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First Nations - CF help, protests, solutions, residential schools, etc. (merged)

An excellent opinion pice for Liberal magnate Gordon Gibson, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/the-greatest-moral-challenge-in-canadian-politics/article2266343/
The greatest moral challenge in Canadian politics

GORDON GIBSON

From Monday's Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Dec. 12, 2011

Why is it the terrible images seem never to change through the slideshow of Indian history? Click. Attawapiskat, 1,800 souls in misery in a place without roads, without work, without any meaning except substance abuse and welfare and rotten housing and little education and no hope. Click. Kashechewan, same thing. Click. The still unresolved uprising at Caledonia.

Click. Davis Inlet – the above plus gas-sniffing children and hundreds of millions wasted on a futile move from nowhere to nowhere. Click. The riot and killing of Dudley George at Ipperwash. Click. The Burnt Church crisis.

Click on a moment of hope – the Supreme Court of Canada and the Delgamuukw ruling, an Indian Magna Carta still ignored by governments. Click. The armed rebellion at Gustafsen Lake. Click. The uprising at Oka. And so it goes, back through increasingly dusty files, modern misery fading to earlier overt racism and passive despair.

This is about “Indians.” I use the hard word found in our Constitution because that is the law. The warm and fuzzy, vaguely deferential “aboriginal” I leave to those who are content to feel good. “Indian” forces us to confront the fact that we continue to impose and finance a system wherein, to their great loss and the rest of our shame, about 2 per cent of Canadians are born with a big red “I” on their foreheads and a new number in the big book of status in Ottawa.

Our governments celebrate and finance the reserve system, that incubator of apartheid, and virtually ignore the 50 per cent of status Indians who have escaped and “gone to town,” to a statistically much better life. Even that is tough – an immigrant off the boat from Bangladesh receives incomparably better settlement services than does an Indian migrant from northern Saskatchewan to Regina.

The statistics hardly bear repeating – the suicide rates, the unemployment and poverty, the lack of good education, the health and addiction problems and earlier deaths. We close our eyes.

Who is at fault? It is us, dear reader. It is every voter who fails to forcefully say to our politicians, “Fix this!”

Our politicians are not fools. They recognize a hornet’s nest when they see one. There is no upside to entering this battle, with a certain downside of being called a racist and practising “cultural genocide” if one asks hard questions and tackles root causes.

Why so? Because there is an “Indian system” – a dense and impenetrable thicket of well-paid chiefs and councils and bureaucrats and lawyers and consultants and politically correct academics. The system works fine for them. There is a lot of money there, $13-billion a year. A shallow media talk only to this elite class. The ordinary Indians are without voice.

On hundreds of reserves in Canada, the system works like this: You have a small government with large powers, often dominated by a couple of extended families. The money comes from Ottawa, and Parliament is not allowed to know the details of expenditure. If you cause trouble to the local elite, you may not get decent housing, your kids might not get educational help, welfare might be difficult and employment impossible. Small governments with large powers and other people’s money? This is an invitation to waste and corruption for any human being. No surprise if it sometimes happens.

Do not blame the Indians. This is our system, Canada’s system. We invented it, we prop it up with our laws and we provide the money. Then we close our eyes and pretend that local “self-government” of a wretched system absolves us of blame.

There is a solution, but it is damned tough, for it means confronting the system and privileging individuals rather than the reserve collective. This invariably brings screams of outrage.

We must assist the individual into the mainstream, into the broader world, if that is where they want to be. That involves a lot more education, including a voucher system for mobility, settlement services and income support in towns, provincial administration of all health, child care and education, and sending band funds to individuals rather than chiefs and councils.

Promote the individual, but respect the collective, too. We can’t shut down the reserves. They can provide some reservoir of culture, and termination would be to violate a 100-year contract where some people find safety, even if the contract is an odious one.

No, change must be based on individual choice. Forty years ago, Pierre Trudeau tried to end the system. The chiefs rose up against him. His mistake was not to have offered a choice.

Stephen Harper has a chance to rerun that movie the right way. This is the greatest moral challenge in Canadian politics. It needs to be met.

