Quote:
Originally Posted by GlassCity
Yeah, I was just gonna say, I know we have quite a few reserves throughout Metro Vancouver but you never hear, or see, horror stories like Winnipeg's north end. So you think it's not as much of a problem here simply because they're a smaller percentage of the city?
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British Columbia isn't part of the same treaty system than most of Canada is part of, so First Nations in BC have more economic rights and better reserve locations. Your province put its reserves in the middles of cities; we put ours in swamps that can only be accessed by plane. Obviously, there are going to be significant economic differences between the two. Thunder Bay's reserve is no longer even directly accessible by bridge and it was cut out of the city; you have to drive for 15 minutes now to get to something that you can see from downtown.
There is also considerably more racism here, even though 60% of the native population in Canada is "average" (lower middle class) they suffer from higher unemployment rates, mainly because employers are less willing to hire them. When a white person does a bad job and then quits or is fired that's just chalked up as poor judgment in character; I'll hire someone better next time. When a native person does a bad job and then quits or is fired, management decided to avoid hiring native people and "will hire someone better next time". Basically a few bad apples are spoiling it for everybody because lots of (but not all) job creators here are middle aged, white racists. People complain about all the service sector jobs we've got these days but their hiring method (virtually anonymous, online submissions) is the only stepping stone many native teens have into the employment world here.
Too many native people are coming here to find a better life and not finding it, because too many people here don't want them to, and on top of that, they're dealing with health issues related to past traumas and abuse, substance use, poverty, and a lack of education. Schools on reserves receive half as much funding as schools off reserves. The Federal Government has taken a step toward rectifying this but the law still has issues. So even if native kids finish school at home, they're often still a few steps back compared to non-reserve students (native or non-native alike).
A quick summary of the situation would be, native people have their economic rights curbed in a way that makes it appear to the average citizen (aka taxpayer) they're receiving extraordinary benefits, so they suffer while people think they're pampered. A lot of things that they interpret as greed or corruption are simply the logical approach to an issue within the context of the Indian Act. In a few cases in Northern Ontario, there are reserves with broken water systems (many reserves are so small and located in such poorly drained areas that well water isn't an option) and instead of spending several thousand to repair and staff them, they spend 10 times the amount on bottled water. The reason this situation makes more sense is that the laws regarding their expenditures puts a repair to infrastructure solely on the band's shoulders, and contrary to popular belief those are stretched pretty tight. The latter option, importing hundreds of tonnes (literally) of bottled water is considered "emergency response" and AANDC doesn't seem to mind forking out the half million per year to pay for the water and transporting it to the north by plane, 6 cases at a time.
This is simply the bizarre reality they're living in. As you know I can go on at length about this stuff.