Treatment of Aboriginal people a national shame - Canada lectures others on human rights
The news media is carrying all the meetings that Prime Minister Harper is having in the far east where he is addressing other countries' human rights violations. Back in Canada, Aboriginal people continue to be discriminated against by a system and nation that has gained so much at their expense. To see Canada arguing against the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights for Indigenous People is just another example of our shameful treatment of Aboriginal people.
Where tragedy falls off Canada's map - Along with poverty, addiction, despair, aboriginal communities battle myths
Nov. 18, 2006 - MARIE WADDEN - ATKINSON FELLOW
Aboriginal communities are out of sight from most Canadians. Our family spent two weeks one summer on Vancouver Island. My children were hoping to see the people who made the wonderful totem poles of Stanley Park. We didn't see a single aboriginal person in our travels.
I understand better now, after a frustrating drive back and forth on the same highway this summer looking for the Nanoose Band Reserve near Lantzville, B.C. There aren't many off ramps for reserves. Few of the communities I visited this year, as part of my research on addiction among aboriginal people, are marked on road maps, or signposted on provincial highways.
Not even the largest reserve in Manitoba — Sagkeeng, population 3,000. To get there I drove a couple of hours from Winnipeg to the Pine Falls turnoff. A gas station attendant pointed me towards town and said "drive that way."
I drove past prosperous middle-class homes. The source of wealth — a large paper mill. Alongside it are railway tracks. On the other side of the tracks is a long line of cookie-cutter CMHC bungalows stretching as far as the eye can see. I knew I was on the reserve because I'd also run out of pavement. This was the pattern wherever I travelled and I began to see the lack of pavement as a metaphor for neglect.
Neighbours to reserves have told me over the years, "pavement isn't a priority for them." Or, "I guess they've got other priorities." The assumption is, aboriginal people choose bad roads.
The aboriginal community has been fighting assumptions for more than a century, most of them about the money — "our money," as one friend pointed out — being spent on their welfare and problems. This year, it is about $9 billion, out of Canada's total budget of $227 billion.
Sometimes the money doesn't make it to them. In 2005, $700 million was allocated for aboriginal health care, but the money never left Ottawa. The bill to free up this money was not passed before the Liberal government fell.
Yet that same year, $2.6 billion was fast-tracked for Newfoundland after Premier Danny Williams insisted on getting a fair share of offshore oil and gas revenues. The message: There are twice as many aboriginal people in this country as there are Newfoundlanders, but they don't count as much.
Through the writing of this series I found a daunting list of aboriginal problems — poverty, alcohol addiction, suicide — and the path to solutions isn't an easy one.
When I applied for the Atkinson Fellowship, my topic was The Money Pit. Why Throwing Money at Aboriginal Addictions Doesn't Work. I changed the title to Tragedy or Triumph? Canadian Public Policy and Aboriginal Addictions to gain acceptance into aboriginal communities.
Now I know it's neither a money pit nor a triumph. It is a tragedy, and not one of aboriginal making.
There are about 391,000 aboriginal people living on reserves in Canada, and more than a million others in towns and cities across the country, including 40,000 Inuit in the Far North.
The United Nations Human Development Index equates the aboriginal standard of living in this country with that of Brazil, well below the Canadian norm.
In 1978, I was in the Labrador community of Davis Inlet, where the people lived in shacks. "Indians don't know how to live in houses," I was told. Inside I found walls built without struts, sheets of drywall installed without proper framing, a single lightbulb to light a three-bedroom house. The "Indians" didn't build these houses; some southern contractor profited from the construction.
This year, I met Phyllis and Andy Chelsea, a Shuswap couple in B.C. whose house is rotting with mould. Statistics Canada says 50 per cent of reserve housing is like this.I was so wrapped up in writing their story, I missed an event at my child's school. Later, when a parent asked where I'd been, I told her about the Chelseas' predicament. Her husband works for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and has told her the houses on reserves are mouldy because "they leave their water running."
I lived with the Chelseas for a couple of days at Alkali Lake and their water wasn't running. Neither was the electricity. Huge trucks piled high with timber routinely knock out the power lines. To add insult to injury, the truck drivers are not aboriginal. And the timber is going off the reserve, to enrich someone else's life.
Contrary to some taxpayers' perceptions, aboriginal people don't get their housing free. It is provided through loans to band councils that are repaid by charging rent. In B.C., I heard many stories of people being evicted by band councils because they couldn't afford to pay their rents. Taxes? Only goods purchased on reserves are tax-free — most reserves have little to sell.
The Inuit pay all the same taxes we do and more because of the higher costs of goods shipped north.
Aboriginal people have another way of looking at the issue of "our" money. They believe "our" money is being made off their land. Some Canadian judges have agreed.
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You can either be on the side of helping us or you can decide to make the struggle that much harder'
Berma Bushie, of Hollow Water, Man.
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Jim Prentice, federal minister of Indian and northern affairs, says the solutions to aboriginal poverty are through better education for their youth and he estimates it will take two generations to make a difference. He sees promise in a bill under study by the Senate that would fast-track aboriginal self-government. How long is that going to take? And if this minority government falls, any progress Prentice may have made goes to waste, like the Kelowna accord the Liberals negotiated before their defeat.
Aboriginal people have little faith in our political solutions. That's why they're doing so much on their own.
I did find stories of triumph, where aboriginal solutions to their own problems are making a difference. In June, I attended a banquet to celebrate the 25th birthday of the National Native Alcohol and Drug Addiction Program, a great source of success stories. This past August, I was in Edmonton, where 3,000 delegates from as far away as New Zealand gathered as part of an inspiring addiction healing movement driven by aboriginal Canadians. Later, in the aboriginal community of Sagamok, near Sudbury, I saw plans to make its people less dependent on welfare.