Gordon Gibson is the author of A New Look at Canadian Indian Policy: Respect the Collective, Promote the Individual.


Now I don't know for sure that the Indian problem is THE greatest moral challenge facing government but it is a HUGE challenge and it has a major moral component.

One key factor: our Supreme Court regularly finds that the honour of the crown has been besmirched by successive governments in their dealing, on our behalf, with Canadian Indians. The honour of the crown is legalize for a promise that we - all Canadians living a dead - made and which we fail, again and again and again to keep. The Supremes tell us that all we ordinary Canadians living in Victoria, Regina, Toronto and St John's are liars and cheats - or, at least, that the people we elect lie and cheat with our active support and approval.

I don't know what the right answer is but it seems to me that we must most Indians out of the traps of reserves and into the 21st century mainstream. I know that some Indians will protest and say that their land is sacred and so on and so forth. In my personal opinion that is rubbish - it is made up history and traditions created on the fly to justify the status quo.
 
The Globe and Mail published its list of "Canada's top 10 most momerable quotes of 2011". Number 1 is from Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence.

1theresa_1352023gm-t.jpg


She said: “We must go together and tell the government: This is our land, this is our life. We need to say enough is enough.”

Maybe the government needs to answer: "You're right, it is your land, but it's our money and we need to say enough is enough, too. It's your land but we don't need to pay you to live on it. We are prepared to invest millions, even billions of dollars to help aboriginal Canadians break the welfare cycle and the stranglehold of the reserve system. People of Attawapiskat: move to places with jobs and a future - we'll help you; move to a place where your kids can get good educations - we'll help you; break free! - we'll help you. Chief Spence: you're cut off - get a real job."
 
:goodpost:

As a secondary comment, someone noted upthread that the people dwelling in cities usually don't have to consider the R value of a tarp. This is because most buildings are owned by either the occupants or the landlords, who have a vital interest in ensuring the accomodation is livable and maintains its economic value. The "housing" and land in most reservations is not owned by the occupants, and the responsibility of ownership is not practiced by the band councils either (acting as landlords).

This can actually be seen in a smaller scale in most cities by looking at subsidized or city owned housing in your city; compare the standards of the dwellings and grounds to the private residences and apartment units nearby.

If we can't or won't help the people on the reservations evacuate as per Edward's post, then we can at lest change the various laws and acts to allow private ownership of property on the reservations. Even if we grant the current corrupt system will allow people to game the new system and achieve majority ownership of the land, they will now have positive incentives to actually provide decent accomodations if only to protect and enhance the value of their property.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
An excellent opinion pice for Liberal magnate Gordon Gibson, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/the-greatest-moral-challenge-in-canadian-politics/article2266343/

Now I don't know for sure that the Indian problem is THE greatest moral challenge facing government but it is a HUGE challenge and it has a major moral component.

One key factor: our Supreme Court regularly finds that the honour of the crown has been besmirched by successive governments in their dealing, on our behalf, with Canadian Indians. The honour of the crown is legalize for a promise that we - all Canadians living a dead - made and which we fail, again and again and again to keep. The Supremes tell us that all we ordinary Canadians living in Victoria, Regina, Toronto and St John's are liars and cheats - or, at least, that the people we elect lie and cheat with our active support and approval.

I don't know what the right answer is but it seems to me that we must most Indians out of the traps of reserves and into the 21st century mainstream. I know that some Indians will protest and say that their land is sacred and so on and so forth. In my personal opinion that is rubbish - it is made up history and traditions created on the fly to justify the status quo.


And yet more, this time reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen by the same Gordon Gibson:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Treat+natives+individuals/5846790/story.html
Treat natives as individuals

By Gordon Gibson, The Ottawa Citizen

December 12, 2011

Fixing Canadian Indian policy? Look first at our Constitution. The framers added (well intentioned, but racist) words into specific federal responsibilities: Section 91 (24), “Indians, and lands reserved for the Indians.” That language is still there.

The year 1867 was a different time. Women, Jews, Chinese, Catholics, Indians — all were thought inferior. But the others weren’t mentioned in the Constitution and are fine today. Not the Indians.

