Privatizing Aboriginal Reserves

CDNBear

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Sep 24, 2006
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Not only self reliant and self governance but taxpayers monies are well accounted for. I haven't seen a could argument against it.
That's funny, because I haven't seen a could (LOL) argument for it.

Perhaps honing your problem solving skills, would help.
 

Cannuck

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That's funny, because I haven't seen a could (LOL) argument for it.

Perhaps honing your problem solving skills, would help.

Well, since you want to make an issue out of a typo...

No one in that province tought Wasiq Waqar how to take a joke?

Why do you insist on embarrassing yourself? You know I'm gonna keep that gem and pull it out every single time you make fun of a typo (and at least mine was a typo and not an inability to spell).
 

gerryh

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Well, since you want to make an issue out of a typo...



Why do you insist on embarrassing yourself? You know I'm gonna keep that gem and pull it out every single time you make fun of a typo (and at least mine was a typo and not an inability to spell).



Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Bear drops a H and that's an inability to spell. You, on the other hand, type in a completely different word and call it a typo.
 

CDNBear

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Well, since you want to make an issue out of a typo...

Why do you insist on embarrassing yourself? You know I'm gonna keep that gem and pull it out every single time you make fun of a typo (and at least mine was a typo and not an inability to spell).
You do that (I near busted a gut picturing you scouring pages of my posts looking for a spelling error though, thanks for the laugh). I have enough of your gems to write a book on how not to debate, discuss, converse. Not that the illumination of your typo was the gist of the post. (I was actually hoping to see a real argument for either a public incorporation or privatization. I guess you don't actually have one) But your comparison of a dropped letter, to the completely erroneous replacement of an entire word, shows you're grasping at straws.

But carry on, I find it extremely funny to watch.

Perhaps if you spent more time problem solving the problems in your posts, lies, inconsistencies, generalization, fallacious arguments and so on, and less time trying to find problems in other peoples posts, you wouldn't make it so easy for me to point out your hypocrisy and stupidity.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Bear drops a H and that's an inability to spell. You, on the other hand, type in a completely different word and call it a typo.
He has to justify his perceived self worth somehow.
 

gerryh

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Just want to point out one little thing to those that think that if First Nations reserves are turned into municipalities or given complete autonomy and the rights to private ownership, that that will be the end of payments from Canada to the First Nations should think again. The payments are for land given by the First Nations to Canada and her predecessors. The only way to stop those payments is to negotiate a "buy out" with the individual First Nations tribes.
 

CDNBear

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Just want to point out one little thing to those that think that if First Nations reserves are turned into municipalities or given complete autonomy and the rights to private ownership, that that will be the end of payments from Canada to the First Nations should think again. The payments are for land given by the First Nations to Canada and her predecessors. The only way to stop those payments is to negotiate a "buy out" with the individual First Nations tribes.
Stop it GH, you're throwing a wrench into some peoples problem solving problems. You know, where they claim to want start at the beginning and work from there?
 

Cannuck

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Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Bear drops a H and that's an inability to spell. You, on the other hand, type in a completely different word and call it a typo.

Apparently you don't know how to read or spell. He didn't drop an H but that is entirely irrelevant. The point is that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I'm really not surprised that I have to explain it to you.

Just want to point out one little thing to those that think that if First Nations reserves are turned into municipalities or given complete autonomy and the rights to private ownership, that that will be the end of payments from Canada to the First Nations should think again. The payments are for land given by the First Nations to Canada and her predecessors. The only way to stop those payments is to negotiate a "buy out" with the individual First Nations tribes.

It's not about ending payments. It's about accountability. Again (and at the risk of sounding like a broken record), I'm not surprised I have to explain it to you.
 

The Old Medic

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May 16, 2010
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"DumpTheMonarchy" wants to eliminate all programs for anyone that is "down and out", not JUST the ones for Natives.

What he fails to understand is that when you are caught in a world where your culture is downgraded, where you lack a decent education, where you are raised in abject poverty, and where you are treated as something significantly less than a human being by uncaring people like Dump (and a large majority of Canadians), it is actually very difficult o to pull yourself out of the mire.

Far too much of the money supposedly going to Natives is lost in corruption, before it ever reaches the people it was intended for.

Native peoples in Canada are not allowed to make even the most basic decisions about themselves. By Federal law, they CAN NOT determine who is, and who is not a member of their own Tribe or Band.

They can not determine who is, and who is not, even a Native!

They are denied the right to manage the lands that they live on.

They are denied the right to control the education of their children.

For over 300 years, the Government of Canada has had essentially one goal, to eliminate all Natives. They have tried to do this by military force, by "forced assimilation", by kidnapping the children of natives and forcing them into residential schools where they were physically, emotionally/psychologically and sexually abused; and then sent back home as very, very sick people.

