Functional Independence?

Isn't it past time for First Nations peoples in Canada to decide to come in from the cold? Living in seasonally-inaccessible places might have made perfectly good sense when First Nations lived in their traditional milieu, but that is no longer the case. People living in remote communities no longer fend for themselves, using age-old knowledge handed down through the generations of how to live on the land in all seasons. Capable, and independent and resolutely knowledgeable.

Yet those same people cling to what they claim is their heritage, to the traditions of which they are proud, but don't really know how to practise. Or, if they do, and the results are as they once were, and privation and starvation brought death to communities unable to adequately feed themselves over long winter months, that too has been altered.

As valued citizens of Canada, the government and the people they govern wherever they are, feel an obligation to the well-being of those in remote communities.

Wishing to honour their ancestors and a way of life long gone, there is a reluctance to sever the link with the land. In all likelihood, that refusal has more to do with local politics, with tribal leaders enthusing their members with a need to respect the past and live within it, than any practical reasons to remain there. There is nothing practical about huge unemployment figures, about poor health facilities, about expensive, imported food and inadequate schooling.

Aboriginals in far-flung communities in Manitoba, where 30,000 First Nations peoples live, require 2,500 shipments of food, construction materials and medical supplies annually. There is a constant trucking in of those supplies, at huge cost, all to supplement and fortify an impractical existence. The people living in those remote communities are totally reliant on winter roads to enable trucking in of supplies and for access to hunting trails.

Those roads are also vital to enable the ill, people with high rates of tuberculosis, those with diabetes, young and old, and there are many, to reach dialysis centres. The roads are a vital life-line to social interaction with relatives living on other reserves, and just to connect far-flung communities. The current year has proven to be a difficult one for those remote, northern communities.

This year's unusually mild winter has meant that winter roads that go over semi-frozen rivers, lakes, creeks and muskegs have melted unusually early into muck and mush. Stranding trucks carrying supplies, and people travelling from one site to another. A state of emergency has been declared in 11 communities due to dwindling supplies; food, fuel, construction supplies.

Since 2001, over 25% of the winter road system was moved to land at exorbitant cost. Still, the roads have become impassable. And rescue missions have had to be launched to ensure that those stranded on those remote roads do not die. "The federal government told us that they are ready to work with us. The department has agreed that they will pay to fly in supplies like construction materials and fuel."

Indian and North Affairs Canada is responding to the crisis. Have they any other option? The Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba chiefs thinks not. "I hope this year's events and the current situation will force all levels of government to take action", said Grand Chief Harper. "This has become a human rights issue - no one should be cut off like this", he said. "No one should feel this isolated."

Precisely. Given the vast and distant Canadian geography, the difficulty of getting around, the uncertainty of the seasons, given climate change, it makes no good sense whatever for remote communities to continue to insist they wish to live as their ancestors did. They do not, they cannot; they are entirely dependent on costly rescue missions.

The self-imposed isolation, leading not to an authentic replication of traditional aboriginal lifestyle, but become a failed experiment in stubborn nostalgia. No one can turn back the clock on a vanished era.