In 1876, Parliament passed the Indian Act. That ended the mobility of Indians, putting them on tiny reserves, unable to leave without the permission of the all-powerful Indian agent. It allowed the state kidnapping of children to send them to distant schools. New laws forbade feasts (which maintained the culture), or assembly of more than three persons for discussing land claims, and the hiring of lawyers. No voting rights, of course.

Since the earliest arrival of Europeans, Indians had been dealt with as a collective, not as individuals. Post-Confederation we added a new policy, generally known as “assimilation,” but in practice actually isolation in places of little use to the new arrivals. Beaten down, individually anonymous, decimated by disease, settled in mostly remote reserves and politically powerless, they became mostly invisible.

Scroll forward to the 1950s. We brought welfare to reserves. Where cash comes, liquor follows. The population begins to rise. The vote is granted. In the 1970s the courts turn friendly, bureaucrats retreat, power is devolved to tiny governments with large powers, often badly used. “Indian power” rises. Lawyers and consultants proliferate. Much money flows and an industry grows.

The situation turns good for a small elite class, but not ordinary Indians. Roughly half of these leave the reserves and are doing statistically much better in cities, though too often in ghettos. For those left on the reserves nothing seems to ever change. Can nothing to be done?

Well, what does the above history all say? Simply, that we have got off on the wrong foot for a century, being guided by the collective approach and the isolation, real and psychological, of the reserve system. The courts insist that aboriginal rights and title are collective in nature. We send social support payments to chiefs rather than individuals. Control of other people’s money means power. And the ability to manage the money can turn alleged democracy on its head if band governments make the distribution of housing or jobs or some social services contingent on electoral support or family ties.

The Indian collective is important, as the repository of culture and heritage. But there is a lot of other marvellous culture and heritage in the big outside world that can only be accessed by individuals. There must be a better balance, an opening to that mainstream life, for the individual or the family to take up, as they choose.

My book suggests that balanced solution in the subtitle: “Respect the Collective — Promote the Individual.” It is the latter part that needs emphasis today. The “collective” is already looked after with billions of dollars. It is time to divert some of that to individuals.

Governments are trying. There are job training and university funding programs galore, for example. But that can’t beat the reserve system. Remember the incentives — every person who leaves a reserve and “goes to town” is one less subject for a chief and council, one less constituent for the Assembly of First Nations, because the reserves are the absolute core of the Indian industry, which like every industry, works to preserve itself.

We can’t end support for the reserves. That would be wrong. But we can vastly escalate support for the individual, to give them genuine choice. Here is a program:

■ divert much of the cash currently going to chiefs (to provide services) to the individual. Let the chiefs tax it back — and therefore become accountable;

■ make some of that a guaranteed annual income, including in trust for children, to provide for mobility if desired;

■ divert much of the rest of the federal cash to the provinces to provide ordinary social services of health, welfare, child care and schooling. On reserves these things can be political and frighteningly substandard. In very remote areas this will be expensive, but people deserve provincial-standard services and, in due course, may decide to move in any case;

■ provide more band transparency and accountability to their memberships. (The federal government is making a beginning on this regarding band elections, but much more must be done.)

The above program will not solve all problems and will be strongly opposed by the Assembly of First Nations and by many chiefs as a diminution of their power and that of their collective — but it is the way to go. In the end, the individual must count.


Gordon Gibson is the author of A New Look at Canadian Indian Policy.
Email: ggibson@bc-home.com

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen


Once again, I don't know the answer, but Gibson is making more sense than anyone else I am reading/hearing.
 
Thucydides said:
:goodpost:
If we can't or won't help the people on the reservations evacuate as per Edward's post, then we can at lest change the various laws and acts to allow private ownership of property on the reservations. Even if we grant the current corrupt system will allow people to game the new system and achieve majority ownership of the land, they will now have positive incentives to actually provide decent accomodations if only to protect and enhance the value of their property.

The issue as I understand it is that under  the Indian Act individuals can not own land as it is held in trust to the reserve.  There is however a very clumbersome and intensive workaround that does allow for the issuance of long term leases to band members.