While addictions are my focus, it was impossible to visit aboriginal communities this year without hearing about the epidemic of suicide. In 2000, the Canadian Institute of Child Health reported 126 out of every 100,000 First Nations people has committed suicide, compared with 24 per 100,000 in the rest of the country. This is the most recent record we have of this unfolding tragedy. The Inuit complain no central agency tracks suicides in their communities, so how can they know if the situation is getting better or worse?
It certainly feels worse, as a weekend in Manitoba and northern Ontario taught me. On a Saturday morning, I was on the Hollow Water (Wanipigow) First Nation reserve not far from Winnipeg. I was driving a teen to the store. He was from a neighbouring reserve and was staying with relatives because he was having nightmares at home. His sister's boyfriend had hanged himself and this young man had found the body. On the way to the store, he pointed to a house and said, "there's a suicide watch on a 15-year-old girl."
That same day I met a couple of teenage boys my own children would think were "very cool" because of the way they were dressed. When they agreed to pose for a photo, I nearly dropped the camera when I noticed rope burn marks on the neck of one of the boys from a suicide attempt.
Later the same day, Marcel Hardisty, a community leader in Hollow Water, told me he and his wife are raising a child orphaned by parents who committed suicide.
On Sunday, I drove to Kenora to meet Tania Cameron, the program manager of Aboriginal Wellness and Healing for the Kenora chief's advisory council. She was to take me to the Wabaseemoong Reserve the next day. A suicide there cancelled that visit.
I was reeling from this when I checked my emails before going to bed to find this, from Allan Saulis of the Maliseet Reserve in New Brunswick:"There was another suicide this weekend in our community. ... This will be the third. ... How many more will it take for the authorities, governments, and the media to take affirmative action once and for all?"
When I called Tania a few weeks ago, she told me 24-year-old Travis James Henry, whom I heard sing at the spring feast in Kenora, killed himself in September and a few days later she attended her brother-in-law's funeral. He also died by his own hand.
Aboriginal people appeared before the Senate committee on mental health and addictions a year ago to express their profound concern about the high rate of suicide. The senators were moved, but recommendations addressing aboriginal concerns buried within the report have not been acted on.
It wouldn't be fair to say nothing is being done. The federal government has launched a national strategy on youth suicides in aboriginal communities. But I fear it will take much more than a federal program to restore hope to aboriginal youth.
After spending a year going in and out of aboriginal communities, after reading dozens of books and countless reports, I've come to believe we have driven the original inhabitants of this country into a place where their survival is at risk.
Inuit women have raised the alarm about violence in their communities. Experts on fetal alcohol spectrum disorder warn of an impending social disaster if alcohol abuse is not curtailed in aboriginal communities. Sober people on reserves are begging for mental health and addiction training, and income parity for professionals to work in their communities. First Nations and Inuit leaders are asking for relief from a severe housing shortage and want a national health budget that reflects their population's needs.
Aboriginal people are not asking to be saved. They are asking for support. Berma Bushie of Hollow Water, Man., was tired, afraid and discouraged when we spoke, but resolute. "You can either be on the side of helping us or you can decide to make the struggle that much harder," she told me.
"I would like to believe there are good people out there, regardless of what positions they hold in government. I believe that goodness, that's what's going to triumph. I truly appreciate all the help that we've gotten from government up to now and I would hope that the help continues. That's all I ask for. The rest of the work that needs to be done is definitely on the part of aboriginal people."
It has been my great privilege to meet people like Berma Bushie this year. Whenever I have felt sad I've pushed myself to work a little harder, read more, write more.
Sad is passive. I wouldn't stand beside a lake where people are drowning and say "how sad.
"I'd jump in to lend a hand and I know most other Canadians would do the same."
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And the government officicals blame each other's government for the problems that continue to plague First Nation communities.
From http://www.wawatay.on.ca/index.php?module=pagesetter&func=viewpub&tid=5&pid=237
Tories respond to Valley's claims - 2006.11.09
In response to your November 7, 2006 story "MP blasts Tories over First Nations water," Liberal MP Roger Valley claims the federal government has failed "to provide safe drinking water."
This is simply not factual.
The community has a water treatment plant and water points in the community ensure that clean, drinkable water is available to all residents.
We acknowledge that the majority of homes have not been hooked up to the treatment plant. There are two main reasons for this:
- The First Nation has limited power supply from a diesel generator, which cannot supply the electricity needed for pumping water to all the residences.
- The issue is complicated by the presence of burial sites throughout the community, making it difficult to carry out the work necessary to hook up the houses.
Long before Mr. Valley called for "immediate action," Indian and Northern Affairs was working with the First Nation to develop a new hydro transmission line to the community from Red Lake.
Last month, October 19, 2006, the Ontario Regional Director General met with the Tribal Council and offered to co-ordinate all issues in the community, including proper sewage treatment and a new school, with the Department, the First Nation, the Tribal Council and the Nishnawbe Aski Nation.
Ontario region's current Five Year Capital Plan identifies $1 million for water and wastewater work in Pikangikum this fiscal year, $1.1 million for the next year, and a total of $9 million in future years.
The First Nation receives approximately $676,670 a year to support operations and maintenance of its water and wastewater treatment systems, as well as approximately $1.26 million a year in minor capital funding, some of which can be used for work on water and wastewater infrastructure.
The First Nation manages this funding, along with any user fees or other revenue, to safely operate and maintain its water and wastewater systems. We find it curious that Mr. Valley would allege inaction by Canada's New Government of nine months when his own riding, which includes the First Nation, was represented by a Liberal Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs between 1999 and 2003.
I trust this helps clear up the numerous inaccuracies contained in the statement by the MP for Kenora.
Bill Rodgers
Director of Communications
Office of the Hon. Jim Prentice
Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada