thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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 Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 8:17 am Post subject: Is integration the better option for Indians? |
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Challenging the Indian Industrial Complex (which comprises almost zero actual Indians), in the Canadian MSM. Amazing.
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Adam Keeper. Age 6. Death by bullying. Three youths, ages 7 to 9, forced him to strip and pushed him into the water although he couldn't swim.
He drowned, another sad story in a sad series of Indian deaths. Not far from his grave on the Pauingassi First Nation are three more young victims of violence in the past year; in May, two girls, 13 and 15, were charged in the beating death of a 22-year-old woman.
The Pauingassi reserve is about 320 kilometres north of Winnipeg, with no road access. Population, about 350.
More than 60 per cent of the residents are addicted to alcohol or solvents, according to the local chief. There are essentially no real jobs, save seasonal rice harvesting and a fishing camp. The money comes from the government.
The almost complete isolation and traditional ways of life of the Pauingassi continued until the mid-1950s. Then came the missionaries and government to "help." The Pauingassi School website lists the benefits - a school, nursing station, subsidized housing, electricity, a water system, residential telephones - but notes: "These benefits have been, to some extent, offset by social problems such as drinking, vandalism and gas-sniffing, but the great majority of people have adapted to rapid social change very well."
So there you are. From self-sufficiency to substance abuse. Credit/blame our government - and us. This is an extreme case of the situation of Canada's 400,000 reserve Indians, a story replicated in similar or lesser forms too often.
About 40 per cent of all residents of reserves are on welfare. Suicide rates run several multiples of the average. You've heard it before.
Now back to Ottawa. The sad story of Adam Keeper, reported last Wednesday, was greatly overshadowed by the cabinet shuffle. Jim Prentice, until then the Indian Affairs Minister and generally acknowledged as one of the most competent ministers on the Conservative benches, was moving to Industry. This was presented as being very good, because Industry is Ottawa's repository of concern for productivity.
Only policy wonks care about this because unfortunately most people see the word as code for working harder for the same wages
The other side of that cabinet shuffle was bad news, because Indian policy is the greatest moral question (and failure) in Canadian politics. Mr. Prentice, before his departure from Indian Affairs, finally was improving things.
That responsibility now falls to Chuck Strahl, an intelligent and compassionate man. It will take him time to get up to speed in his new post.
Mr. Strahl must address the central question of Indian policy: Is it a favour to individuals to foster their adhesion to a parallel society reserved for Indians, the current orthodoxy? Or would it instead be better to offer an equal choice of participating in the mainstream?
These innocent words conceal an explosive issue, because the mainstream world offers so many more possibilities for the mind, body and soul than the parallel ethno/cultural-based society. Genuine choice would almost certainly lead to integration into the mainstream, which is entirely possible without rejecting one's heritage. But there is a huge industry - political, academic, legal, financial, bureaucratic - based on the belief Indians are fundamentally different from the rest of us, and keeping them so.
"Keeping them so" means maintaining isolated places like Pauingassi, and the enormous $10-billion structure of the parallel-society enterprise, the favourite of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, most academics and most Indian elites. They may be right, they may not. But the view is never challenged.
Should the choice be up to the individual? That is what we say with most Canadians. But with Indians we say, no, the fundamental choice is up to the Indian collective, and it is those power structures that we will fund and nourish, not the individual.
You need both, but which takes priority on any given policy choice: the individual or the collective?
It will be a brave minister willing to confront that question. Until then, the Pauingassi stories will continue. |
http://www.theglobeandmail.com (Behind a subscription wall)
I've spent much time of reserves in Alberta and Sask. They are a miserable failure. I think that this article is asking the right questions and challenging the right interests. |
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