A long term lease provides sufficent collateral that an individual can then apply for and recieve a convential mortgage for their home which does a couple of things:
1) provides a basis for credit rating and long term credit risk
2) provides a sense of personal ownership in the dwelling
3) removes the power of the chief in council to re-allocate the home to someone else.
4) forces construction to a standard required to meet mortgage needs

It is my understanding that the 6 nations of the Ottawa Valley have used this process to great success and have really kick-started their economy as a result.  Other communities are running into issues with the paperwork or have a lack of interest in the process due to effective local leadership.  But the simple fact that credit history is a major barrier to employement and financing from non-government sources can be changed through steps like this.

Think about it..you live in an area with little to no employment, the only source of funds are regular payments from the crown, and banking facilities are remote.  With internet these days the banking situation is largely resolved but being able to show that you are a productive, responsible economic risk is often enough to allow for the ambitious to take the next step...leverage the house against a new bulldozer for road construction contracts or even basic tools to fix the neighbors house+ trade school.  The only issue I've heard is that many have regular income but don't have the down payment to start the process of buying a new home so the band was loaning, in a legal formal agreement, the monies for the down payment while the member was on the hook for any mortgage arrangements.

Maybe this is a possible long term partial fix to creating an easier way of self control through homes if the documentation and regulations were clearer and easier to work through.

Anywho..my  :2c:
 
Bass ackwards said:
From the article posted by Scott:

"Peterson had 63 votes to Toney’s 26. There were 199 eligible voters among the 300 band members."

89 votes from 199 eligible voters. Wow.

To be fair we don't knot that 89 votes is the total number cast by the band members.  We only know that those two candidates received 63 and 26 votes respectively.  There may have been other candidates that received fewer votes and were not mentioned since that information wasn't central to the article.

 
GR66 said:
To be fair we don't knot that 89 votes is the total number cast by the band members.  We only know that those two candidates received 63 and 26 votes respectively.  There may have been other candidates that received fewer votes and were not mentioned since that information wasn't central to the article.

Good point. And one that I did not even think about.
Thanks.
 
Some Attawapiskat residents at odds with chief

Some residents of Attawapiskat First Nations support the government's plan to put the reserve under third-party management, a move strongly opposed by the chief and band council.

"I think it would be a good thing. We need to clean up our financial crisis here in Attawapiskat because it's been like this too long now," Greg Shisheesh, a former deputy chief of the reserve, told CBC News in a phone interview.

"I was happy to hear the federal government was stepping in to clean the mess up."

Shisheesh, who said he has lived on the reserve all his life, said he believes a forensic audit should be conducted on a number of organizations on the reserve, including the band office and economic development office.

"If our leaders have nothing to hide, by all means do it."

More at link

Exactly.  If there's nothing to hide, why is Chief Spence so against third-party management?
 
PMedMoe said:
Some Attawapiskat residents at odds with chief

Some residents of Attawapiskat First Nations support the government's plan to put the reserve under third-party management, a move strongly opposed by the chief and band council.

"I think it would be a good thing. We need to clean up our financial crisis here in Attawapiskat because it's been like this too long now," Greg Shisheesh, a former deputy chief of the reserve, told CBC News in a phone interview.

"I was happy to hear the federal government was stepping in to clean the mess up."

Shisheesh, who said he has lived on the reserve all his life, said he believes a forensic audit should be conducted on a number of organizations on the reserve, including the band office and economic development office.

"If our leaders have nothing to hide, by all means do it."

More at link

Exactly.  If there's nothing to hide, why is Chief Spence so against third-party management?

Counterpoint (Devils advocate)  or what might be said by his opposition - Its obvious that Shisheesh is part of the problem. He's jealous because he no longer has access to the band funds. AND Shisheesh is on the side of the oppressive white Harper government.

