I Don't Think Any Of My Ancestors Met Any Indians...

Native protesters dig up the road in front of their barricade as violence breaks out between white residents, native protesters and the OPP at the barricade in Caledonia in 2006. ...so hopefully they will not be the lynchpin that drives the discussions and concessions will not be made on anything they are falsely accussed of doing.

There is hope for Canada’s First Nations

Ken Coates and Greg Poelzer: Harper’s meetings this week with First Nations leaders have a quiet urgency about them. It has been a long while since there was a First Nations meeting of this importance.

John Ivison: Pragmatic PM looks ahead as Chiefs air old grievances

The Crown-First Nations gathering in Ottawa was a classic example of a failure to communicate.
Both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and National Chief Shawn Atleo recognized the history of Canada’s relations with its First Nations as a register of crimes and misfortunes. Both paid lip-service to the idea of unlocking the potential of aboriginal Canadians.
But they talked past each other when it came to moving forward.
Read More »

Matt Gurney: A native uprising isn’t likely, but it’s possible
Led by a charismatic young leader, small groups of natives strike a series of Canadian military bases and launch terrorist attacks in major Canadian cities. While the numerically tiny and underequipped Canadian Army scrambles to respond, a second wave of attacks by native insurgents bring Canada’s petroleum industry and electrical generation capability to a halt, causing economic disruption and blackouts in the United States. Eventually, the U.S. mounts a major military incursion into Canadian territory to restore order and stabilize their own economy.
That is all confined to fiction — namely, Canadian military expert Douglas Bland’s 2010 novel Uprising. But while the prospect of a native insurgency in Canada admittedly seems a remote threat, it is a real one, and something that Canadian strategic planners, who plan for pretty much every scenario, must consider.
Read More »

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 »

How Much Funding Is Needed....

...to pickup the garbage on your front yard and take it to the local dump or in this case possibly use it to fuel the sacred bonfire?

Jonathan Kay: A tiny decrepit slice of Attawapiskat, right here in my Toronto backyard

Dec 5, 2011 – 12:29 PM ET Last Updated: Dec 5, 2011 2:05 PM ET

There are exactly three houses in my neighbourhood that are owned by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. These also happen to be the same properties that, for the last decade at least, consistently have appeared to be falling apart, and have garbage strewn over their lawns. Coincidence? Not quite.
It’s famously said that, in the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car. The same principle applies to real estate. The people who live in public-assistance properties aren’t necessarily any lazier or messier than the rest of us. But they have no economic motivation to beautify or maintain properties in which they have no economic interest. So they tend to let their living spaces fall into ruin and filth.
The difference between these properties and resident-owned properties is remarkable. The three city-owned properties I refer to in the first paragraph carry the street numbers 6,8 and 10. The property immediately to the north, number 12, is a world apart — a beautiful, well-maintained house that the owner has tastefully set apart from his neighbours with a wooden fence. The contrast couldn’t be more telling.
Now imagine a whole community of homes that contains no 12 — just variations on 6, 8 and 10 — a place where real-estate ownership is not only discouraged, but actually outlawed. Read More »

The Vagaries Of Special Status...

...it is verboten for the "white man" to be critical of the actions of his "red brothers" so their actions are overlooked when it comes to outright fraud and theft.

Follow the money to Attawapiskat

Despite gut-wrenching images of Native children in far-off Attawapiskat living in unheated sheds and tents with no electricity and no running water, the tragic situation is largely self-inflicted.

Little hope in Attawapiskat
Christie Blatchford:

I hope they didn’t get used to the parade of media and politicians up there in poor old Attawapiskat, the remote native community on James Bay that has been so much in the news the last while

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence: Help the First Nations move forward

It Is Time To KICK Ass...

Make a choice...

The answer to Attawapiskat is … well, we’ll get back to you

Conditions-in-attawapiskat-can-be-blamed-on-political-correctness

...and Harper should do so when he meets with indian "leaders!"

Counterpoint: For those in Attawapiskat, assimilation isn’t so easy

John Ivison: Attawapiskat’s hardships could be helped by roads

True But Not Only On Reserves...

'Things don't add up' in Attawapiskat: Duncan

Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan says the government has appointed a third-party manager to take over in Attawapiskat because "there are a lot of things that don't add up," such as missing reports and money earmarked for housing that doesn't appear to have been spent. More

How Canadian!

It is a Canadian tradition...once your foot touchs Canadian soil the first thing on the majority of people's minds is how do they get a place at the trough and how do they play the race/cultural card to get special privileges.

