Great article, but apparently we're not supposed to ask those sorts of questions, because that would make us racist oppressors.
NDP leader slams PM's Attawapiskat response
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More jobs,This is Areva who was first denied a mining permit because of native opposition back then.Looks like their 30 years of exploring will finally pay off.
Kiggavik Project: Through The Eyes of A Young Person - YouTube
Not by mine or any reasonable standards.
I have great difficulty applying that repugnant label to anyone, with a legitimate criticism.
Repeated use of myths, stereotypes, generalizations or outright lies, despite being proven erroneous by overwhelming evidence, simply to smear or perpetuate misconception of an identifiable group. Is what makes someone a racist.
I'm still further south. Here's a clue, I'm one of the ones Durry hates, lol.
You know, I've been thinking that if a journalist really wanted a story out of all of this, aside from the typical spin out of Ottawa that is, and they were smart (smart being kind of the key word of course) this would be the one. Shine a spotlight on the few individuals and groups that can make these changes happen, that have the expertise and seriously and pointedly question why they are not being utilized to combat some of these logistic issues. Otherwise the spin just keeps spinning.
I don't know, just a thought.
Neat.
What needs to be done to prevent more housing crises on reserves
As one who has had the good fortune of visiting the majority of First Nations Indian Reserves in Canada and also having spent some time on the Navajo Nation in Window Rock, Arizona, while doing a year-long study into policing, I find the recent media frenzy concerning the Attawapiskat housing situation overblown and rather frustrating.
To begin, please bear with me while I record an excerpt from a speech given by a prominent Canadian, to an assembly of aboriginal people several years ago:
“So this year we came up with a proposal. It’s a policy paper on the Indian problem. It proposes a set of solutions. It doesn’t impose them on anybody. It proposes them — not only to the Indians but to all Canadians — not only to their federal representatives but to the provincial representatives too and it says we’re at the crossroads. We can go on treating the Indians as having a special status. We can go on adding bricks of discrimination around the ghetto in which they live and at the same time perhaps helping them preserve certain cultural traits and certain ancestral rights. Or we can say you’re at a crossroad — the time is now to decide whether the Indians will be a race apart in Canada or whether it will be Canadians of full status.” Those words were spoken way back on Aug. 8, 1969 by then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau at the Aboriginal and Treaty Rights meeting in Vancouver.
Trudeau continued: “And this is a difficult choice. It must be a very agonizing choice to the Indian peoples themselves because, on the one hand, they realize that if they come into the society as total citizens they will be equal under the law but they risk losing certain of their traditions, certain aspect of a culture and perhaps even certain of their basic rights and this is a very difficult choice for them to make and I don’t think we want to try to force the pace on them any more than we can force it on the rest of Canadians but here again is a choice which is in our minds whether outside, a group of Canadians with which we have treaties, a group of Canadians who have as the Indians, many of them claim, aboriginal rights or whether we will say well forget the past and begin today and this is a tremendously difficult choice because, if – well one of the things the Indian bands often refer to are their aboriginal rights,” Trudeau said.
“We will recognize treaty rights,” continued Trudeau, those 42 years ago. “We will recognize forms of contract which have been made with the Indian people by the Crown and we will try to bring justice in that area and this will mean that perhaps the treaties shouldn’t go on forever. It’s inconceivable, I think, that in a given society one section of the society have a treaty with the other section of the society. We must be all equal under the laws and we must not sign treaties among ourselves and many of these treaties, indeed, would have less and less significance in the future anyhow but things that in the past were covered by the treaties like things like so much twine or so much gun powder and which haven’t been paid this must be paid. But I don’t think that we should encourage the Indians to feel that their treaties should last forever within Canada so that they be able to receive their twine or their gun powder.
“They should become Canadians as all other Canadians and if they were prosperous and wealthy they will be treated like prosperous and wealthy and they will be paying taxes for the other Canadians who are not so prosperous and not so wealthy whether they be Indians or English Canadians or French or Maritimers and this is the only basis on which I see our society can develop as equals,” said Trudeau. “But aboriginal rights, this really means saying, ‘We were here before you. You came and took the land from us and perhaps you cheated us by giving us some worthless things in return for vast expanses of land and we want to reopen this question. We want you to preserve our aboriginal rights and to restore them to us.’
“And our answer —it may not be the right one and may not be one which is accepted but it will be up to all you people to make your minds up and to choose for or against it and to discuss with the Indians — our answer is ‘no’ . . . .”
From what I can gather, the Trudeau speech garnered such significant backlash among Indian leadership that it strengthened their resolve to support their Canada-wide quasi-political organization, the Assembly of First Nations. After considerable opposition from Indian politicians, the Trudeau government backed away from this “red paper ‘ proposal.
Who is to know if his proposals would have made a difference among our First Nations communities? But we do know that poverty, joblessness, health care and hope have not shown improvement.
