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  #21  
Old Posted Dec 27, 2019, 12:43 PM
Franco401 Franco401 is offline
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This was a horrific thread idea and I give it two days before it's a full-on hate thread. We couldn't even get one page before somebody nearly invoked bootstraps. C'mon, guys.

Close the thread, mods.
     
     
  #22  
Old Posted Dec 27, 2019, 2:44 PM
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Wait, what? If a bunch of educated adults interested in urban affairs can't even discuss these things on an open forum in a casual setting, the current situation is guaranteed to stay untouched. You're probably fine with "genocide" as long as you can look the other way...? Personally, I think the status quo is greatly flawed (and absolutely indefensible), and if Canadians are censored from ever talking about it, then nothing will ever change.
     
     
  #23  
Old Posted Dec 27, 2019, 2:46 PM
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Wait, what? If a bunch of educated adults interested in urban affairs can't even discuss these things on an open forum in a casual setting, the current situation is guaranteed to stay untouched. You're probably fine with "genocide" as long as you can look the other way...? Personally, I think the status quo is greatly flawed (and absolutely indefensible), and if Canadians are censored from ever talking about it, then nothing will ever change.
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  #24  
Old Posted Dec 27, 2019, 2:46 PM
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Also, your prediction was wrong - we can all observe that it did not "become a full on hate thread" 23 days ago.
     
     
  #25  
Old Posted Dec 27, 2019, 3:04 PM
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In spite of examples of corruption that we can all point to in Canada's non-indigenous federal, provincial and municipal government structures, it's clear that First Nations governance is much more hit-and-miss in terms of quality of governance and accountability.

This is largely due to the relative absence of checks and balances and watchdog functions (which exist and are reasonably robust for the three orders of government mentioned above) and the attitude that when someone sticks their nose into something that smells bad in First Nations governance, the usual reply is "you asshole colonizers are meddling in the way we run our own communities!"

Which more often than not leads overseers to back down, or at least tread more softly than they perhaps should.

Perhaps one solution might be to have a cross-Canada governance oversight and accountability body that is run and staffed by indigenous people only, but who don't work on cases involving their own communities?
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  #26  
Old Posted Dec 27, 2019, 7:54 PM
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This was a horrific thread idea and I give it two days before it's a full-on hate thread. We couldn't even get one page before somebody nearly invoked bootstraps. C'mon, guys.

Close the thread, mods.
I don't see why? Quite the contrary, such a conversation is essential if Natives are to move beyond their economic and social problems. Certainly, Ottawa and provincial governments can take a good chunk of the blame for the present situation but it does take two to tango.

This hereditary leadership notion is just a politically palatable way of saying Feudal Lord system and that's exactly how the Chiefs want to keep it to maintain their privileged position. Ottawa can't do anything about the Reserve high birth rates, kids dropping out of school at 16, domestic violence, and drug abuse. All the resources in the world mean nothing unless there is a ground swell support for such initiative...…….a damaged community needs a resolved community to fix it.

Unfortunately Chiefs tend to be indifferent to such fundamental changes as it is far more politically advantageous to just blame Ottawa. Solving one's problems does not start with gazing out the window but rather looking in the mirror.
     
     
  #27  
Old Posted Dec 27, 2019, 8:52 PM
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Ottawa can't do anything about the Reserve high birth rates, kids dropping out of school at 16, domestic violence, and drug abuse. All the resources in the world mean nothing unless there is a ground swell support for such initiative...…….a damaged community needs a resolved community to fix it.
I don't care what race you are..Force a group of white. Latin,or Asian kids for that matter to live on a reservation with no opportunities, choices or incentive, and they will turn to drugs, alcohol, property destruction, etc. themselves. Just out of sheer boredom.It's not like first nations people need to hunt, gather, fish, build and make /repair clothes all day anymore to survive...They can go to the neighbourhood store or fly in to the closest city monthly and use cash.If they do hunt, fish, etc.It's not for pure survival. Furthermore, I myself grew up hunting, fishing, camping and snowmobiling, and when I hit my late teens I got bored of all that. I can imagine some native kids living on a reserve feel the same way, and find hunting and fishing just for leisure boring..They don't have many choices though.
     
