to university there and my brother used to work in the city. It’s an okay place as long as you stay out of the bad areas. I prefer Saskatoon, but I’d rather go to Regina than Vancouver or something.
There was a big scandal here in Saskatchewan last week because of a contest the government sponsored for Juno tickets. Listeners of a radio station in Vancouver were invited to finish the sentence ‘You know you’re in Saskatchewan when…’ Of course, it was mostly stupid hick farmer jokes. But that’s okay, I’d rather have that than ‘You know you’re in Vancouver when you’re mugged by homeless druggies.’
Upthread featherlou mentioned Moose Jaw. Honestly, I’d rather live in a horribly boring, mostly safe place than a big, violent city. Moose Jaw: Prince Albert without the STDs and crystal meth.
Is the water in Regina still brown or have they fixed that?
Prince George is really surprisingly improved in the last 10 years, and especially since the bug wood thing, since the economy is not nearly as craptastic as it was. The university has made a huge difference to the town.
Anyone who thinks Toronto is even vaguely in the running for worst place in Canada has probably never been here. There are certainly crappy parts of it, but it’s a huge city, and there are a lot more non-crappy parts.
Oh, that reminds me of the water in Moose Jaw. Seriously bad water.
kushiel, I heard about that Juno ticket thing. That still gets under my skin, after being gone from Saskatchewan for 18 or so years now. Every province has it’s pluses and minuses; Saskatchewan is no different.
Nah, a few days of heavy partying does not equal a lifetime of squalor, violence and continual passing out on the street.
BTW, I have a collegue who was adopted out from the community when she was an infant, and relocated to southern Ontario. She is now a lawyer, and is a nice person. In recent years, her birth parents have both been murdered in separate incidents, and her birth brother has been convicted of murder (again a separate incident).
On the road into the town, you pass a small community. Many people prefer to fly in rather than drive because pot shots have been made at vechicles travelling the road, but even this is not a grauranteed solution, for at another neighbourng community pot shots have been made at planes taking off and landing. (On one occasion, I was travelling with some cops, a judge, a court reporter, a court clerk, a prosecutor, and another defence attornery, when we were delayed while the local anti-aircraft crew was tracked out of the bush – I was not able to convinve the judge the we should try and convict the shooters, and then take them up in the plane, open the door and toss them out.) I have a collegue who is a defence attorney who stays in a jail cells when he attends certain communities up there, simply out of concerns for his safety, just as certain communities up there have fenced in nursing compounds so as to protect the nurses. I have had several clients from up that way who have told me that they are regularly raped and beaten, and the cases that I have worked on have included “sleeping beauty” rape – the practice of having sex with passed out women at nightly drunken house parties. Youth suicide rates are outrageously high.
The problem of drunks laying on the street is just the tip of the iceberg. The social, physical and economic conditions of some of the more remote communities in north-western Ontario are truly abysmal.
Ah, crap, now I’m getting bummed out just thinking about it. It is so very tragically sad.
That vacant land is occupied by farmland, Nisku and Leduc. Edmonton’s pretty great (and that’s hard to get from a Calgarian like me) but it has its good and bad like everywhere.
I avoided talking about those places in my replies because “town/city” to me doesn’t really describe those places. They’re more like concentration camps. The sad part is how many Canadians think the government should continue keeping those people there to fulfill some weird cultural debt.
For communities without a hope of ever having an economic base, there is little that could be done to ease the isolation and poverty.
For communities with an economic base or with the possibility of an economic base, I’d suggest focusing on education, political stability at the band level, and revamping the Indian Act to remove debtor’s immunity.
Relocation to an actual city without corresponding loss in benefits, at least for awhile. Isolation is itself most of the problem; these places have no jobs, nothing for the kids to do, no connection to anything, no hope.
Why not offer these people a chance to relocate to Thunder Bay or Sudbury or what have you, while not taking away the benefits gained from being on a reservation? In fact, INCREASE the benefits for a few years. Why not say “Move to Thunder Bay and keep your kids in school and we’ll give you two thousand dollars a month, tax free, for five years.” How could that possibly be worse than systematically making people live in isolated, useless shitholes?
A few years ago I suggested even offering a buyout option; give up status, and the government will give you $50,000 in cold, hard cash. Family of five, you say? Well, here’s your check for $250,000. Tax free. No obligations, no taxes, no strings attached; $50,000 per person in cold, hard cash. But you become a regular citizen, as do all your direct descendants yet to be born. Here’s a list of rental properties in Hamilton, or Kitchener, or Kingston, or St. Catharines. Or you can stay where you are if you like… but this is it.
