Attawapiskat a 'deep concern' for UN rights official
- Thread starter Machjo
- Start date
The fact that fellow Canadians live like this is embarassing. Also Attawapiskat is hardly unique. 15-25 years ago in a previous career I traveled Eastern Nunavut and Northern Ontario extensively. I've never been to Attawapiskat, but I've been to Big Trout lake, Deer Lake, Sandy Lake, Pikangikum, Resolute Bay, Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, Baker Lake, Chesterfield Inlet, Arviat, Whale Cove... while the conditions on some of these communities were fair, some were poor to embarassingly third world like. Iqaluit was probably the best one of the bunch. Arviat was the worst.
I am aware that incompetence and corruption are a huge part of this problem, but why these communities have problems doesn't matter. If a community lacks the competence to take care of itself, and a minimum living standard isn't met as per an annual inspection then its the role of the provincial/federal/ assembly of First nations governments to intervene.
BTW, Amnesty International has noticed this problem for years. Ever since I've started following AI, they've criticized this shameful side of Canada.
Also I don't like Stephen Harper or the conservatives, but attempts to attribute this problem to the conservatives is total political BS. This is a chronic systemic problem. During the 1950's some of these communities in Nunavut were starving and freezing...literally. The forced relocation of Inuit from Inukjuak to Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord in the early 50's was criminal.
I am aware that incompetence and corruption are a huge part of this problem, but why these communities have problems doesn't matter. If a community lacks the competence to take care of itself, and a minimum living standard isn't met as per an annual inspection then its the role of the provincial/federal/ assembly of First nations governments to intervene.
BTW, Amnesty International has noticed this problem for years. Ever since I've started following AI, they've criticized this shameful side of Canada.
Also I don't like Stephen Harper or the conservatives, but attempts to attribute this problem to the conservatives is total political BS. This is a chronic systemic problem. During the 1950's some of these communities in Nunavut were starving and freezing...literally. The forced relocation of Inuit from Inukjuak to Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord in the early 50's was criminal.
So true,you probably know Peter from PTL expediting if you were at Baker lake. Nice place to visit but flying out of there was going back to the "world" Nothing go's to any of those communities without going through him north of Hudsons bay.We nicknamed him the Arctic mafia,lol!
It's a huge place,you can fly for hours to get to a community like Chesterfield inlet or Arviat or whale cove but chances are when you get in the airport you know someone.
I managed a few remote camps up there north of Rankin and meadowbank north west of Baker lake,and worked on the east side at Sabina gold south of Cambridge bay.
Never been to Iqaluit though,thats on the bucket list and resolute bay.
It's like going back 30 years when you get north of Churchill.
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Really?
You must be quite embarrassed by the lower east side of Vancouver, where fellow Canadians live even worse.
I find it more disappointing than embarrassing. Attawapiskat, no matter how you look at it, is a small town, a small town with three chiefs
and another dozen or so people on the public teat. I still haven't seen chief Spence's house but I bet it is not held together with
cardboard. The fact that this small town can have a hockey rink and a Zamboni while some of their people are living in cardboard boxes drives me wild.
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At this point, I have decided to join Bear and reserve judgement. Kicking the 3rd party out of town left a sour taste in my mouth.
Hockey rinks and housing come from 2 different streams of funding....so,if 1 million is allotted from the feds for a rink, that is where the money MUST be spent...not on housing or infrastructure maintenance.
And,let's keep in mind,the feds have had an auditor in Attiwapiskat for 7 years....presumably,if there was poor accounting by the band,the auditor would have spotted it.
If a band has a chief and several deputy chiefs,it is the same as our town...one mayor,one deputy mayor and 7 councillors. The major difference is that our town can levy property and business taxes,to run the town,maintain infrastructure,etc. Bands CANNOT levy taxes,and are completely dependent on the federal government for their dollars(with all the strings attached).
The expenditure on recreational facilities points a bright light onto the priorities and judgement of the leadership... I can not believe for one moment that had the band council known that there was a sever crisis on the housing front, that they would not have requested that the monies for recreational facilities be diverted to more pressing needs.
Most villages have an arena,some have only a few miles of road in and out of town so you better have something to do,they hold more then hockey games there.
The youth suicide rate in the north is highest in Canada allready so an arena where kids can participate in other activities besides drinking and drugging is money well spent.
I would say that fixing the desperate housing situation would do more to lessen youth suicide than a hockey rink. Jobs would do even more in that respect. A life with some kind of a future is what these people need more than anything.
I agree,they have no incentive to get an education and the kids are the future,corruption is rampant in most communities and I think some band council members are finally going to get caught.