Then, the overwhelmingly white population says, "Why don't you do something to help yourselves?"

It will take at least a couple of generations, if not more, to overcome the effects of those residential schools.

It was only in the 1980's that a Native woman was no longer stripped of her status as a Native if she married a non-native person. That change in the law ONLY came about after Canada was cited by the United Nations for violating the rights of native women with that policy, for the 7th time!

The United States, which has had it's own dismal history in treating Native peoples as something less than human; is light years ahead of Canada in how it treats its natives.

Add to this the simple fact that Canada refuses to live up to two treaties that essentially provided for it to become an world recognized entity. Those two treaties were between Great Britain and the Unites States of American, that resolved the Revolutionary War, and then the War of 1812.

In BOTH of those treaties, the rights of Native people to cross back and forth between Canada and the USA were guaranteed. They were to be allowed to move any of their personal possession, to trade freely among themselves, and to live on either side of that newly established border without any government interference at all.

The United States STILL honors those provisions. ANY Canadian native person, that is 50% Native or more, can move to the USA without a "Green Card", without a Visa, without any background check at all. They can obtain a Social Security Card, and gain any employment that they can get. They can move all personal possession into the USA (so long as that personal possession is not illegal, such a marijuana or narcotics, etc.), without any duty at all.

Canada on the other hand DOES NOT recognize such rights. In fact, the Supreme Court of Canada said that those treaties simply do not apply.

Yes indeed, the government of Canada dose so much for the Native people. So much that is totally and completely designed to destroy them as a People, to destroy their culture and essentially either force them to become "white men" or be exterminated.

And this movement to "privatize" the reserves is just more of the same.
 

Kakato

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Quite a bit of ignorance here about native culture and spirituality and some folks just cant get the old stereotype of natives they have had all their lives out of their heads.
I can honestly say I thought that way at one time also but am wiser now to the way they live and their culture and we can learn lots from listening to the elders.

Anyone who has ever had the priviledge of participating in an smudge ceremony where the eagle feather is passed around will know that their way of life is different,focusing more on family then on material goods.

Dump should endeavor to be included in one of these ceremonies,i'm sure it would open his eyes and I would be real interested in what he would say when the sacred eagle feather was passed to him.
 

CDNBear

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Sep 24, 2006
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He didn't drop an H but that is entirely irrelevant.
Glad we cleared that up.

The point is that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I'm really not surprised that I have to explain it to you.
I am. Since I get to point out you throwing stones in your glass house, almost daily. Which is one of the reasons I find you oh so entertaining.

Like this string... http://forums.canadiancontent.net/c...pect-pay-more-use-national-4.html#post1527072

You should probably put the stones down now. Winter's here and you don't have many panes of glass left.

Your hypocrisy is palpable.

It's not about ending payments. It's about accountability. Again (and at the risk of sounding like a broken record), I'm not surprised I have to explain it to you.
Neither am I since you've never actually put forward a reasoned proposal, but instead have simply been the purveyor of lies, generalizations, and silly diversions.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record... Perhaps if you spent more time problem solving the problems in your posts, lies, inconsistencies, generalization, fallacious arguments and so on, and less time trying to find problems in other peoples posts, you wouldn't make it so easy for me to point out your hypocrisy and stupidity.

Just sayin'.
 
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Machjo

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Oct 19, 2004
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Here an organization for lawyers is adamantly against privation of aboriginal reserve lands by Ottawa. Among other specious arguments they use is that aboriginals have a "spiritual" connection to the land. Comic. No one has a spiritual connection to the land, this is from the age of magic and superstition that science has destroyed with the Scientific Revolution. It is time the legal community got with the times.

The article states right wing zealots support this, odd, I've voted for the NDP.

Lawyers want the status quo, which means don't question the millions and billions of dollars that keep coming their way. Time to stop this Canadian corruption.


Why privatization of reserve lands risks aboriginal ruin



Why privatization of reserve lands risks aboriginal ruin

by John Rwinski

September 24, 2010 issue


The federal government is exploring a voluntary regime of private ownership of reserve lands in Canada. This is an idea that is premature and short-sighted.

Advocates of this proposal say that the current communal stewardship of traditional lands by First Nations stifles development and stunts financial opportunities for individuals. By permitting private ownership, individuals would have the opportunity, among other things, to mortgage and sell lands.

In other words, what “they” want is for Canada’s indigenous peoples who live on reserves to be beholden to outside financial interests.
A near universal facet of indigenous cultures is a spiritual connection to land. Land is not to be bartered and sold; it is part of who we are. The inspirational tenet of this way of life is the spirit of working collaboratively for the greater good of the collective community, as opposed to the crass pursuit of individual gain at the expense of others.

Right-wing zealots call this pursuit of communal goals “socialism.” It is contrary to the ethnocentric conviction that one must be able to put a fence around one’s yard to be a “free” person. Of course for most, that fence means taking on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, by which multi-billion dollar banks make massive profits. The greed of lenders in turn leads to irresponsible loan commitments. This revered notion of private property very nearly put the world into financial ruin mere months ago.

Proponents of privatization exhibit a xenophobic distaste for the idea that an entire community can find a way to use land that benefits as many individuals as possible, without the need to trade this most sacred resource — so essential to the lives of everyone — like one would trade old hockey cards with schoolyard friends.

At present, governments and businesses owe billions of dollars to First Nations pursuant to treaties and for exploitation of traditional lands. Compensation is tediously slow in arriving and hard-fought by those who owe the money. Is this new proposal a distraction from the obligation to compensate aboriginal peoples for centuries of taking? It proposes the “privilege” of borrowing against the little bit of land yet to be stolen. Indigenous peoples can be debt-ridden like the rest of Canada — absolving the Crown from meeting its own financial and fiduciary obligations.

This philosophy is like saying, “We will give you all the crap you want for free, you just have to build a toilet.”
Debt without a means to escape it is merely enslavement to those holding economic power. Borrowing against the value of land may allow for improvements and access to cash. But lack of education and joblessness are endemic to the majority of reserves. With no job and little schooling, how does the borrower make payments on a traditional mortgage? The doomed answer is foreclosure, and a corresponding loss of reserve lands.

Far from a slippery slope, this is the harsh conclusion one must inevitably draw to the proposal to allow borrowing against individually-owned reserve lands.

Treaties and the constitution make it clear that the Crown owes aboriginal peoples the protection of aboriginal rights and lands. This includes the right to cultural protection, education, health care, natural resources and self-government. The Crown has failed miserably in meeting its obligations in this regard. Without first addressing these protections and correspondingly making the necessary financial commitment to establish these goals, resort to a private property regime only promises to shift aboriginal economic dependency from the Crown to lenders. This is a subtle way of completing the centuries-old goal of the colonizers — assimilation — now re-packaged as “economic opportunity.”

This is not to say that someday an on-reserve private property regime could not be a useful tool in the hands of our First Nations. Reserves near urban centres, equipped with adequate training, education and infrastructure, sufficient land to meet the needs of their members, and reasonable employment rates, may find some advantage to being able to borrow against and even market portions of their lands.

It is more difficult to foresee how privatization will assist remote communities. Lands in these territories will lack any significant market value. These are Canada’s most impoverished and troubled reserves, and aside from opportunistic resource companies, little outside interest in these lands exists.

The present-day government focus should be on ensuring the basic human rights of indigenous peoples, such as potable water, suitable housing, health, training and education, control of resources, and the honour and respect of culture and identity.
Until these foundations of self-sufficiency are solidly established, a culture of indebtedness will only serve to entrench economic and social dependence on the “rest” of Canadian society that treats the on-reserve aboriginal population as second-class citizens. Ultimately, the establishment of such a regime without first addressing other shortfalls risks the absorption and annihilation of our indigenous peoples.

John Rowinski is a sole practitioner in Brooklin, Ont. In addition to his civil litigation practice, he acts for First Nations in respect of claims, negotiations and all associated legal issues.

====================

An article from The Globe and Mail discussing the same topic.

First nations property rights: Going beyond the Indian Act - The Globe and Mail

I do not know whether I am for or against privatization of reserves. I think I'm for privatization in principle, but bearing in mind our laws and constitution clearly discriminate in our favour. Just to take one of many possible examples:

If you're a unilingual Calgarian traveling to Baie St. Paul and you need help, you're guaranteed service in English by any local federal agency. As a unilingual French-speaker in Calgary likewise. Or as an MP you're guaranteed interpretation to and from English and Ferench. Not so for the unilingual Nunavummiut. Then you have the issue of all products having to be labelled in both official languages but not Inuktitut, and English and French being taught as second-languages across Canada. This creates plenty of jobs and opportunities for certain linguistic groups and not others. And yet only part of this can be attributed to the free market when we consider that official languages is not a private sector matter but one of government policy.

This is just one example of how at least some First peoples are legislatively put at a disadvantage in the market.
 

Kakato

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Some wisdom to live by.

From the 1927 Grand Council of American Indians



"The white people, who are trying to make us over into their image, they want us to be what they call "assimilated," bringing the Indians into the mainstream and destroying our own way of life and our own cultural patterns. They believe we should be contented like those whose concept of happiness is materialistic and greedy, which is very different from our way.
We want freedom from the white man rather than to be intergrated. We don't want any part of the establishment, we want to be free to raise our children in our religion, in our ways, to be able to hunt and fish and live in peace. We don't want power, we don't want to be congressmen, or bankers....we want to be ourselves. We want to have our heritage, because we are the owners of this land and because we belong here. The white man says, there is freedom and justice for all. We have had "freedom and justice," and that is why we have been almost exterminated. We shall not forget this."