How the O’Learys and 20,000 other Newfoundlanders were declared Mi’kmaq


There are more and more registered Indians in Newfoundland. Not because of migration. But because thousands of people are discovering, or declaring for the first time, that they are Mi’kmaw descendants

Will Tories Get Praise And Kudos...

...not bloody likely! There are too many in the indian community who feed at the trough.

Reform of aboriginal land claims Tory success story
John Ivison: By any measure, reform of the specific claims process has been one of the Conservative government’s success stories since coming to power in 2006

Gettting On The Aboriginal Gravy Train?

Meet Running Bear and Small Warrior (or John and Pauline from Coventry)

(Thanks to Jeff Meyerson)
Posted by Dave on August 2, 2011 at 07:30 AM

Permalink Comments (17)







Read more: http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/#ixzz1Tt6tJpAV

Take The Time Tor Read...

* the future of the next couple of generations of youth are at stake. Remember they are tomorrows leaders.
* we are investing $6B annually with questionable results.

In conversation: Shawn Atleo


On moving beyond residential schools, overcoming cynicism and trusting the Tories

Photograph by Simon Hayter

by Ken MacQueen on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 11:00am - 1 Comment


AFTER TWO YEARS as national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Shawn Atleo is cautiously optimistic about the relationship he is forging with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. On Tuesday, at the assembly’s annual meeting in Moncton, N.B., he proposed replacing the federal Aboriginal Affairs Department with a system that allows bands more autonomy and lessens the heavy federal intervention required under the Indian Act. “The patterns of the past have to be essentially smashed,” he told Maclean’s. Atleo, a hereditary chief in the tiny B.C. island community of Ahousaht, reads vindication in the recent report by now-retired auditor general Sheila Fraser. It warns, as Atleo and successive national chiefs have said, that the quality of life on reserves is worsening and the existing system of financing and accountability must be overhauled.


Q: The last time we spoke, you called your home community of Ahousaht a microcosm of First Nations across the country. So, how is Ahousaht faring?


A: Oh, it has its struggles, to be frank. They’re working on them, and we’ve got a new generation of leadership coming on.


Q: There were issues of addiction and suicide, and there was an attempt last year to turn to traditional ways to deter drug dealers and chronic offenders. This included the threat of banishment if the offenders didn’t agree to go through treatment and an acculturation process. Has using traditional ways worked?


A: There’s definitely a sense of taking greater control of your life when you don’t leave it up to the [justice] system. I think that’s happened. The community had a referendum on a bylaw to have intoxicants not allowed in the village. And it passed. Council will work closely, not only with the RCMP detachment in the village, but within the traditional governance system. The bigger indications are things like our high school, which is going to be completed by September. There’s community expansion happening. There are eco-tourism ventures that are taking place. We’re seeing the young generation say there’s got to be ways we can support the health, wellbeing and future prosperity of our community. But make no mistake, the underlying struggles, they continue.


Q: There was at Ahousaht, as in many other communities, a legacy of residential schools. How did that impact the lives of people of your generation who didn’t attend such schools?


A: To be very frank, high rates of violence. Deep dysfunction in the community. Deep poverty. A real sense of conflict between the historical ways as well as the modern ways. Overall, I think it helped rob our people of a sense of self-confidence and being confident in our own identities. But it feels like we’re turning the corner to recognizing that none of us set up those systems of residential schools. We didn’t write the Indian Act. The First Nations didn’t, nor did the average Canadian.






Q: June 11 marked the third anniversary of the Prime Minister’s apology for Canada’s residential schools program. How important is that? I’ve heard a lot of noble-sounding words over the years that went nowhere. How do you take it beyond mere words?


A: My late grandmother remarked when we were together at the apology [in the House of Commons], “Grandson, they’re just beginning to see us.” That’s a profound statement for a lot of reasons. She raised 17 kids, all of whom went to residential school. I was the first generation not to in our community and our family. I certainly felt the impact in our community but I didn’t have to face those impacts directly. Her words were also encouraging. They’re about looking forward. She said, “What I realized is that I couldn’t turn this heavy page in a dark chapter of our history. It’s going to take every single one of us. First Nations and Canadians.” If residential schools existed for 150 years under the guise of education—education as a tool of oppression—it makes sense that we turn it around. Like she said, “We no longer fight our fights with our fists. We fight our fights with education.” So chiefs have made education our top priority.


Q: In June there was the release of a profoundly depressing report by now-retired auditor general Sheila Fraser. She looked at 31 audits conducted over 10 years related to Aboriginal programs. She generally found things are getting worse. What are the roots of that failure?


A: The essence of it is still a deep disconnect. She has made it clear, it was actually quite explicit, no longer should we do this any other way except with First Nations working with Canada. What’s implied is that it’s been nothing but unilateral action. First Nations find themselves fighting a status quo that they rejected. This needs to be about joint planning. The Prime Minister and I have had conversations just like that over the course of the last year, both agreeing that we need to bring forward all the resolutions and priorities that the First Nations have developed over the years. We need to bring that together with the government’s thinking and jointly design a set of priorities on how we can make real progress in a short period of time at the front end of the fresh mandate this government has.


Q: A centrepiece of that is the Joint Action Plan you announced last month with Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan. It sets priorities for improving the lot of Aboriginal people: education, accountability, improved negotiation and treaty implementation. Does this signal a new working relationship?


A: I’m really very hopeful that there’s a real commitment behind what I believe are hopeful words in the action plan. Canada, being a relatively young country, is a work in progress. While we look forward we have to bring forward that original treaty relationship. It is important to understand what Canada, and being Canadian, is about. That work in progress includes the need to reconcile those relationships. We need to reach out to the monarchy as well. It all comes down to political will. This is with the Prime Minister himself and Duncan directly. That’s what we’re hoping to do, to elevate it to the political level. We’ve had initiatives down in the bureaucracy and it’s just not done the job.


Q: You’re investing a lot of hope in that relationship with Stephen Harper. Why do you feel he’s committed to this?


A: Coming out of a recession, there’s still a fragile economy. There’s a labour shortage coming in 2017. We’ve got an aging mainstream populace. If we were to close the education and labour market gap in one generation, it could result in $400 billion in additional output to the Canadian economy, and $115 billion in saved government expenditures. So one other aspect I expressed to the Prime Minister is that Canada is, in fact, a successor state and has a responsibility to uphold treaties that were made with First Nations before Canada was even formed. We can’t work in isolation. The status quo has to be significantly changed, and these young people in the communities where I go—where they have no schools, they use slop pails in their homes, they have no running water—they need to see, taste and feel results sooner rather than later. If we can support First Nations and lift them out of these dire situations it’s going to make the country stronger.


Q: In a recent speech you talked about the funding gap between students on reserve and those elsewhere in the country, as much as $2,000 or $3,000 per child. How does that gap affect their education experience?


A: The average kid on reserve does not have access to computers, funds for recreation, funds for teacher training. That gap grows up to $7,000 per child in some parts of the country. We have regions of the country that have about a 28 per cent kindergarten to [Grade] 12 graduation rate. We need 65,000 post-secondary grads to close the gap with the rest of the population.


Q: Annual education spending growth has been capped at two per cent for years.


A: Not only two per cent. But there is no protection for sustainable funding. No equitable funding, which is what we’re pursuing at a minimum, although I think there are strong arguments to be made that we have some real catch-up to do when it comes to education. We have governments say, “We’re putting in all this money and chiefs are unaccountable, [Aboriginal] governments are unaccountable, systems are unaccountable. We’re not going to have you write 100 reports, you’re going to write 200 reports.” The auditor general says First Nations are drowning in a sea of accountability.


Q: What is the role of parental responsibility? When children end up in care, or drop out of school, those problems start at home.


A: What we’ve got to do is put the power and responsibility in the hands of the communities. And that means in the hands of the families.


Q: Does the current system create a kind of learned helplessness and cynicism among your leaders and educators?


A: I think the cynicism is well earned. It’s about lack of trust. Good words over the course of history without the kind of follow-through and action that’s required. Why do we believe we can break this pattern now? Perhaps it’s because we’re reaching out to Canadians and we don’t feel so alone now in this fight. I hope we’re in the kind of tipping point moment that other movements have experienced, whether it’s civil rights, women’s rights, the environmental issues. If this is indeed one of those moments, it would be incumbent on the government to recognize that along with us.

Putting Aside The Human Impact...

...there are 6 billion reasons to get involved and possibly a solution to the "incompotence" of band leaders would have the side effect of giving asistance to the working poor, seniors, etc. who are losing out in this two tier governance.

Christie Blatchford in Hobbema: Where does the money go?



Atleo’s bold call for abolition of the Indian Act requires a bold plan


117 comments

National Chief Shawn Atleo’s bold words about repealing the Indian Act and abolishing the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, at the Assembly of First Nations general assembly this week in Moncton, are unfortunately not accompanied by a specific picture of what would replace either of those institutions. Instead, there is a diffuse discussion paper.

