Message to Indians...

...in many, too many, cases your enemy is not the white man in Ottawa or your provincial capitals but in your own back yard and they use you as pawns to further their self interests whether it is politically of financialy. It is time those bands that are "successful" to step up to the plate and kick a little ass...
Lorne Gunter: The Indian Act sustains the problems on our reserves
Dec 6, 2011 – 2:49 PM ET Last Updated: Dec 6, 2011 3:08 PM ET
Last week, I wrote that political correctness was behind the mess at the troubles Ontario Cree community of Attawapiskat. Politicians and bureaucrats are worried about being labelled racist by aboriginal leaders, so they won’t call out the incompetence, nepotism, mismanagement and corruption that leads to the dysfunction that now paralyzes northern Ontario’s Cree reserves and more than 140 (of 630) other First Nations reserves across the country, which are under some form of direct or indirect management by Ottawa.
I stand by that assertion. There are simply too many examples of band politicians in communities of a few hundred people paying themselves more than the prime minister or their provincial premier, or new councils firing most of the employees on a reserve after an election and replacing them with friends and relatives (only to have the process reversed when the old councilors win re-election after the next vote and rehire their supporters), or incomplete records of payments made from band funds, or grants for firehalls or community centres that never get built (or get built but never get used). Read More »