Just sayin.... >:D
 
While the article is written from the perspective of the poor urban youth of the United States, I think it also applies to the problems of our own poor youth (native and urban). If anyone can "crack the code" and teach people new skils and habits (change the culture) then the problem will be reduced to more manageable proportions:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/if-i-were-a-poor-black-kid/249996/

If I Were a Poor Black Kid
DEC 14 2011, 10:58 AM ET 688

Gene Marks has been taking some entirely justified twitting for outlining what he'd do if he were a poor black kid. Like most of the people making fun of him, I assume that if I had been a poor black kid, I would have made the same choices that poor black kids make in those circumstances.  I was as easily led as any other sixteen year old--I wanted to be liked, and I preferred hanging out with my friends to doing schoolwork.  The main differences, as I see them, are that I grew up knowing a lot of people who had achieved enjoyable and remunerative careers via college degrees; and the peer group available to me at the Riverdale Country School all thought that it was really, really important to graduate high school and get into a good college.  I was willing to work much harder to impress my friends than for a nebulous shot at a future job that was, from my perspective, a half a lifetime away.

After yesterday's post, someone asked me: why am I cutting more slack to fat people than I am to poor kids?  After all, when I write about obese people, I write about the biological systems making it hard to eat less than your body wants.  When I write about poor kids, he said, I emphasize choice.

Not exactly.  Yesterday, I was writing about an argument for an environmental intervention (more jobs) that was supposed to be a "silver bullet" for the problems of educating poor kids.  And when people have proposed such silver bullets for obesity (menu labeling, sugar/calorie taxes, restrictions on fast food restaurants), I've made approximately the same argument as I did yesterday: heavy people are choosing to eat because they want to, not because there aren't enough carrots available at McDonalds.

But when people blithely say "They're fat because they're lazy/greedy/insert bad character trait here", I point out that the people making the accusation have a much easier time making "good choices".  Their bodies are not insistently demanding food in the same way that obese bodies are, so of course it's easier to pass up that big helping of pasta.

I'd say the same thing about people who are poor.  They could be middle class if they made a series of hard choices.  But those choices are really hard--much harder than they are for the people who are already there.  Chances are, you would also have a hard time making those choices.

Obviously, I am not going to adequately characterize all the difficulties of being poor.  And since I have not actually been poor, I can only write about what I understand from a combination of imagination, interaction, and academic research.  With that caveat, here are some of the constraints that strike me as powerful:

1.  Not knowing anything different  Middle class people have a very strong image of everything they'd lose if they'd end up in a housing project.  Kids from poor neighborhoods, who do not see, say, successful people who have gotten out, have a much less clear idea of what leaving would look like.  It's hard to work towards something you can't really imagine.

2.  Leaving means living among strangers.  Most of the middle class readers of this blog would--quite apart from the crime rate--find it very difficult to start a new life as a welfare mother in a housing project in the South Bronx.  The kids from the housing project find college just as alien.  That's not to say that poor people somehow prefer the irritations of crappy housing projects, high crime, and hassling with various government bureaucracies--they do not.  But that doesn't therefore mean they actually want to abandon their friends and loved ones and the world they know.

3.  Economically sound long term decisions have uncertain payoffs.  Middle class kids can assume that if they work hard enough, they'll make it through college and get some sort of a decent job.  Most poor kids can't assume that--a lot of those who try, flunk out--and those who try and fail won't have much help to get a second chance.

4.  Their payoff matrix is different.  Middle class kids can make $75,000 out of school if they get a solid degree in engineering, or a job at an investment bank.  But most poor kids who study hard and go to college are not going to get one of those jobs.  Realistically, dealing drugs probably offers many of them a more certain chance of making good money in their twenties than staying in high school.

Is it crazy that poor black kids focus on being entertainers and sports stars?  Numerically, yes.  But the odds must seem longer still of becoming an investment banker.  People from their backgrounds become rap stars and football players.  Few of them end up as the president of Merrill Lynch.

5.  If your peer group accepts bad short-term decisions, you will often make bad short term decisions.  I like to think that I work hard simply because I'm such a stellar human being, but the fact is, I would be utterly humiliated if I had to tell people that I got fired.  Ditto if I'd had a baby at 21.

You can spin this into "bad culture" or "bad values" but this seems irrelevant to me, because there is no way to replace someone's values; there is no context in which the necessary discussion could take place.  I don't see much likelihood that we can influence a bunch of 15 year olds to suddenly remake their value matrix to something more pleasing to a bunch of contemptuous affluent white people.  If I recall high school correctly, the contemptuous affluent white people weren't very good at doing this even with their own kids.