Indian Act to forge a new deal, AFN chief urges Ottawa

Native reserve feeling ‘shock and grief’ after death of five-year-old boy

First Nations chief wants to disband Aboriginal Affairs department

The Indian Act was largely misguided when first enacted in 1876. The series of patchwork amendments over the following 135 years have not turned it into a sound structure. First nations communities might well benefit from greater flexibility and freedom than the Indian Act provides for – in their memberships codes, their forms of self-government, their handling of property rights and many other matters. But the reliance that the discussion paper seems to place on the multiplicity of treaties is not a substitute for a comprehensive framework of some sort.

In any case, there will certainly continue to be fiscal transfers from the federal government to these communities. There needs to be some department or agency, by whatever name, answerable to a cabinet minister and consequently to Parliament, to deal with those transfers and to oversee that spending.

Mr. Atleo wants a government-to-government relationship. The provinces have such a relationship with Ottawa, and there has been a federal minister of intergovernmental affairs for 18 years, though with a secretariat in the Privy Council Office, rather than a full department. Perhaps what Mr. Atleo has in mind would be something analogous.

An entity smaller than a department – or a fragmented set of smaller entities for the delivery of this or that service – might not be an improvement, considering that the needs of first nations communities are so great, and so urgent. The provinces have far more political power vis-à-vis Ottawa, and vastly more revenues of their own than the first nations communities. The breakup of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs could result in a dangerous neglect of aboriginal policy.

The National Chief is a perceptive and thoughtful politician. Mr. Atleo is right that thorough-going change is needed. Canadians would be grateful for a much more clear account of what it is that he wants and what he hopes for.

More related to this storyWinnipeg’s new mural honours the missing

Aboriginal Canadians get a fuller share of rights

Disband Indian Affairs Department And Give Them A Shot At Self Government...

...with the understanding that the government money tap will be closed in a specific time period and they will have to go to the government for funding in the same way the "white man" does.

First Nations understand that many people have a difficult time grappling with First Nations self-government (After The Act And The Department, What? – July 14). Canadians want definition and precision, whereas First Nations want creativity and flexibility. First Nations are diverse – culturally, historically, geographically and demographically; movement toward self-determination must reflect that reality.

Just as there are differences among provinces and regions, there is no one-size-fits-all approach that will work for First Nations.

The discussion of chiefs was to reflect back the voices, energies and progress that is emerging and suggest a way forward that increases the rate and pace of change. The discussion paper, Pursuing First Nation Self-Determination: Realizing Our Rights and Responsibilities, builds on the volumes of previous study and sets out four specific elements and several possible paths on each.

Our job at the AFN is to open doors so First Nations can create the change they need. Unilateral approaches do not and have not worked.
We are asking all Canadians to engage in this dialogue; we invite all to participate in the essential work of delivering lasting change.
Shawn A-in-chut Atleo, National Chief, Assembly of First Nations

More related to this story More letters

Shawn Atleo calls for the repeal of the Indian Act but, as your editorial points out, he offers no concrete or realistic alternative. Indian reserves exemplify the archaic, wrong-headed and dysfunctional “separate but equal” legal straitjacket that Canada and Canadian Indians have become bound and oppressed by.

The real solution to the problems Mr. Atleo is trying to address is to find the courage and resolve to end the reservation system and race-based special status for Indians. The situation of ordinary Indians in Canada, because of their special, race-based status and the reservation system, is dismal and inferior, and the only way for this situation to improve is by gradually eliminating both these things.

The ancient, pre-contact Indian cultures are extinct. Indians can’t go back to them. Completing the process of assimilation with non-Indian Canadians is the best way forward for them.
Peter Best, Sudbury, Ont.

...now let's hear from those (facetious) who speak with forked tongues

Christie Blatchford in Hobbema: Where does the money go?



When you wade into the shark-infested waters of writing about matters aboriginal, you quickly learn how stupid you are.

Well, that’s my experience. So it was with the Caledonia occupation; and this week again with the shooting death of Ethan Yellowbird on the Samson Cree First Nation, one of four First Nations situated south of Edmonton at a place called Hobbema in English and Maskwacis, Cree for “bear hills,” to natives. Read More »

Rights of aboriginals cannot be denied


Hunter: We're a nation of handwringers, and no more so than over what are referred to so lamely as aboriginal "affairs." The conditions under which our First Nations live on so many reserves are a national shame. They have earned Canada the censure of international bodies set up...