As with so many other reserves, the schools at Attawapiskat, a remote reserve on the edge of James Bay in Northern Ontario, are bare bones and run down. Lousy or non-existent schools are part, though only part, of the reason why 60 per cent of status Indian children never finish high school.
They are more then hockey rinks,thats the community center to in most places.
Kakato offered, "They are more then hockey rinks,thats the community center to in most places."
????????
????????
Thats not too hard to understand is it? When the 2 biggest buildings in a town are the school and the arena/community center then ya,thats the one biggest place for the community to meet.I guess when you spend a few years living with some of these natives then you see things differently. I have spent many years with the Innuit in a lot worse conditions then Attawapaskit has and i'll take living with them over a kabluna any day of the week. Once folks start to understand that natives are not the same as us and have different idealogies about life then us then maybe we can start to understand why they arent integrating into our "civilized society" like we planned.
This is why I think money spent on an arena is money well spent,I'll say one thing about most native communities I have been to,they treat their kids better then any whitey ever would,theres no such thing as day care while mom gos to work along with pop to chase the dream of haveing more toys then the next person.If someone falls on hard times and cant care for their child someone from the town will step in and do it,you will never see that in a white southern town or city at that level....never!
You never hear about the closeness and how much respect these communities have for family and children in the news,you just see the bad stuff and it is bad.
Because of this I am very passionate about the injustices we did to Canadas first settlers,maybe because I see them in a different way then most who just see the bad stuff on t.v.
Their not white so lets stop trying to make them white and instead learn about their way of life and thinking.
My father got me into reading Chief Dan George many years ago and I now understand his wisdom
May the stars carry your sadness away,
May the flowers fill your heart with beauty,
May hope forever wipe away your tears,
And, above all, may silence make you strong.
- Chief Dan George
The beauty of the trees, the softness of the air,
the fragrance of the grass speaks to me.
The summit of the mountain, the thunder of the sky,
The rhythm of the sea, speaks to me.
The faintness of the stars, the freshness of the morning,
the dewdrop on the flower, speaks to me.
The strength of the fire, the taste of salmon, the trail of the sun,
and the life that never goes away, they speak to me
And my heart soars.
- Chief Dan George
When the white man came, we had the land and they had the bibles. Now they have the land and we have the bibles.
- Chief Dan George
Where no one intrudes, many can live in harmony.
- Chief Dan George
So I have no solutions but I do have some suggestions,how about we use these arenas to hold some meetings and ask the regular townsfolk what they want to see to improve things? What do THEY want to see happen to improve life on the reserves,what do they need and lets make it public so we can all participate as it is mostly taxpayers dollars involved.
There is no incentive for education or jobs there,why do you think Debeers and other mining companies have to fly in 70% of their work force?
I was told at one camp I ran that we had to have 70% native employees and I was lucky to get 30% and not because they didnt want to work but because they had no skills,the govt. sent a lot of them to winnipeg for a 6 week equipment op. training course and they were pretty well untrainable after that,I wonder how many whiteys had their hand in that pie?
Theres corruption on the reserves and theres even more corruption with the kabluna's that are exploiting them.
I think it's high time though that all the corruption is exposed,lets see how deep it go's.
End of rant
Tories shrug of UN's criticism
More international embarrassment for Canada. This time it’s from the United Nations, which this week took to task the federal government for its failure to deal with a desperate housing crisis at northern Ontario’s Attawapiskat Indian reserve.
Predictably, Ottawa’s reaction was to shoot the messenger. A government spokesman accused James Anaya, the UN’s special rapporteur on indigenous peoples, of grandstanding.
The government also gleefully pointed out that Anaya directed his query to former foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon rather than the current occupant of the post, John Baird. It argued that this shows the UN doesn’t know what it’s talking about.
In fact, given the reality on so many Canadian reserves, the UN official’s statement is mild.
He states the obvious — that conditions at Attawapiskat and many other native communities are “dire.” He expresses the UN’s concern, which is his job. And he asks the Conservative government to comment.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that the UN has criticized Canada for its handling of aboriginal issues. In 1990, the world body’s human rights committee famously accused Canada of violating the rights of the Lubicon first nation in northern Alberta in order to encourage oil, gas and lumber extraction.
The UN continues to chastise Canada for its handling of the Lubicon issue, most recently through a statement issued this September by the world body’s high commissioner for human rights.
Intriguingly, however, Ottawa absolutely refuses to countenance any of this criticism.
No government has clean hands when it comes to aboriginal issues. Attawapiskat was a sinkhole when I visited it in 1990. According to all reports, it remains one today.
