“Idle No More”: First Nations Resistance Movement across Canada

“A study was done of all band audits ever done to look for evidence of corruption. Less than three percent of all of those audits ever found anything that could even be close to an individual purposely taking money for their own purposes and mismanaging it. That’s a lower corruption rate than all of the municipalities, provinces and Canada put together. So who is the corrupt ones here? It’s not First Nations!” - Miq’Maq lawyer Pam Palmater


“Idle No More”: First Nations Resistance Movement across Canada | Global Research

The moral relativism aside...

I have difficulty believing that.

I wonder how many loopholes and/or excuses were used to justify or hide unethical behavior?

Well for starters it says "of all band audits ever done", so the first question should be-"How many band audits have ever been done?"

And who were the auditors?

And by whom.

What type of audit was done?

Pam Palmater (PhD,LLB) had to fight tooth and nail to get her status card and was rejected several times consecutively befor succeeding.
Possibly more white than red I presume.
She now despises all things whitey and routinely accuses the Governement of Canada of genocide.
She is the behind the scenes leader and stratigist of Idle no More and is using the movement to try and bring down her political foe Shaun Atleo.
Believing her statements verbatim is a fools game.
The Government of Canada has reported that the accountancy standards of between 40 and 60% of Canadian bands is substandard and unacceptable.
Somewhere around 40% of the bands are in direct contravention of signed fiscal agreements between the bands and Ottawa.
That means Ottawa has the legal right to move in on those bands and directly enforce outside accountancy and bookkeeping.
Ottawa does not do this simply because they know that the native outcry and demonstrations would go through the roof.
In other words Ottawa is afraid to enforce agreed upon regulations on reserves.
And guess who suffers? The neediest.
And who gains? The Chiefs and their friends.

That's more like it.

Idle No More, Meet the Norwegians

Canada's elite lack guts dealing with oil giants. First Nations might embolden all of us.



Norway is a long way from Attawapiskat but there may be some important lessons for Canada's First Nations from across the Atlantic in the looming showdown with Stephen Harper. In a recent series for The Tyee, I documented how this tiny Nordic country stood up to powerful outside oil interests intent on exploiting their natural resources and achieved a remarkable economic success.

By standing their ground with a clear vision and united front, Norwegians negotiated arguably the toughest ever terms with the world's most powerful industrial sector. They now enjoy full employment, no debt, generous social programs, and have over $600 billion in the bank -- putting them $1.2 trillion ahead of Canada.

Norwegian experts I interviewed repeatedly stressed that this achievement was rooted not in policy or economics but in their culture. Because people in Norway have such a strong and ancient connection with their land, and a famous Viking chutzpah dating back to the Iron Age, they refused to capitulate to outside timelines or artificial industrial imperatives.

Seen through this lens, the First Nations of Canada have a far better chance of replicating the Norwegian success story than the rest of our country. Their awakening could well lead the way forward towards transforming resource management in our country. And it needs transformation.

more


The Tyee – Idle No More, Meet the Norwegians

Canadians need stop stop settling for mediocre lives in a medicore country.

It seems Canadians don't have the balls to be number 1 and have far better lives.

To sit at the top of the heap without needing to blow the wad on military would be a world first.

We have it all and have it all without firing a single shot at somebody who couldn't defend themselves.

That's is unheard of in world history,

What?

This is a long article but well worth the read considering what Jonathan Kay found in his travels to some remote reserves.

Excerpt:

'If there is one James Bay-area Cree who personifies the spirit of do-it-yourself self-improvement, it is Allan Jolly, chairman of something called the MoCreebec Council of the Cree Nation. The MoCreebec people share Moose Factory Island with the Moose Cree First Nation, but they do not have a reserve.

Indeed, they are not even officially recognized as a First Nation within the meaning of the Indian Act. And here’s the surprising thing about that: Mr. Jolly kind of likes it that way.


“The only thing the federal government really knows how to do in this [field] is to create reserves and bands,” Mr. Jolly told me during an interview at the MoCreebec offices. “Even though we agreed in principle to having our own land base, we were skeptical about going in that direction.”


The MoCreebec people are essentially stateless Cree — First Nations Protestants from Quebec who migrated to the Moose Factory area decades ago because of its residential school and the hospital, and never left. Now, there are about 1,000 of them, but they’re not recognized by Ontario because their ancestors never signed on to any of the province’s treaties. In fact, they are still technically members of Quebec-based First Nations.



For modern reserves, success is in balancing tradition and capitalism | Canada | News | National Post

Do you have any idea how rich we are?

What's the context of post #11? What are you reponding to?

#10 and the rest of the shmucks who have no clue that we're making the leap forward that we should have 60 years ago that is going to make Canada the most prosperous nation on the planet.