Would this cost a fortune? You’re damn straight it would. But in the long run I bet it’d work better than the 140-year-old pseudo-apartheid fiasco we have now.
The situation as it stands is a crime against humanity and a stain on our country. We have created a system that benefits rich white guys, bureaucrats and band “leaders” and systematically drives half a million people into a subclass that results in economic desperation, poverty, addiction, and death, and today the motivation for it is largely a nebulous, semi-clear sense of trying to preserve First Nations “culture” and avoid genuinely dealing with stickly legal and treaty issues.
That we’re allowing human beings to live in misery and die needlessly in the name of preserving a “culture” and avoiding paying the piper for centuries of oppression and neglect is nothing short of disgusting.
I don’t think the lump sum “buy-out” would work. You can’t give people who are used to living in third-world-like poverty a massive sum of money and expect them to go invest it and use it wisely - they don’t have the skills and attitudes for that.
Paying people to move into larger centres wouldn’t tend to work, either. If you are used to a life of welfare, poverty, and drinking and drugging, you’re not magically going to turn into Joe Lunchbox when you move into town. You’ll just have a larger pool of people to drink and drug with.
I don’t think throwing more money in the form of hand-outs at our Native problem is going to fix anything. I think a lot of the current problems have been caused by money for nothing - it’s not good for your self-worth for humans to live without earning a living (and I suspect governments have long known that). Perpetuating the Treaty-Welfare state isn’t working, but cutting off the money altogether leaves all these people with no education, no skills, and having known nothing but the Treaty-Welfare state with no income at all.
I realize this is close to heresy in Canada, but I would consider eliminating the concept of the Treaty and/or Status Indian altogether. Become simply Canadians, with no special treatment at all (phased in, of course). It’s starting to sound ridiculous that they were here first. Yeah, they were. That and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee. Statute of limitations on feeling bad about “taking their country” is up. The Canadians (like most of us in this thread) living here now aren’t going anywhere. It’s called “acceptance” and it’s the first step to healing.
I hear the outcry - “They’ll lose their culture!” First - what culture? The culture of poverty, drinking, teenage pregnancy, abuse, and wasting their lives? I hope they do lose that culture. Any “noble” culture they once had is long gone, except in the ways Natives themselves are keeping it alive.
Second - people lose their cultures all the time. It’s not the end of the world. People move to Canada from all over the world, and their children and grandchildren keep as much of their culture as the family makes an effort to keep, but mostly, they’re just Canadian. Moving Natives out of their “special” status and into just plain Canadians doesn’t have to cost them all their culture - no one would be keeping them from doing cultural things they want to do. It would just put them on the same footing as the rest of Canadians, and I think that would be better for all of us in the long run.
Really, if we are voting for the worst - I’ll chalk in “Puks” (Pukatawagan)
Very sad little town, much of the soil is contaminated from old diesel and oil spills that no one can be bothered to clean up. There are 100 homes that are supposed to be replaced (they were demolished due to contamination), but they have been waiting since the 70s.
It has over 80% unemployment. The houses that are standing are falling apart due to simply too many people (the Chief shares her home with 40 family members). The buildings just can’t take that wear and tear.
They can’t afford to move, they can’t afford to build (even if they could, no supplies). Everything that is good for you is very expensive ($4 per pound of bananas). Diabetes is high, students struggle with school due to poor diet and lack of sleep (many sleep on matresses on the floor in common rooms). Teen pregnancy is high.
It’s very much like many other northern communities. I realize that the same poverty exists right in my city, but at least there is slightly better access to resources if you are motivated to make a change.
I’m roughly sixty percent in agreement, but forty percent in disagreement.
Relocation to real cities would unquestionably work for some people. Sure, some drunks and gas-huffers will remain so, but there at least now exists a chance for these people to have real lives. If you look at socioeconomic class in big Canadian cities, there’s a relatively high amount of mobility. Some people born into welfare-dependent and booze-swilling families are doomed… but some are not. Many make something of themelves, because they have a chance to. People trapped in reservation communities a thousand miles from anywhere have no chance. Saving some is better than none, and with each passing generation, the lingering effects of isolation and hopelessness will further dilute. Look at it this way; if we keep doing things the way we do them now, 100 years from now we will be exactly where we are today. If you break this system up, 100 years from now there’s a good chance the problem will be a bad memory.