There are literally hundreds of Attawapiskats in Canada and I doubt that any federal government can correct the malaise until or unless major change is made.
As one who has been an outside observer during several First Nations elections, my first suggestion is that their electoral system must be standardized and overseen by Elections Canada. Second, I believe that the auditor general of Canada should have the unfettered authority and responsibility to conduct on-site First Nations financial audits, thus ensuring that federal funds —Canadian tax dollars — appropriated to these communities are being fairly and equitably distributed. Without these two safeguards, I have little faith that the system can be corrected.
Robert H.D. Head retired as an Assistant Commissioner, the Director of Aboriginal Policing for the RCMP. He lives in Cochrane.
What needs to be done to prevent more housing crises on reserves
To begin, please bear with me while I record an excerpt from a speech given by a prominent Canadian, to an assembly of aboriginal people several years ago:
“So this year we came up with a proposal. It’s a policy paper on the Indian problem. It proposes a set of solutions. It doesn’t impose them on anybody. It proposes them — not only to the Indians but to all Canadians — not only to their federal representatives but to the provincial representatives too and it says we’re at the crossroads. We can go on treating the Indians as having a special status. We can go on adding bricks of discrimination around the ghetto in which they live and at the same time perhaps helping them preserve certain cultural traits and certain ancestral rights. Or we can say you’re at a crossroad — the time is now to decide whether the Indians will be a race apart in Canada or whether it will be Canadians of full status.” Those words were spoken way back on Aug. 8, 1969 by then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau at the Aboriginal and Treaty Rights meeting in Vancouver.
Trudeau continued: “And this is a difficult choice. It must be a very agonizing choice to the Indian peoples themselves because, on the one hand, they realize that if they come into the society as total citizens they will be equal under the law but they risk losing certain of their traditions, certain aspect of a culture and perhaps even certain of their basic rights and this is a very difficult choice for them to make and I don’t think we want to try to force the pace on them any more than we can force it on the rest of Canadians but here again is a choice which is in our minds whether outside, a group of Canadians with which we have treaties, a group of Canadians who have as the Indians, many of them claim, aboriginal rights or whether we will say well forget the past and begin today and this is a tremendously difficult choice because, if – well one of the things the Indian bands often refer to are their aboriginal rights,” Trudeau said.
“We will recognize treaty rights,” continued Trudeau, those 42 years ago. “We will recognize forms of contract which have been made with the Indian people by the Crown and we will try to bring justice in that area and this will mean that perhaps the treaties shouldn’t go on forever. It’s inconceivable, I think, that in a given society one section of the society have a treaty with the other section of the society. We must be all equal under the laws and we must not sign treaties among ourselves and many of these treaties, indeed, would have less and less significance in the future anyhow but things that in the past were covered by the treaties like things like so much twine or so much gun powder and which haven’t been paid this must be paid. But I don’t think that we should encourage the Indians to feel that their treaties should last forever within Canada so that they be able to receive their twine or their gun powder.
“They should become Canadians as all other Canadians and if they were prosperous and wealthy they will be treated like prosperous and wealthy and they will be paying taxes for the other Canadians who are not so prosperous and not so wealthy whether they be Indians or English Canadians or French or Maritimers and this is the only basis on which I see our society can develop as equals,” said Trudeau. “But aboriginal rights, this really means saying, ‘We were here before you. You came and took the land from us and perhaps you cheated us by giving us some worthless things in return for vast expanses of land and we want to reopen this question. We want you to preserve our aboriginal rights and to restore them to us.’
“And our answer —it may not be the right one and may not be one which is accepted but it will be up to all you people to make your minds up and to choose for or against it and to discuss with the Indians — our answer is ‘no’ . . . .”
From what I can gather, the Trudeau speech garnered such significant backlash among Indian leadership that it strengthened their resolve to support their Canada-wide quasi-political organization, the Assembly of First Nations. After considerable opposition from Indian politicians, the Trudeau government backed away from this “red paper ‘ proposal.
Who is to know if his proposals would have made a difference among our First Nations communities? But we do know that poverty, joblessness, health care and hope have not shown improvement.
There are literally hundreds of Attawapiskats in Canada and I doubt that any federal government can correct the malaise until or unless major change is made.
As one who has been an outside observer during several First Nations elections, my first suggestion is that their electoral system must be standardized and overseen by Elections Canada. Second, I believe that the auditor general of Canada should have the unfettered authority and responsibility to conduct on-site First Nations financial audits, thus ensuring that federal funds —Canadian tax dollars — appropriated to these communities are being fairly and equitably distributed. Without these two safeguards, I have little faith that the system can be corrected.
Robert H.D. Head retired as an Assistant Commissioner, the Director of Aboriginal Policing for the RCMP. He lives in Cochrane.
What needs to be done to prevent more housing crises on reserves