     
  #28  
Old Posted Dec 27, 2019, 11:06 PM
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Originally Posted by lio45 View Post
Wait, what? If a bunch of educated adults interested in urban affairs can't even discuss these things on an open forum in a casual setting, the current situation is guaranteed to stay untouched. You're probably fine with "genocide" as long as you can look the other way...? Personally, I think the status quo is greatly flawed (and absolutely indefensible), and if Canadians are censored from ever talking about it, then nothing will ever change.
This. I haven't accused anyone in this discussion of being racist or accepting of genocide and I don't intend to. I'm looking more for this kind of post:

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Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
In spite of examples of corruption that we can all point to in Canada's non-indigenous federal, provincial and municipal government structures, it's clear that First Nations governance is much more hit-and-miss in terms of quality of governance and accountability.

This is largely due to the relative absence of checks and balances and watchdog functions (which exist and are reasonably robust for the three orders of government mentioned above) and the attitude that when someone sticks their nose into something that smells bad in First Nations governance, the usual reply is "you asshole colonizers are meddling in the way we run our own communities!"

Which more often than not leads overseers to back down, or at least tread more softly than they perhaps should.
Part of me is curious to see if we can have a decent discussion on the topic of blowback toward far-left/hyper-woke rhetoric but based on some people's comments, the answer is "not really". It's too easy to let this issue be boiled down to "You committed genocide!" "So what? Here's a million dollars to shut you up!"

We've clearly seen that using the term "genocide" has derailed the entire discussion, not just here but anywhere it is discussed. But the thing is, sitting down and shutting up didn't fix things. Reaching out diplomatically didn't fix things. Peaceful protest didn't fix things. Violent protest didn't fix things. Accusations of genocide didn't fix things.

What exactly are native people supposed to do here?

In the case of accountability, the reforms Harper instituted were roughly equivalent to making Justin Trudeau's personal finances a public record. When you do that, it only drives things deeper into the abyss. The rich already find ways to skirt their taxes; you think native chiefs can't do the same under a slightly different law? In the end, it didn't quite find as much as it was thought it would, and what it did find in places like Attawapiskat was prosecuted. There are non-native people gaming this system too; a local car repair shop in Thunder Bay lost several contracts with First Nations after bragging on-line that he purposefully overcharged them "since the government pays for it".

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Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
Perhaps one solution might be to have a cross-Canada governance oversight and accountability body that is run and staffed by indigenous people only, but who don't work on cases involving their own communities?
I've long been a big proponent of the full democratization of indigenous governance, meaning eliminate the hereditary chiefs, establish clear and consistent election schedules and financing laws, and convert the Assembly of First Nations from a chief's-only lobbying group to a representative democratic body directly elected by First Nations people, to do just this. I've explained it several times on here over the years (more in the Manitoba forum than the Canada one) but it hasn't gotten much traction. There was a touch of this in the Idle No More movement a decade ago, but once chiefs got hold of it they squashed that part of the movement. (INM was started as a pro-democracy/anti-chiefs protest in response to the federal government unilaterally proposing changes to governance and the chiefs uniformly opposing with without fully knowing what it was.)

But, this can't really be done without co-operation between the federal government and First Nations people at a grass-roots level. There is definitely a desire for better democracy at the First Nation level, it's part of why some native people choose to leave their communities, but there has been little effort by the federal government to harness that desire and turn it into something positive and every time they've started going in that direction, their actions (like Harper's) were more authoritative than co-operative.

The other problem is that all the reserves were created as separate micro-nations as part of a divide and conquer approach with the idea that they'd have died off or assimilated by now, but they haven't, and the legacy of that is the insane complexity and difficulty of negotiating with First Nations.

Also, "consultations" is a big issue.

Case in point:

Company wants to build a pipeline through FN land.
FN hosts consultation and says "no pipeline!"
Pipeline gets approved.
FN gets upset and says "they didn't consult!"

In FN parlance, "consult" seems to be used in place of "dictate", so when the "consultation" doesn't result in "re-write the plans to the exact specifications of this one community", FN governance gets offended and then says, absurdly, "They didn't consult!". But they did.

So, this needs to be addressed, and I think it would be better if First Nations leadership or some form of representative of them drafted up a template of what exactly "consultation" is. The second phase of this is when it goes through the courts and they decide "consultation" didn't happen. Does consultation mean "seek input" or does it mean "hand over control"?

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Originally Posted by ssiguy View Post
I don't see why? Quite the contrary, such a conversation is essential if Natives are to move beyond their economic and social problems. Certainly, Ottawa and provincial governments can take a good chunk of the blame for the present situation but it does take two to tango.