Supper you move a thousand people from Gasoline Inlet to Thunder Bay, and 900 remain hopelessly dole-dependent, but 100 don’t. A hundred beats zero, doesn’t it?
As for the issue of buy out, of course it won’t work. You can rejig the methodology if you want - say a gradual payout - but the point here is to convince people to leave the system. I don’t care if it takes $25 or $25,000; you need to end the system as it stands, and if you have to pay people to make them volunteeer to leave it, then you pay them.
I am absolutely, 100% in agreement. It’s a ridiculous travesty. However, to do this you have to settle the legal issue involved - and that means payment, either in cash or land. Hence the buyout idea, or perhaps the feds could offer massive land grants, conditional upon the end of status. Whatedver the solution it is going to involve payment, payment in the billions, because the courts would never allow the feds to unilaterally end status.
But of course, they weren’t. I’m 35 years old and was born here; I was here before any Indian who’s 34 or younger. I’m as native a Canadian as anyone who has ever lived. In any event, we otherwise do not allocate citizenship rights according to seniority. Once you’re a citizen, you’re a citizen. An immigrant from Pakistan who took the oath yesterday is legally as much a citizen as I am and that’s the way I like it.
The crimes visited upon the First Nations were heinous in the extreme, but there seems to be a sort of national blindness to the fact that the current system is hurting real, live human beings right now. Instead, virtually all actions we’re taking now seem designed to increase the isolation and apartheid status of aboriginals. the recent trend towards blathering on about their “culture” and pretending dreamcatchers and inukshuks and those native dancers they trot out for visiting dignitaries matter to us and all that nonsense is, IMHO, racist and appalling. In a rush to make up for something that can never be made up for, we ooh and aah over an abstract and ignore the flesh and blood human beings we’re assigning the culture to. Imagine if we started treatinbg African-Canadians that way, paying them to live in isolated communities and making it up to them by pretending the Zulu shield is a national symbol. It’s outrageous.
Just a month ago I performed a quality audit on a consulting and engineering firm. One of the projects I inspected was a project whereby the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, or whatever they called it now, contracted them to go to a reservation in Alberta and ask the “elders” what’s wrong with their lives. The hypothesis was that these people appeared to be extremely poor so they should go ask them about it to see what had to be done. The results were that - hold on to your hats - the old people complained that they were really poor.
For this, the government paid $80,000 of your tax money. Yes, eighty thousand big ones so we could find out that poor people are poor. This is where most of the money the government spends on Indian Affairs goes; wasted by mostly white government bureaucrats on irrelevant programs, studies and initiatives to justify their continued employment.
The Canadian government now spends about five BILLION dollars a year “Administering” natives and native reservations. It’s quite obvious to me they’d be better off firing the entire government apparatus, taking all that money, and just cutting checks to natives every month. That couldn’t possibly work worse.
Agreed. If it worked for any percentage of Indians, I would support it whole-heartedly. I can think of reasons why it wouldn’t work (as I outlined earlier), but having a small chance of success isn’t a reason to not try it as part of a comprehensive program of ending Indian poverty and isolation in Canada.
Agreed.
Don’t Indians already own the reservation land? I agree that there has to be some kind of trade-off for eliminating status/treaty agreements that so obviously aren’t working.
Agreed. This is my country. I was born here. Who was here first sounds like kids squabbling over whose toy it is.
But we’re not supposed to say that. We’re supposed to feel bad about taking their country and call them Native Canadians (I was born here - am I not a native Canadian?) and give them money for nothing to stay on reservations. We aren’t even supposed to be having this discussion we’re currently having. It’s not very Politically Correct.
Ah, now we’re getting to the point where the rubber hits the road. Indians don’t like being treated crappily; average Canadians (when we think of it) don’t like Indians being treated crappily; so why does it continue without anything appearing to change for the better?
The Federal Crown holds title to Indian reservation land, in trust for each Indian Band.
Some Bands don’t have a land base at all. Some Bands have a land base but are in disagreement with the Crown as to its dimensions. Some Bands have a land base that has been partly sold off by the Crown. These all lead to land claims.
Since the land is held in trust, the Indians can not do a thing with it unless the Crown approves. Up until recently, the Crown could do whatever it wanted with the land without the Band’s consent. Presently, the Crown is supposed to only act concerning reservation land if it has the consent of the Band, but even then there are instances where the Crown rents out or sells off land without consent.
