Apr 19 2010
Op-Ed: Our Inheritance
When the opportunity came up to write an op-ed, I was ready to argue with whatever Jordan was going to say, owing to the fact that I always end up with really good points when I argue with him about First Nation funding. I was ready to rant on about how the Aboriginals of Canada didn’t have enough funding and services when I suddenly realized that I really had no concrete facts in my head to use. Calming down, I decided to research about funding.
The Canadian federal government gives the aboriginals of Canada 30million for their education and the BC government supplies an extra funding of $1,014 per student. That’s around a thousand more dollars than normal students. Then why are 70 percent of the students on reserves not graduating?
Most of the problems are there because of the environment of the reserves. If you grow up surrounded by people with no hope and people that cling to the past that is obviously not ever going to revived, you’re not going to grow up with a whole lot of optimism for the future. Also, that’s not mentioning the drugs, alcohol, abuse, and debt. All of that is fuelling the poverty cycle that is rolling around and around in the reserves. With that all that swirling around the kids as they grow up, they don’t find school a prospect anymore. At this rate, it would take 28 years for the high school grad rates to catch up to the rest of the population grad rates.
People all over the place always say that we shouldn’t be paying for something someone else’s ancestors did. Nick K’s arguments really got me really going.
So, if you are a registered Indian, you have a chunk of land reserved for you and your tribesmen that you can use however you like. You might have rights to fish a river as much as you want (for free) and sell the fish you catch even though your ancestors never sold fish for a profit and even if the river is protected from the general public.
The First Natives certainly didn’t sell the fish. They traded. All of their resources were at their disposal in their huge swatches of land. Living off the land is the way they lived for millions of years before a bunch of Europeans came and cheated them or forcing them to give up their homes. Living off the land requires a great amount of…well, land. People can’t live off a little chunk. Look at the size of farms! And the produce from farms can’t even completely support the farming families anymore. Also, when the natives lived off the land, the land was rich and fertile and could renew itself. Look around us. Is it like that now? (No.) All those reserves are far off in the mountains where transportation and environment are pretty dire. Take for example, the Bonaparte Reserve near Cache Creek. It’s extremely nice for them that the dump is nearby too, isn’t it? Financially, people inherit estate from their ancestors, but that also includes their debt. Moving to or living in Canada is like receiving the estate of the people who worked hard to make Canada a beautifully natural democratic place full of equality and free health care. But we get the debt too.
There are government housing programs for you which exist nowhere else in the country and you (status-Indians) have access to the same education, healthcare (including paid healthcare premiums if you live in B.C. or Alberta), old age pensions, and social services as anyone else living in Canada.
That makes sense. They are Canadian citizens.
I’m not suggesting that the government completely cut off help to the First Nations, because most of them wouldn’t be able to make it without the government’s help. Rather, I think that the government should help assimilate First Nations into Canada’s general population as quickly as possible because not only is it an economic problem, but it is simply not fair that someone has more rights than I do simply because my ancestors wronged them hundreds of years ago.
That’s what our first Prime Minister, Macdonald, said. He told everyone that his government would “do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the inhabitant of the Dominion of Canada.” A lot of good that did. Also, I would like to point out that though the Europeans wronged them hundred years ago, they are not my ancestors. But that does not make me free of guilt either. Just because the colonists took the land, that doesn’t make it okay now. We are still on their land while they are shoved in tiny pockets of land in the middle of nowhere. I’m not saying to kick everyone out of Canada. It’s completely impossible. But at least we can do what we can to help the people we’ve stolen from.
Canada used to be at the top for quality of life and living conditions, but the conditions of the reserves dragged us down to eighth. How about water quality? The BC government is providing 226 million to improve drinking water in our communities. The federal government spends $330 million to improve drinking water in reserves, yet 25% of water treatment systems on-reserves pose a high risk to human health. The reserves have more funding, yet many of them are equal to the living conditions or developing countries.
Here was when I read Jordan’s Op-ed and after I thought about it, I surprisingly agreed with him.
For change in the living standards of aboriginal citizens, our government needs to do a better job of spending the aboriginal money, and the aboriginal government needs to be monitored to make sure the money reaches its destination.
