Ignorance and racism drives mainstream media to blame First Nation victims
From Pembroke Daily Observer editorial ...
Canada is an apartheid state
Michael Den Tandt - Osprey News Network - June 06, 2007
Canada is a an apartheid state. Our laws and institutions systematically keep aboriginal people poor, apart and oppressed. The Indian Act, and the racist mindset at its heart, should have been abolished long ago. The fact that it remains in place is a national disgrace.
Anyone who doesn't wish to believe this should spend a few minutes with the helpful folk at Statistics Canada. The evidence is neatly compiled on their web site, at www.statscan.ca.
For example: Did you know that in the year 2000, aboriginal infant mortality rates were twice as among non-aboriginals, and that most of these deaths were due to preventable causes, such as sudden-infant-death syndrome and postnatal infection?
Or that in 2004, aboriginal people were nearly twice as likely as non-aboriginals to be repeat victims of crime, and three-and-a-half times more likely to be victims of spousal violence?
Native Canadians are three times more likely than the rest of us to be victims of violent crime - specifically rape, robbery and battery. And the chances of that crime being committed by someone they know, as opposed to a stranger, are much higher - more than 50 per cent, as opposed to about 40 per cent for non-natives.
Aboriginals make up three per cent of Canada's population. They account for 17 per cent of the country's murder victims and 23 per cent of those accused of committing murder.
On native reserves, rates of violent assault are eight times higher than in the rest of Canada; sexual assaults, seven times higher; murder, five times higher.
Here's the kicker: The reserves themselves are incubators of misery. According to Statscan, in 2004, the rate of violent crime reported by aboriginals living off-reserve was 953 per 100,000 people. On-reserve, the rate was 7,108 per 100,000 people - more than seven times greater.
We've all read the stories of squalor and destitution and degradation on remote northern reserves. Places like Pikangikum, 300 km north of Winnipeg. Many residents in Pikangikum have no running water and use outhouses that freeze and overflow in winter, the Canadian Press reported in April. Electricity comes from a diesel generator. The town's 700 kids are schooled in a building built for 350. The community is beset with water-related sickness, including skin ailments, lice and ear infections.
Pikangikum has one of the highest suicide rates in the world.
Granted, the town recently received $40-million emergency federal funding. That, too, is typical. Horror stories emerge about a specific reserve, and big money is quickly allotted. That makes the embarrassing international headlines go away - until the next crisis, on the next reserve.
The widespread squalor and desperation are driving people off reserves into the cities. Fully 51 per cent of Canadian status Indians now live off-reserve, according to the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, which champions the interests of off-reserve Indians.
Nevertheless, the lion's share of federal funding for aboriginals - $9-billion a year, according to Ottawa - goes to reserves. For every dollar spent on programs for off-reserve Indians, $8 is spent on a reserve, according to the Congress. There are numerous government-sponsored incentives for aboriginals to stay on reserves - communal housing and income-tax relief, to name two.
Think of that for a moment: The federal government, on all Canadians' behalf, pays aboriginal people to stay in separate enclaves where living standards are, relative to those in the rest of the country, abominable. Why would we allow that?
We allow it, it seems to me, for two reasons. The first is apathy and lack of political will among the broader Canadian population for any kind of difficult reform that would see land claims fairly settled and aboriginals integrated into the Canadian mainstream.
Second, there has been active resistance from successive generations of aboriginal politicians - the 600-odd band councils and chiefs - to any change that would erode their power to disburse federal money, and favours, on reserves.
Most reserves (the exceptions are communities that have negotiated self-government) still operate under the rule of the Indian Act, first authored in 1876 and "updated" several times since then.
This document is explicitly racist. It reduces aboriginal people to the status of powerless, landless tenants. It deprives them of property rights and inheritance rights, as any other Canadian would understand those terms. It gives Ottawa the power to seize Indian property virtually at will. It allows for reserve lands to be forcibly expropriated. It places limitations on who Indians on reserves can do business with. It contains clauses that lay out, in excruciating detail, how the government may seize the property of Indians deemed "mentally incompetent." It is a horror show.
The rotten core of the Indian Act, it seems to me, is this single line, clause 20, section 1). "No Indian is lawfully in possession of land in a reserve unless, with the approval of the Minister, possession of the land has been allotted to him by the council of the band."
If you live on a reserve, you don't really own your home, or the land on which it sits. You borrow it - sort of. Perhaps you pass it on to your children, or perhaps you don't. It's not your right to do so. The land and home are not yours to give away, or - God forbid - to sell. They belong to the collective.
Communal ownership of property is one of the sacred cows of the aboriginal system in Canada. It's often presented as a morally good thing - a reflection of traditional aboriginal culture, which holds that the earth is a living being, which no human can or should 'own.'
In practice, it seems to me, communal ownership bars aboriginals on reserves from participating in the single greatest driver of middle-class wealth - the real estate market. Private property is how most of us acquire wealth, and wealth is what gives most of us our excellent standard of living. How is it that this is denied to aboriginal people on reserves?
"Ah, but it's a very different culture," some will say. Really? So is China's. So is India's. And yet, no one denies that private property and private initiative have helped pull both those emerging economic giants out of poverty.
In 1969, Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chretien proposed abolishing the Indian Act and ending every form of special status based on race in Canada. You can still read that document, the White Paper, on the Internet. It was couched in the idealistic language of Pierre Trudeau's Just Society. It died because of opposition from the chiefs. In 2003, Indian Affairs Minister Bob Nault tabled the First Nations Governance Act, which would have set new standards for governance and transparency on reserves, and brought reserves under the aegis of the Human Rights Act. That died, because of opposition from the chiefs.
Now, Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice is doggedly attempting reforms of his own. He wants to repeal a section of the Human Rights Act that shields band councils and chiefs from human rights complaints by their constituents. And in this year's budget, $300-million was set aside to encourage private home ownership on reserves. Many chiefs, sensing yet another attempt to sideline them, are furious. It's no coincidence that we face a nationwide day of protest on June 29, and the prospect of more blockades.
Is aboriginal anger justified? Certainly. Every Canadian should be furious at how this country's First Peoples have been and are being treated. Will illegal blockades focus public and political attention on the problem? Maybe. More likely though, they will stoke resentment, misunderstanding, anger and, yes, racism, in mainstream Canada. It's difficult to see how an illegal blockade generates political impetus towards any kind of solution.
What would that solution look like?
First, Canadians and Canadian politicians need to stop looking the other way. We need to face up to this problem. We should come to the table with our checkbook in hand. The Senate Indian Affairs committee, chaired by Metis Senator Gerry St. Germain, has estimated that settling all existing specific land claims - there's a backlog of 900 - would cost up to $6-billion. The Department of Indian Affairs reportedly estimates that its total liability for all claims is $15-billion.
The government of Canada should establish an independent land-claims agency, one with resources and teeth. It should place a stick between its teeth, bite hard, and take the $15-billion hit. Settle the claims, as quickly and fairly as possible. That would be step one.
Step two: Abolish the Indian Act. Create a process, perhaps grandfathered over a period of 20 or even 50 years, that will end all legalized special status for aboriginals in Canada, and end the reserve system as we know it. Create a system that gives reserve land to the people who live on it - as individuals. Give them the right, which all other Canadians have, to sell their property, should they choose to do so.
(Michael Den Tandt is editor of the Sun Times in Owen Sound, and a former political correspondent based in Ottawa. Contact him at: mdentandt@thesuntimes.ca)