Many Bands have reservation land, but consider a broader expanse of land outside of their reservation to be traditional land. Presently, the Crown is supposed to only act concerning such traditional land after it has consulted with the Band, but there are instances where the Crown fails to consult, or where the Crown consults but essentially ignores the Band’s position.
Obtaining consent from a Band is problematic. Canada’s European derived political system is based on democracy. Traditional Indian politics are based on a consensus of Elders. Often consent from a Band will be formally given through the Band Council as elected under the Indian Act, when in fact consent may not have been given by the Elders through the Elders’ consensus. Band Chiefs and councils elected under the Indian Act tend to be elected on a family basis – whomever has the larger extended family tends to win. That in turn tends to lead to handouts to family members when government funds, government funded contracts, or employment positions become available. If a member from a different family is elected, then often the handouts are cut off and re-directed to members of the newly elected family. Elected councilors tend to be younger than Band Elders, leading to intergenerational conflict. Bands traditionally have a patriarchal political structure in which women often have little or no direct voice in Band affairs, either through elected positions or as Elders. Given all the above, it becomes very difficult to judge when real representative consent has been given. With some Bands, consent really is consent. With other Bands, consent really is not representative of what the members of the Band want.
When it comes to deciding who lives in what house, the land on the Reserve remains owned by the Federal Crown in trust for the Band. The Band decides who should live in which house, and the Federal Crown through Indian and Northern Affairs pays for the building of houses. Given the control of Band Councils by extended families, if a person does not have the right relatives, that person may wait a very long time for housing. Destroying houses is common during drunken nights (everything from smashing windows and doors, to putting holes through walls, to burning wall frames and floors in bonfires), and the Federal Government is not partial to rebuilding frequently, so over time, overcrowding becomes a problem. A very high birthrate from teenage pregnancies also leads to overcrowding, for the homes that the Federal Government builds tend to be small single family units, rather than large units intended to house grandparents, teenage children and many grandchildren.
Since the land on a reserve is owned by the Federal Crown in trust for the Band, a person living in a house on a reservation can not get a mortgage on that land. That makes it difficult or impossible to raise funds to build a better home. Furthermore, under the Indian Act, there are provisions to protect Indians living on reserve against debt collection, and Bands can prohibit persons from trespassing on a reserve, which make the extension of credit to an Indian living on a reserve a highly risky thing. Without credit, economic development is extremely difficult, forcing Indians to go cap in hand to the Government when they need credit to fund their on-reserve businesses.
Like I say, answering “Don’t Indians already own the reservation land?” is a tough one, for it illustrates many of the systemic challenges Indians living on Reserves face.
My $0.02? Average Canadians don’t like it, but ultimately don’t really care. Its not a hot button issue, its not going to sway votes either so nothing gets done. To get change you first need to have a desire for change. That just isn’t there. People talk about how homophobia and gay rights is the last barrier to equality, but really its the way the US, Canada and Australia have treated their Indians. If we looked deep into our individual countries my guess is most citizens of said country would rather they just go away.
There is a lot of that already. A good example would be Dennis Cromarty High School, which is an Indian run school in Thunder Bay created to accomodate kids from remote reserves. For adults moving to TBay, there is the Indian Friendship Centre, that provides access to any number of services that ease the transition.
Part of the problem flows from the abuses of previous residential schools. The children were ripped from their parents, which devestated the parents, causing a tremendous increase in alcoholism on Reserves. Aside from having new assholes ripped at the residential schools, children were cut off from their families and their culture, and actively prohibited from using their birth language, leaving them as aliens when returned to their reserves, again causing a tremendous increase in alcoholism on reserves. That’s why such great care is being taken now to encourage education, including attending schools in regional centres, without blowing families apart. It’s quite a dilema – the problem can’t be fixed unless kids move to the city for education and economic opportunities, but moving kids to the city causes the problem.
I think a lot of the problem is that there is no simple solution. There are a lot of people with their hearts in the right place, but there is no obvious course of action to take.
I was wondering what life is like for the poor people who live in those remote towns in northern Labrador-these places must be terrible? With the collapse of the Cod fishery, there is almost no work in these places-yet the government still supports these towns. The young people leave (or become drug addicts)-and there is n future for those who remain. Why not forcibly relocate these people? It would be saving them from a terrible fate.