6.  Criminal records make it very, very hard to get a good job.  A middle class kid who joy rides in a car or gets a DUI gets the benefit of the doubt when he claims that this was just youthful hijinks.  Poor black kids with recognizeably "black" names--or poor white kids with recognizeably "poor" names--mostly don't.  Once you're in that place, what's the point of trying?

7.  Little economic social capital.  If you're a poor kid who screws up, Mom doesn't have three relatives and a college roommate who can help you find a job to get you back on your feet.

8.  Too much other social capital.  Poor people have very little financial capital.  But they have very strong help networks that help them survive.  These networks are vital to keeping them off the bottom, but also make it harder to rise--there's a much greater expectation that if you get your hands on some money, you share it; that you will take in needy friends and relatives even if that makes your life much harder, and so forth.  (There's some really interesting work on how microfinance actually functions as savings for people who cannot save because their savings will be tapped before they can be used by needy relatives and friends.  The EITC seems to work the same way here).  The more you have, the more you have to share.  This erodes the incentive to get more.

9.  Short time horizons There are all sorts of arguments about whether this is cultural, genetic, driven by the harassments of poverty, or whatever.  All I can say is, if I was contemplating the possibility of the rest of my life in a housing project, I would do my best not to think about the future.

10.  Lack of capital is really expensive.  If you have to keep buying a $1,000 car every six months because your last $1,000 car broke down, you end up spending a lot more than if you could have bought a $5,000 car.  If you don't have the money for an apartment deposit, you end up living in a much more expensive motel.  Buying in bulk from Costco is cheaper than buying in small lots from a corner store.  Etc.

The upshot is that the poor have to defer a lot more consumption to get their hands on a given amount of capital.  That makes it hard to decide to amass the capital.

11.  The jobs the poor do are really unpleasant.  Yes, yes--we all did them in high school and college!  But that was temporary.  It's very different to work your way through college as an orderly at a school for the retarded (as my mother did) and to have that be your actual whole life.  Particularly since that sort of thing wears on your body.  I'm 38, and I can no longer raise my left arm all the way over my head.  Thank God my job doesn't actually require that sort of thing. 

When I've had a particularly crappy, tiring day, I throw money at the problem: I get nice takeout instead of cooking, pay Peapod to deliver my groceries instead of trekking to the store, treat myself to a manicure or a massage, whatever.  I have fewer crappy tiring days than people who do unpleasant manual labor for years on end--and I have more money to make the associated stress go away.

I'm thinking it's a lot harder to get out of bed on Monday in year 13 of your stint as a janitor than it was on day 300--and that it's harder to get out of bed on Day 300 if you know there's probably going to be a Year 13.

12.  Super high marginal tax rates  Because of benefit losses and tax-credit phase outs, it is very possible for working poor people to be made actually worse off by getting a raise or a better job.  They face higher marginal tax rates than all but the most affluent people in our society, which makes it less than surprising that they find it hard to move that far above the poverty line.

13.  Discipline is a finite resource.  Having a low-wage, low status job is usually not very enjoyable.  Nor does it leave you much money for enjoyments outside of work.  This makes it harder to get up the mental energy to do even more joyless tasks, like studying or harassing your kids about their homework.

14.  Not everyone likes school.  I've always been struck by this passage of Orwell's in The Road to Wigan Pier:

The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a 'job' should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly. The idea of a great big boy of eighteen, who ought to be bringing a pound a week home to his parents, going to school in a ridiculous uniform and even being caned for not doing his lessons! Just fancy a working-class boy of eighteen allowing himself to be caned! He is a man when the other is still a baby. Ernest Pontifex, in Samuel Butler's Way of All Flesh, after he had had a few glimpses of real life, looked back on his public school and university education and found it a 'sickly, debilitating debauch'. There is much in middle-class life that looks sickly and debilitating when you see it from a working-class angle.
It's still true: the mania to get more and more people into college is the brain child of people who think that school is fun, and that anyone who doesn't go is being deprived of something like a trip to Disneyland packaged with a job guarantee. 