From Chief Joseph, Nez Perces'



"If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace.....Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The Earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.......Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade....where I choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself, and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty."


Chief Maquinna, Nootka



"Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house. They told me it was a bank and that the white men place their money there to be taken care of, and that by and by they got it back with interest. "We are Indians and we have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by and by they return them with interest, and our hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank."

 

Niflmir

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Dec 18, 2006
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Just want to point out one little thing to those that think that if First Nations reserves are turned into municipalities or given complete autonomy and the rights to private ownership, that that will be the end of payments from Canada to the First Nations should think again. The payments are for land given by the First Nations to Canada and her predecessors. The only way to stop those payments is to negotiate a "buy out" with the individual First Nations tribes.

Or so dilute the gene pool that there are no longer any First Nations. One can see "privatization" as a form of that.

I really like the idea of autonomous first nations. Mostly because I like seeing anyone stick it to the government. I wish they would do more things like the casinos though. Why haven't they been able to make offshore tax havens, legalized drugs, and less gun control? I'd also like to see them have their own passports.

That'd be amazing. I'd be applying for citizenship at the nearest reservation in that case. The truth seems to be that parliament says they are a nation then sends in our police. Isn't that an act of war?

Sorry if that's off topic.
 

taxslave

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I am in favor of turning reserves into something approximating municipalities and the individual may own the land their house sits on. Now wether the funding comes from locally raised taxes or comes from the federal government is immaterial as long as it is spent wisely and openly accounted for. Without doing a whole lot of research that I don't have time for and Bear may know the answer to but there may be a huge difference between the east where most bands are covered by treaty rights that were made many years ago and the west where there are not many treaties. One of the problems with private ownership of reserve lands that has been alluded to is non band members buying homes on the rez. I'm sure there could be a legal way of preventing this but I wouldn't know how to word it. Something like Co Ops perhaps? In any event the control over development must be made closer to home and not in Ottawa.
 

Niflmir

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I am in favor of turning reserves into something approximating municipalities and the individual may own the land their house sits on. Now wether the funding comes from locally raised taxes or comes from the federal government is immaterial as long as it is spent wisely and openly accounted for. Without doing a whole lot of research that I don't have time for and Bear may know the answer to but there may be a huge difference between the east where most bands are covered by treaty rights that were made many years ago and the west where there are not many treaties. One of the problems with private ownership of reserve lands that has been alluded to is non band members buying homes on the rez. I'm sure there could be a legal way of preventing this but I wouldn't know how to word it. Something like Co Ops perhaps? In any event the control over development must be made closer to home and not in Ottawa.

But these are lands that are ostensibly owned by an internal nation. Many people own land in countries that they are not citizens of, and there is no problem for the nation. The problem comes for the private landowner when the nation decides to take the land for eminent domain purposes or otherwise. I say ostensibly, because it really looks to me like people continue to consider reserves to be Canadian lands and not lands owned by an internal nation, one of the First Nations.
 

Cannuck

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The truth seems to be that parliament says they are a nation then sends in our police. Isn't that an act of war?

That's because they aren't really considered "nations". It's just a PC term to appease some people. I believe that, if the government wants to treat them like nations, they should treat them like nations and on the flip side these nations should act like nations. I don't see much political will on either side to make that a reality though.

One of the problems with private ownership of reserve lands that has been alluded to is non band members buying homes on the rez. I'm sure there could be a legal way of preventing this but I wouldn't know how to word it.

Why would you want to prevent an aboriginal from selling his property to whomever he/she chooses? Would you like the government to do the same to you?
 

Niflmir

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That's because they aren't really considered "nations". It's just a PC term to appease some people. I believe that, if the government wants to treat them like nations, they should treat them like nations and on the flip side these nations should act like nations. I don't see much political will on either side to make that a reality though.

But they are treated like a sovereign nations for the purposes of casinos and taxes... so it seems they can win some political battles. I'd like to see them truly sovereign.
 

Cannuck

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I'd like to see them truly sovereign.

I have no problem with that but in order for it to happen, first nations need to want it. I've seen no evidence that they do. I'd be truly surprised if more than 2 or 3 percent of aboriginals would want to give up their Canadian citizenship.
 

taxslave

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That's because they aren't really considered "nations". It's just a PC term to appease some people. I believe that, if the government wants to treat them like nations, they should treat them like nations and on the flip side these nations should act like nations. I don't see much political will on either side to make that a reality though.



Why would you want to prevent an aboriginal from selling his property to whomever he/she chooses? Would you like the government to do the same to you?

I personally don't care but I know that many natives do because the question has come up before. Co-ops- strata can and do dictate who you can sell your holdings to. Governments have prevented the sale of companies, so it does happen.