Problems Will NOT Be Solved In Sweat Lodges By Elders...

...the solution, IMHO, is to remove special two tier system that is now in place.

Reserve’s code of silence deafens


Christie Blatchford in Hobbema: Speaking out on this reserve south of Edmonton, as on many others across the country, usually carries a price

Christie Blatchford: Shooting’s legacy should be scrapping Indian Act

Great And Timely Idea...

First Nations chief wants to disband Aboriginal Affairs department

. but it begs the question will the $6B go back into general revenues and indians have to go to the provinces for handouts like the rest of the villages, hamlets, towns, cities, etc. to provide basic services and ill residents of reserves begin paying taxes.

Shawn Atleo

Trying to breathe life into First Nation rights

Will Six Nations Be Payng The $20M...

Calendonia: residents finally awarded $20 million, after Indians took over their neighbourhood and police stood by and watched


By Kathy Shaidle on Saturday, July 9th, 2011
No Comments

Yes, this happened in Canada. In this century.

Imagine a Western where the Indians and the cavalry gang up on the settlers…

Today, the expert on the occupation, Christie Blatchford, reports:

It was in February of 2006 that a handful of aboriginals from the nearby Six Nations reserve first walked onto Douglas Creek Estates, a residential subdivision then under construction along the town’s main street.

With the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ontario government determined to handle the occupation as a land claims dispute or “reclamation” the protesters remained unmolested on the land, their numbers and confidence growing. (…)

What happened in the weeks and months after was widespread lawlessness that ranged from the minor to the serious. It included the destruction of an electricity tower (which caused a three-day blackout to the area), the torching of a bridge, the hijacking of a police car with officers inside it and unprovoked assaults by natives upon a local builder, who suffered a permanent brain injury, an elderly couple whose offence was to drive by the site and a Hamilton TV crew who dared try to video-record that.

(KEEP READING...)

Corrupt And Inept Band Leaders And Petty Bauracrats

Tory ridings good place to start looking for wasted moneyLiving conditions on reserves worsening: AG


John Ivison: Like most politicians, Conservatives were guilty of pork-barrelling, but it was in another chapter of the A-G’s report where the real scandal lurks — namely, an update on First Nations programs on reserves



Living conditions on First Nations reserves remain significantly below the national average despite billions of federal dollars spent each year to address longstanding issues.

Police release names of 4 dead in Nunavut

Same Old...

Ottawa, native leaders commit to sweeping overhaul of reserve life 6


Adam Radwanski
Defeatist attitude biggest obstacle to tackling native problems

The Norm Whenever There Are "Govt. Handouts!"

Alberta band’s challenge: ‘Too many chiefs, not enough Indians’


Along the side of the road into Morley, headquarters of Alberta’s Stoney Nakoda Nation, just north of the busy stretch of Trans-Canada between Calgary and Banff that bisects this portion of the reserve, is a parade of signs

Do You Not Have To Be A Canadian?

Province ordered to explain why natives excluded from jury pools


2011/03/11 07:45:22

The Ontario Court of Appeal ordered a senior court administrator to testify about what’s being done to include people living on reserves and ensure juries reflect a cross-section of the community (4)

The Ones Who Should Be Censured Are...

News for indian giverCBC Pundit Censured for “Indian Giver” Comment

The famously brash O'Leary used the term “Indian giver” during a heated exchange with his co-host Amanda Lang about the potential takeover of Saskatchewan's ...

1) INDIAN BAND LEECHES
2) PETTY ASS POLITICALLY CORRECT BEAURACRATS

Lorne Gunter: Audit of band’s finances underlines need for accountability


As near as I can tell, the federal Indian Affairs and Northern Development department is at war with itself over whether or not to hold First Nations bands accountable for the billions they receive each year from Ottawa. About a third of the department’s bureaucrats favour greater transparency and accountability – regular outside audits, reporting of band politicians’ compensation, subjecting native governments to access to information laws and human rights complaints. The other two-thirds adhere the politically correct view that it is culturally insensitive to demand answerability – to do so amounts to an almost-racist accusation that the band councils cannot be trusted to manage their own affairs.

But as a taxpayer, I want transparency. Ottawa spends $8 billion to $11 billion annually on aboriginal programs, more than $3 billion of which is sent directly to band councils. I want to know what my money is being spent on and I am no more concerned for the cultural sensitivities of First Nations bands than I am for the bureaucratic sensitivities of federal departments and agencies subjected to scrutiny by the Auditor General. Read More »