This hereditary leadership notion is just a politically palatable way of saying Feudal Lord system and that's exactly how the Chiefs want to keep it to maintain their privileged position. Ottawa can't do anything about the Reserve high birth rates, kids dropping out of school at 16, domestic violence, and drug abuse. All the resources in the world mean nothing unless there is a ground swell support for such initiative...…….a damaged community needs a resolved community to fix it.

Unfortunately Chiefs tend to be indifferent to such fundamental changes as it is far more politically advantageous to just blame Ottawa. Solving one's problems does not start with gazing out the window but rather looking in the mirror.
Part of the problem some communities have is compounding of crises. Several tribal councils in Northern Ontario have pooled their resources to establish education systems, they operate schools and maintain a curriculum, and they're actually good programmes. Oshki-Wenjack has a certified water system operator course that's turning out dozens of water system operators a year. But if they have to build a school in their community... how? They have no revenue sources. They're completely dependent on federal funding and the way that system works is broken. They can't get resource royalties or tax land or income or purchases so there's no possible revenue stream, they got handed dozens of houses each all at once and every single one is reaching the end of its useful life at the same time. Groundwater is contaminated by diesel fuel because they never bothered running power lines up there. (Quebec did, though—and you can see the difference!)

It's really quite difficult to talk about a problem they face in isolation because all the problems are crashing into each other and the whole thing gets worse with each passing day. Trudeau is building new water systems but old ones are still failing at a high rate and the new ones aren't being built properly (either poor craftsmanship by the southern contractors coming up to install them, or the system Ottawa has picked for any community isn't actually suited to the water its drawing an is treating it with the wrong techniques but no one cares?)

The problem isn't so much that we have the reserves; if they were to become municipalities, they'd still have the same revenue problem where they can't levy resource royalties, they can't tax income, they can't tax sales, and with worthless land, they will get nothing back by taxing that. Some municipalities in Northern Ontario has property tax rates around forty per cent, that's over 20 times higher than Thunder Bay and 25 times higher than Toronto, and it's still bringing in barely $2,000 per house. You can't run a government on that model.

So where does the revenue come from to achieve the solutions? I guarantee if Grassy Narrows had enough cash just lying around they'd build the minamata disease treatment center themselves.
     
     
  #29  
Old Posted Dec 27, 2019, 11:39 PM
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As much as I love the idea of Canada with a thriving, autonomous indigenous realm, associated cultural, architectural, culinary influence on us and our cities, and vast lands for preserving ancient ways of life... it's way too late for that. There is zero charm in casinos, mega malls on farmland, free-for-all zoning/land use in urban land, unregulated commercial fishing with modern vessels, "reserves" populated with suburban houses clad in vinyl siding, and the very expensive advocacy industry.
     
     
  #30  
Old Posted Dec 28, 2019, 12:41 AM
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As much as I love the idea of Canada with a thriving, autonomous indigenous realm, associated cultural, architectural, culinary influence on us and our cities, and vast lands for preserving ancient ways of life... it's way too late for that. There is zero charm in casinos, mega malls on farmland, free-for-all zoning/land use in urban land, unregulated commercial fishing with modern vessels, "reserves" populated with suburban houses clad in vinyl siding, and the very expensive advocacy industry.
Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
     
     
  #31  
Old Posted Dec 28, 2019, 2:07 AM
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Well duh, as is with all forum posts. Also, water is wet.
     
     
  #32  
Old Posted Dec 28, 2019, 2:30 AM
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Well duh, as is with all forum posts. Also, water is wet.
Astonishing, isn't it? People having different opinions on the internet. I guess some people can't grasp that concept
     
     
  #33  
Old Posted Dec 28, 2019, 4:01 AM
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It's too easy to let this issue be boiled down to "You committed genocide!" "So what? Here's a million dollars to shut you up!"
In my observation, it's more like
- "You committed genocide!"
- "?!? No we didn't. You seem totally unhinged and disconnected from reality and we're pretty much going to stop paying any attention to you from now on."
     
     
  #34  
Old Posted Dec 28, 2019, 4:11 AM
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Perhaps one solution might be to have a cross-Canada governance oversight and accountability body that is run and staffed by indigenous people only, but who don't work on cases involving their own communities?
Feels absolutely unacceptable to have a job opening that demands the applicant to be of a certain race... it doesn't, to you guys? Even for good reasons.