For change to happen, people need to be aware of the facts, and realize the first nations are not the only ones to blame for the state they are in.
We give them all this funding, yet nothing is happening. With the reserves in such remote places, the amount of money spent to just transport things there is massive. No wonder healthy food and proper medication is such a problem. Also, all that extra funding for education is not making a huge difference at all. The government needs to stop throwing money at the reserves and actually think of plans that make self-sufficiency happen.
In order to encourage self-sufficiency, the importance of having a 2 way communication between off-reserve communities is needed. In the world of today, living in a little pocket of land isn’t going to be self-sufficient. Trading and partnerships with the outside economy is the only way to prosper. The Aboriginals cannot live as they used to since the first immigrants from Europe have already ruined their past way of living for them. Since all of us immigrants (whether it was you, your parents, or your ancestors) are living on Aboriginal land, we shouldn’t complain about the amount of funding going to the status-Indians. Instead, we should think of better ways to manage the funding, so the tax money is worth being used.
Really good post, louise. I agree with a reasonable amount of it, despite the fact that we both clearly have very different opinions on this issue.
What I really feel required to mention is-”We are still on their land while they are shoved in tiny pockets of land in the middle of nowhere… But at least we can do what we can to help the people we’ve stolen from.”, “Since all of us immigrants…are living on Aboriginal land, we shouldn’t complain about the amount of funding going to the status-Indians.”
It isn’t their land! Does half of Europe belong to Italy because the Romans occupied it for a thousand years and the are the ancestors of Italy? Do France and Britain belong to the Celts, who lived in those lands for thousands of years?
We are not living on Aboriginal land. We are living on land. We should make Aboriginals equal, but they must make themselves equal as well-and not because we stole from them, but because all people should be equal.
Also, you say that the reason for low graduation rates and such is their society-again, if their society clings to the past and has a poor outlook, we should help them look forward, not assist them in separation.
Louise,
I love the new design of your Blog…Looking Awesome…Way to go
I agree with you in the sense that the money collected for First Nation’s does have to be better managed. After all, tossing money at a problem doesn’t solve it. But you don’t mention that a Native can leave his/her reserve at any time he/she wishes and become a regular Canadian citizen like you and me. I think it’s time that Canada realizes that Native’s can’t really be repaid for the wrong done to them by giving them pieces of land and money every year, but rather try to assimilate the Natives into the general population even if it mean displeasing some people in the short term and politician’s popularity take a bit of a dip. I apologize if I have offended anyone or if I seem like an ignorant white guy, but this is my position on the matter.
Good points Liam,
But I have to disagree. Your points about Europe make perfect sense-…in the way of civilization hundreds of years ago.
We are 21st century humans and therefore we are different than the view you are taking-the natural “laws” before humans came and “civilized everything.” Our morals and ideas are so much more different than the ones humans used to have, therefore, we can only act in the ones that are relevant to today.
We did steal from them. We have to be using the terms of humans, not the terms of the natural world. If I’m a tiger and I go into your territory, shove you out and kill your kids, that’s fine. But we’re humans.
We ARE helping them look forward. And letting them identify with their culture isn’t separation. I’m pretty sure assimilation is against the multi-cultural act. So that option is out.
Besides, why do we help animals? Why do we even try to clean up the environment? Why do we help homeless people? Why do we help someone up when we accidentally push them over? Because we’re human.
Also, I think that views on both sides need to change. The past is the past. We need to move forward. But that doesn’t mean that making the First Nations live just like us is going to make them happy. We only have one point of view here- our own. Perhaps we don’t have to help them. But we are, and that is what counts. And if we are going to keep on doing that, we have to make sure that the management of the money is much better than it is now.
Nick, I think your points are pretty valid too.
But to assimilate someone into a society they may not be wanting to be a part of, is pretty much against what Canada is all about-Multiculturalism.
I know the status-Indians can leave anytime they want from their reserves, but where will their money come from? I mean, no is going to move into a reserve, (I’m pretty sure you can’t) and that means you’ll have no money to buy a house outside the reserve. I can’t really speak for the natives themselves, but perhaps there is a feeling of belonging when they are with their people.
