COST INCLUDED IN $6.5B SENT FROM OTTAWA?

Osoyoos Indian Band wins bid for first provincial jail on reserve land

Chief wants more jobs training for Aboriginal inmates

by Ken MacQueen on Monday, September 16, 2013 9:49am - 30 Comments

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In 2007, Chief Clarence Louie, the no-nonsense leader of British Columbia’s Osoyoos Indian Band, was appointed to a five-person federal panel reviewing the operations of the Correctional Service of Canada. There was much that troubled him, as he toured federal penitentiaries. He was distressed, but hardly surprised, by the overrepresentation of First Nations and other Aboriginal offenders in prison. Most anyone from a First Nations community has a friend or relative who has done jail time, he said in an interview. But what frustrated him, in that context, was the mushy morass of well-meaning “Aboriginal” programs to heal and empower, or to find one’s inner warrior.

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