(Unless that job is a movie role - fair enough to demand a white male actor to play William Wallace, a black male actor to play Toussaint Louverture, a Mediterranean-looking female actress to play Cleopatra, etc.)

A way around this could be "must be fluent in Cree" and "must be familiar enough with reserve life". At least those aren't constitutionally-illegal requirements... but then you may open the door to non-aboriginals qualifying. (Anyone meeting those requirements should honestly have a chance at the job, in my view.)
     
     
  #35  
Old Posted Dec 28, 2019, 4:19 AM
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For perspective, it's often useful to try to see things as an outsider. Imagine that you're learning that in modern France, they have over there an ethnicity-based status system where Frenchmen of established Gallic ancestry and lineage are paid "financial reparations" by all the rest of the Taxpaying French Population who don't possess this special Directly-Descended-From-The-Vanquished-And-Conquered status. This "Taxpaying" part of the population of France (a majority) would be made up of "lapsed status" descendents of Gauls, as well as all other possible (mixed) old stock origins (Italian, Germanic, non-Gallic Celts) for the current French population, plus all other more recent immigrant origins (Arabs, subsaharan Africans, etc.)

This is 21st century France, right now. What's your opinion of their system?

(Mine can be summed up as "WTF")
     
     
  #36  
Old Posted Dec 28, 2019, 5:06 AM
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Feels absolutely unacceptable to have a job opening that demands the applicant to be of a certain race... it doesn't, to you guys? Even for good reasons.

(Unless that job is a movie role - fair enough to demand a white male actor to play William Wallace, a black male actor to play Toussaint Louverture, a Mediterranean-looking female actress to play Cleopatra, etc.)

A way around this could be "must be fluent in Cree" and "must be familiar enough with reserve life". At least those aren't constitutionally-illegal requirements... but then you may open the door to non-aboriginals qualifying. (Anyone meeting those requirements should honestly have a chance at the job, in my view.)
Just working within the framework we have.

Yes a different set of laws for different people based on ethnicity is odious.
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  #37  
Old Posted Dec 28, 2019, 10:40 AM
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As much as I love the idea of Canada with a thriving, autonomous indigenous realm, associated cultural, architectural, culinary influence on us and our cities, and vast lands for preserving ancient ways of life... it's way too late for that. There is zero charm in casinos, mega malls on farmland, free-for-all zoning/land use in urban land, unregulated commercial fishing with modern vessels, "reserves" populated with suburban houses clad in vinyl siding, and the very expensive advocacy industry.
It is a big country with very different situations. Many but not all first nations communities on the coast are small communities in very isolated places.

I think a good starting point is to create a system of government that permits local self-governance with respect to local issues.

If there is any group (native or not) that wants to own communal property and setup an internal mechanism of self-governance why not stay out the way and let that happen. During earlier parts of our history we were open to immigrant groups that did just that. For some first nations community that may very well be what "self-governance" means.

For other communities it means individual land ownership by members of the community and something similar to what we think of as a municipal government.

As for "unregulated" urban development, well you just need to look at at a community such as Victoria where there is 15 different municipal governments all doing their own thing. This is no a first nations issue, this is an urban development issue.
     
     
  #38  
Old Posted Dec 28, 2019, 12:16 PM
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The big mistake was giving chiefs power of disbursement of funds.
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  #39  
Old Posted Dec 28, 2019, 10:09 PM
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If there is any group (native or not) that wants to own communal property and setup an internal mechanism of self-governance why not stay out the way and let that happen. During earlier parts of our history we were open to immigrant groups that did just that.
Sure, but huge difference, these groups (Mormons, Mennonites, etc.) were all financially self-sufficient. They wanted housing, they built it, they wanted potable water, they made it happen, etc.

I'm sure nearly everyone in this country would be super happy with such an "autonomy" model for native communities, where they're on their own, do what they want on their land, and never get one more penny from Ottawa from this point on.
     
     
  #40  
Old Posted Dec 28, 2019, 10:16 PM
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Just working within the framework we have.

Yes a different set of laws for different people based on ethnicity is odious.
I am pretty damn certain that at some point in the future (on that distant day when a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, which I think will inevitably come) people will look back at Canada and be astonished that this racial apartheid system lasted through the 20th century and into the 21st. It's incredibly anachronistic and I guess you have to be looking from the outside to see it. Similarly, it's possible South Africans in the early 1990s who grew up with their system found it normal too - "its just the way things are and have (from living memory) always been".
     
     
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