Lots of people think school is rather miserable, and they wish to leave as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the "school is fun" crowd has made an education a virtual pre-requisite for a stable and well paying job in this century.  If you don't like school, and aren't good at it, what do you do?  Spend the rest of your life popping chicken tenders into the deep fry at Popeye's?  Or deal drugs?

15.  Loss aversion is more powerful than potential gain.  Over a period of years, you will work harder to keep from falling out of the middle class, than you will for a 15% chance at $100 million.

16.  Racism in hiring still exists.  It's harder to get your resume picked out of a pile if your name is LaShonda (or Elvis).  Maybe your mother shouldn't have named you something so strongly identified with low-income mothers, but the fact remains, you may find it harder to get a job.  And changing your name to please employers who are prejudiced against your ethnic group is just as fraught for LaShonda Washington as it was for Moishe Rabinowitz and Mairead Murphy--especially if you suspect that passing the initial screen just means you'll get dinged in the next round when you walk in looking identifiably Jewish, Irish, or Black.

The knowledge that employers do not trust members of your ethnic group changes the payoff of investments in human capital.  We can argue about whether such statistical discrimination is rational for employers, or whether it's less powerful than poor black kids may think.  But it still changes the calculation.

I think of poverty as a bad equilibrium--a pretty stable bad equilibrium, unfortunately.  The coping skills that make it easier to live in poverty make it harder to get out.  Bourgeois employers are actually completely correct that it is not safe to trust someone with a prison record around their cash drawer--and also, it is actually going to create more crime if criminals have no hope of rehabilitation.  Poor people would actually be economically better off if they separated themselves from their friends and relatives, and used their money to attend college rather than help out struggling relatives--and also, if they fail, they'll actually be worse off than they were before.  People will lead more economically successful lives if they are ashamed to skip work, go on benefits, or lose a job--and a community where most of the available jobs are unstable, pay low wages, and require pretty sound health, cannot possibly enforce such norms.

Sum it all up and the answer is: if you grew up as a poor black kid, you'd be making decisions under the same constraints, which probably means you'd make the same decisions.  The fact that different decisions could produce different outcomes is important--but to state this is not to state an obvious solution.
 
The latest news courtesy of SUN NEWS TV is that Chief Spence is seeking an injunction against the appointment of a  third-party manager.
 
OK, maybe I'm just not understanding some of the nuance here, but given:
A) Additional funds are tied to the appointment of a third-party manager;
B) Chief Spence is seeking an injunction against the appointment of a  third-party manager;

Therefore, no additional funds are forthcoming.

Yet, C) the people of Attawapiskat, being aware of this, are not rising up to punt Chief Spence. This suggests that they are not as destitute, in their minds, as we believe (or conventional wisdom would have us to believe).

You'll forgive me if I continue not losing any sleep over this.
Have a nice winter; see you in the spring.




I can't believe spell-check doesn't recognize "Attawapiskat."  ;) 

Yes kids, that button in the bottom right corner checks for your typos before you hit <send>.  It's FREE!    :nod:
 
Interesting article from the Frasier Institute:

Here's a sample, shared in accordance with the fair use laws:

What’s additionally curious is where the money is spent. According to Attawapiskat’s latest budget documents, $11.2 million went to salaries, wages and employee benefits. That equates to $7,249 per reserve resident on just compensation-related expenditures.
In contrast, according to the latest available estimates from Atikokan, that town spends just under $3-million on salaries and benefits, or $904 per person.

Complete article here

 
Technoviking said:
Interesting article from the Frasier Institute:

Here's a sample, shared in accordance with the fair use laws:

Complete article here


That ought to be required reading on Parliament Hill ... especially in the wholly uncritical press gallery.
 
The nuclear option:

http://jnarvey.com/2011/12/06/disband-the-first-nations-reserves-start-with-attawapiskat/

Disband the First Nations Reserves. Start with Attawapiskat

Published by jnarvey at 9:36 pm under Canada,downtown eastside,politics,united nations,Vancouver

Imagine you’re the slumlord owner of a rent-controlled bedbug-infested hotel in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. You’ve pocketed big bucks over the years from the government that was supposed to pay for essential renovations. Your welfare-dependent tenants usually don’t complain too loudly about the mold or the rats or the lack of working toilets, for fear of being tossed out on the street.