Indeed, to say that nothing works there is an understatement.
In 1990, some 95 per cent of homes in Attawapiskat used outdoor latrines. To fix that, the government eventually constructed a system that linked indoor toilets to sewage lagoons.
But the flat coastline of Hudson Bay is prone to flooding and those lagoons soon backed up, inundating homes with raw sewage.
Many of these failures occurred under Liberal governments. What makes Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives different, however, is that they seem almost gleeful in their obduracy.
Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan, who is paid to be on top of these issues, apparently knew nothing about the problems at Attawapiskat until late in the game — and then blamed Charlie Angus, the local New Democrat MP, for failing to keep him up to date.
Harper responded to the crisis by accusing the band council of wasting money, which, even if true, did nothing to meet the immediate needs of those living in tents or slopping about in raw sewage.
In fact, the first to deliver assistance to Attawapiskat was not the federal government but the Red Cross — another embarrassment.
So now the UN is involved. That’s unlikely to bother Harper, who finds the UN useful only as an organization able to authorize wars such as NATO’s attack on Libya.
Otherwise, as he demonstrated recently in his handling of the Kyoto accord on climate change, he has nothing but disdain for the world body.
But it is odd for Canada.
Over the decades, this country has been an enthusiastic backer of international organizations. When the UN chastised Canada over the Lubicon in 1990, the news was shocking enough to merit front-page treatment.
Now, however, we’re so used to being on the outs with the rest of the world that this week’s UN broadside was treated as a ho-hum event. Some newspapers didn’t even bother reporting it.
Canada News: Walkom: Tories shrug off UN's criticism
More international embarrassment for Canada. This time it’s from the United Nations, which this week took to task the federal government for its failure to deal with a desperate housing crisis at northern Ontario’s Attawapiskat Indian reserve.
Predictably, Ottawa’s reaction was to shoot the messenger. A government spokesman accused James Anaya, the UN’s special rapporteur on indigenous peoples, of grandstanding.
The government also gleefully pointed out that Anaya directed his query to former foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon rather than the current occupant of the post, John Baird. It argued that this shows the UN doesn’t know what it’s talking about.
In fact, given the reality on so many Canadian reserves, the UN official’s statement is mild.
He states the obvious — that conditions at Attawapiskat and many other native communities are “dire.” He expresses the UN’s concern, which is his job. And he asks the Conservative government to comment.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that the UN has criticized Canada for its handling of aboriginal issues. In 1990, the world body’s human rights committee famously accused Canada of violating the rights of the Lubicon first nation in northern Alberta in order to encourage oil, gas and lumber extraction.
The UN continues to chastise Canada for its handling of the Lubicon issue, most recently through a statement issued this September by the world body’s high commissioner for human rights.
Intriguingly, however, Ottawa absolutely refuses to countenance any of this criticism.
No government has clean hands when it comes to aboriginal issues. Attawapiskat was a sinkhole when I visited it in 1990. According to all reports, it remains one today.
Indeed, to say that nothing works there is an understatement.
In 1990, some 95 per cent of homes in Attawapiskat used outdoor latrines. To fix that, the government eventually constructed a system that linked indoor toilets to sewage lagoons.
But the flat coastline of Hudson Bay is prone to flooding and those lagoons soon backed up, inundating homes with raw sewage.
Many of these failures occurred under Liberal governments. What makes Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives different, however, is that they seem almost gleeful in their obduracy.
Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan, who is paid to be on top of these issues, apparently knew nothing about the problems at Attawapiskat until late in the game — and then blamed Charlie Angus, the local New Democrat MP, for failing to keep him up to date.
Harper responded to the crisis by accusing the band council of wasting money, which, even if true, did nothing to meet the immediate needs of those living in tents or slopping about in raw sewage.
In fact, the first to deliver assistance to Attawapiskat was not the federal government but the Red Cross — another embarrassment.
So now the UN is involved. That’s unlikely to bother Harper, who finds the UN useful only as an organization able to authorize wars such as NATO’s attack on Libya.
Otherwise, as he demonstrated recently in his handling of the Kyoto accord on climate change, he has nothing but disdain for the world body.
But it is odd for Canada.
Over the decades, this country has been an enthusiastic backer of international organizations. When the UN chastised Canada over the Lubicon in 1990, the news was shocking enough to merit front-page treatment.
Now, however, we’re so used to being on the outs with the rest of the world that this week’s UN broadside was treated as a ho-hum event. Some newspapers didn’t even bother reporting it.
Canada News: Walkom: Tories shrug off UN's criticism