Quote:
Originally Posted by chrisallard5454
I am starting to see some major irony in the fact that many different ethnicities can be pointed out directly, yet when referring to Aboriginals it is always followed with the subtext "in appearance".
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That's got to be a Winnipeg news thing. In Thunder Bay, they just say "Aboriginal" or "Native Canadian", without any qualifiers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chrisallard5454
It seems our society is so afraid of our Aboriginal community, that we cannot put them in a negative light without first trying to throw in a shade of grey. The same situation occurs when stories highlight how chiefs rip people off. Everyone knows many Chiefs allow their band to starve while they cash their rewards, yet we can't come out and say it.
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Even though communities like Attawapiskat are required to be audited on a regular basis and have all of their spending approved by AANDC bureaucrats (with authority from the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, ie the Federal Cabinet), they still manage to be "corrupt". So what, exactly, is broken and corrupt?
If anything, that shy reluctance to blame aboriginals is due to the people who are doing the "blaming" knowing that it is the federal government that set things up to fail. the "hidden agenda" of the Indian Act was to "prove" that Indians couldn't function as a society by restricting their rights, to justify the Residential School System and its cultural genocide. That law requires all bands to keep track of where their members are, something that is illegal in Germany because that kind of data was used to conduct the holocaust. And we wrote that into a law that was passed 13 years before Hitler was born.
There is also the fact that, not all aboriginal chiefs are corrupt. Most, in fact, try the hardest the can to make sure that everyone is as well off as possible under the circumstances. There are a few problem reserves, but then there are many reserves where you never hear of corrupt leadership because it isn't any worse than it is in our municipalities. But the way Federal law lays out First Nations governance is a big problem. Provinces are responsible for local government for most Canadians, but the reserves are Federally regulated, and the Federal Government isn't very good at defining how local government should operate. It wasn't until recently that a standard for drinking water systems existed on reserves. Provinces had them, but reserves aren't legally part of provinces, so they were exempt from any rules about drinking water other than the basic guidelines from Health Canada. Provinces have a funding structure in place to maintain and improve drinking water systems, but the Federal Government must do this as part of its "stimulus spending". The Harper Government will be spending $300,000,000 on this over the next few years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chrisallard5454
We are no more special than any other person in this country. I may have Native blood in me, but I have no more right to this land than the descendent of immigrants who landed here 200+ years ago.
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There is a collection of 90 to 150 year old treaties between our ancestors and the crown and a 136 year old law that beg to differ. But considering status aboriginals don't actually have the right to own land that is considered "theirs", unless they trade that right for all the "rights" they get from the treaties, then I suppose you're correct when you say that you have no more right to this land than the descendents of immigrants who landed here over 200 years ago. In fact, you have less.
In Ontario, those descendents are approving mines in close proximity to reserves with very little consultation with those reserves. That alone reinforces the colonial era racism that is inherent in our law. So many things are provincial matters, and reserves are excluded from provinces, that so many things are simply out of reach for aboriginal communities. They're not occupying and blockading because they enjoy it, they're occupying and blockading because they have no legal recourse within the provincial government system. It's hard to influence a province's decisions when you're not legally part of it.
Look at it this way: Thunder Bay collects land taxes from communities in unincorporated territory to the north, while remote Northern First Nations can't stop a mining project immediately adjacent to their boundaries without breaking the law. (Leaders of a NWO reserve were actually jailed for trying to do so.)
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