Assimilation or integration? That is the crux of this issue. No one, not even the natives I believe, want them to stay pretty much separate from the rest of the country, as almost sovereign nations within Canada.
Assimilation is wrong. Assimilation causes cultures to be forgotten, forwards the destruction of what marks people unique. But integration…that is necessary. Integrating peoples is what creates a melting pot of cultures. Interestingly enough, I’d say that the melting pot of Canadian multiculturalism is completely missing the native ingredient. They make up their own little side dishes, but are not part of the whole.
I’ve got lots more to say, but I feel bad enough about hijacking this post, I’ll bring it all up in discussion in class.
I have to agree you Louise, that having natives being totally assimilated into our population would result in a loss of culture and we (Canada) would become more like the U.S. melting pot type culture. What could be a potential solution, would be to let the Natives keep their reserves but to scale funding back and eventually eliminate it once the Natives are able to be self sufficient.
Regarding housing, I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly have a house or a huge pile of money sitting around that I can use once I move out of my parent’s place to buy a house. And that’s after using what savings I do have for post secondary education (which I have to PAY for).
Obviously, there is no easy solution to the Native issue, but I agree with your post when you say that one of the key things is making sure money is properly spent
And so the discussion begins…
In a few of the different conversations I have had with different TALONS over the last few weeks, I have heard two recurrent arguments that I think require further investigation before the last word on the subject will have been uttered.
One is the issue of Canada’s responsibility toward First Nations for land disputes centuries ago; and the other is a need for aboriginal peoples to move forward, and fall into step with modern Canadian society. And while these points may be difficult to argue against – other than to invoke the human kindness element that Louise does in the comments – this discussion doesn’t take into account the systematic repression of Canadian First Nations that continued until shockingly recently, or the phrasing of Canada’s Multiculturalism Act of 1971, which are each relevant to the discussion at hand.
A piece of legislation that made our country unique in the world at the time – and has not been followed by as many modern nations as one might think – the Multiculturalism Act made it law that Canadian society “promote the full and equitable participation of individuals and communities of all origins in the continuing evolution and shaping of all aspects of Canadian society and assist them in the elimination of any barrier to such participation.”
It is up to Canadians to continually interpret our history and Charter Rights and Freedoms in lieu of these issues, because as Mayor Stewart alluded to last week, and Jordan echoed as well, our understanding of their complexities helps us determine responsible public policy that is representative of the voting public.
This issue of what may or may not be ‘owed’ to members of Canada’s aboriginal communities boils down to the values we have set for ourselves in the Multiculturalism Act, and how we view not only our country’s early colonists’ treatment of the native population, but our government’s actions in the meantime. Stephen Harper said two years ago that, “The legacy of Indian Residential Schools has contributed to social problems that continue to exist in many communities today,” and that “this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.”
Residential Schools – which removed 150,000 aboriginal youth from their families and communities with the ambition of “killing the Indian in the child” – are but one facet of a society bent on solving its “Indian Problem” (as the government officially referred to it). And if this legacy of racial discrimination has created a visible minority among its citizens for whom there are significant barriers to “full and equitable participation [...] in the continuing evolution and shaping of all aspects of Canadian society,” it is our stated responsibility by law to “assist them in the elimination of any barrier to such participation.”
I doubt – along with you – that more money is the answer. But an equitable solution is somewhere in respectful discourse which weighs our community’s diverse opinions along with our best collection of facts, statistics and Charter Rights and Freedoms. I applaud your efforts thus far in putting your opinions and interpretations of our country’s possibilities and plights out there for discussion, and look forward to the continued evolution of these ideas.
Mr. J
Nice post. Explaining both sides of the issue, you effectively solve it so that it is a win-win situation for both sides.
I don’t really understand “The Canadian federal government gives the aboriginals of Canada 30million for their education and the BC government supplies an extra funding of $1,014 per student. That’s around a thousand more dollars than normal students.” How many dollars per student is that? In B.C. the government funds around 8,000 dollars per student for education.
The BC government gives the First Native students the same funding per person as everyone else, plus the $1, 014. The federal government also gives another 30million to all the Aboriginals in the country for education.