Justice and Fairness

"We must all agree that lengthy and costly battles are not the way forward.  The priority is to deliver justice and fairness for our children, and the way forward must be about working together focused on real action and results for our kids and all First Nation peoples." Shawn Atleo, national chief, AFN

Sounds good on the face of it, but the fact is the Assembly of First Nations is heavily invested in maintaining a status quo that hasn't worked and never will.  The chiefs of the AFN appear to be interested in their own status as chiefs and public figures of great respect among their people and the public at large.  And to appear to be representing the best interests of their people. 

Why then, do they not examine the knotty problem of their failure to bring their people into the 21st Century?  Some serious and determined introspection would have them acknowledge that the reserves system that they continue to support doesn't work to the benefit of indigenous people.  The dreadful fact that three times more First Nations children are removed from their parents now than during the residential school system was in operation should be telling them a great deal.

The status of aboriginal children living on reserves is nothing short of disastrous.  Those young people whose parents care for them are in danger of being inadequately educated to a level that would be of real value to themselves and to their community.  It has been estimated that funding from both levels of government for schools on reserves is less than for children living elsewhere, short-changing aboriginal reserve children with schools and teachers inadequate to their needs.

But then, as vital as ensuring that reserve children receive proper educations happens to be, the conditions in which they live are cause for far more alarm, comparatively speaking.  A Federal Court judgement has found for First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations which had joined in an effort to seek a ruling from the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal for increased funding.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, hearing the case in 2007, dismissed the charge from those sources complaining of inadequate funding.  Latterly, Justice Anne Mactavish of the Federal Court hearing the case on appeal, set aside the tribunal's decision, granting three applications for judicial review, ordering that a "differently constituted panel" hear the case.

The case revolves around First Nations groups claiming the federal government discriminates against aboriginal children through consistent service underfunding on reserves.  Something that leads, they contend, to poverty, poor housing, substance abuse and an inexcusably large number of aboriginal children received into state care.

It really is questionable, that assertion that underfunding, if it indeed exists, apart from the funding of the school system itself, has led to poor housing, substance abuse and children taken from their parents to be held in protective custody by the state.  That aboriginal populations living on reserves are poverty-stricken, living in substandard housing is as much to be laid at the feet of their reserve band councils as any other reason.

Apart from the engrained culture of reserve aboriginals being unemployed because there exist few opportunities for gainful employment on remote reserves.  And that no one living on housing provided for them will lift a finger to repair the inevitable wear and tear on housing that results from constant use, let alone abuse.  And that reserves are plagued with addictions to alcohol and drugs, and children are woefully neglected.

Not only are they neglected they are often abused.  Their parents feel little obligation to imbue them with life values for they exhibit none of their own, living indolent lives of extreme boredom, seeking relief in drugs and alcohol.  In so doing setting an example and a pattern that their children emulate.  Enough of an explanation, in fact, for the dreadful toll among aboriginal children in suicide rates.

The insistence on 'living on the land', in recognition of 'tradition' and 'heritage' and valuing one's ancestors' way of life guarantees that these things will occur.  Reserve life is no more akin to tradition and heritage and living the life of one's ancestors than those wasted lives emulate those of non-aboriginals living in urban centres represents, with their television sets and reliance on junk foods.

What self-respect is there in claiming to honour one's ancestors while living on government hand-outs and being disinterested in the welfare and future of one's children, then claiming the government to be at fault?  There was a time when North American aboriginals lived unspoiled lives of industry, independence, responsibility and respect for the land, but that time is long past.

Early explorers, like those who explored the far frozen reaches of the Arctic and who met success only because they befriended the Inuit who did live unspoiled lives and who did their utmost to aid the awkward and unschooled-in-wilderness-living white men, knew the value of the people whose expertise they relied upon.  They knew also the damaging effect of exposure to the 'white man's ways'.

Roald Amundsen viewed the Inuit as his superiors, and held no brief for the-then popularly-received idea that they should be "civilized" or "Christianized" to make them fully human. 

"During the voyage of the 'Gjoa' we came into contact with ten different Eskimo tribes in all, and we had good opportunities of observing the influence of civilization on them, as we were able to compare those Eskimo who had come into contact with civilization with those who had not.  And I must state it as my firm conviction that the latter, the Eskimo living absolutely isolated from civilization of any kind, are undoubtedly the happiest, healthiest, and most honourable and most contented among them."  He urged that aboriginals be guarded from "the many perils and evils of civilization".  "My sincerest wish for our friends the Nechilli Eskimos is, that civilization may never reach them."

Too late for that, now.  But enough time has passed since those days that exposure has paved the way for aboriginals to decide how they will maintain themselves; as their forbears did, or by assimilating with the majority populations within Canada.  They are, after all, the original Canadians; at the very least the authentic dwellers of this land.  But they have long since ceased to live as their ancestors did.

And it degrades them and sullies them and underprivileges them to remain wards of the state.