But this time, they couldn’t help themselves, when a wall fell down, exposing several families to the elements and the shocked stares of onlookers from Hastings Street. They spilled the beans. Reporters from all over the country started talking about the deplorable crisis. It’s downright embarrassing.

An independent auditor comes knocking to go over your financials. He wants to find out what you’ve done with the millions of dollars that you were supposed to use to fix the leaky plumbing and the crumbling brickwork and rotten wood and broken windows. You tell him to take a hike. When he objects, you physically throw him out.

Then you get an epiphany. Oh, this is brilliant. You file a grievance with the United Nations over your ill treatment.

How do you think this story ends? With you keeping your hotel? With the United Nations giving you a badge of honor? With your long-suffering tenants patting you on the back for your courageous stand? With you not going to jail?

No.

No, no, no, no.

The crisis of Attawapiskat has thankfully helped put the entire system of First Nations reserves under more scrutiny. Band leaders on many (most?) reserves operate with impunity and an explicit rejection of democracy. The nepotism, corruption and wastefulness not merely of money but of human beings is something that people in the rest of the country would never stand for.

I’ve been ambivalent about this problem over the years because I don’t live next to it. I see the conditions on reserves in the news from time to time. The places do look awful. But that’s not the fault of the government shoveling cash into these places. No amount of cash can paper over this perpetual horror show. Not with band leaders demanding 280 new houses at $250,000 a pop, according to the NDP — houses in the middle of nowhere that are just going to fall apart again after a few years because under the rules on reserves, no one actually owns the property.

Think about that figure again: $250,000 per house. That’s just to build a house, since the land has no value. This is a house that will stand in an isolated community with no jobs, no schools, no hospital, no reason to live there at all. Why does it cost that much to build a house there? Because that’s what the band council says it costs… for houses that are going to end up as firewood.

This problem needs to be solved yesterday.

The solution? Simple. Stop the flow of money. There are some examples of well-run, prosperous reserves that are closer in development to Whistler than Attawapiskat. They will survive, maybe even thrive. But those reserves like Attawapiskat that cannot survive without massive infusions of funds (or fail even with such generous support) need to be dismantled. Let the people living on those reserves migrate to places with education, jobs and a hope for a future.

No more money. No more reserves.
 
Technoviking said:
Interesting article from the Frasier Institute:

Here's a sample, shared in accordance with the fair use laws:

Complete article here

What's interesting is that they used Atikoken as the counter point to the situation in Attawapiskat.  From my memories of working in and around Atikoken it's probably the most intergrated community I've ever been in from a racial point of view...mixed native/european/metis marrigies are extremly common and race by and large is a non-issue.  Although it does have good road access there is limited employment with many youth eventually ending up in Thunder Bay to chase oportunities...

For comparison's sake 10 years ago when getting out of school a buddy bought a truck and put the downpayment on a $76,000 house to work there...and the truck was the bigger portion of the loan. when the time came to sell due to a transfer he ended up walking away from the house because there was no buyers...that's a depressed economy.
 
To be fair to Attawapiskat and Atikoken, the comparisions are superficial; however, when the wages and benefits (etc) of Attawapiskat are more than the entire operating budget of an entire community, one can only go "Hmmmm....."
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Act

We and the Native People of Canada signed this little agreement in 1867. We will never "close" Native Reserves in this country. Do the Chiefs have to be responsible to their own people? Absolutely!

http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/I-5/

What I can see in the future is an endless series of negotiations on replacing the Indian Act with another document that could in fact cost taxpayers even more.

My final point would be that we have spent billions of dollars on Afghanistan for example at a cost of 158 Canadian soldiers with poor to minimal results. We have also spent billions on Aboriginal Affairs with the same overall result.

Their has to be a solution to this problem because I do not wish too see Canadian children playing near their own fecal matter on the CBC again.
 
What provokes my skepticism is the notion that in the internet age, the young people are interested in living out their lives in the remote communities which have no particular employment drivers except governance.  I find it hard to believe many of those people would not prefer to suffer the agonies of city living.
 
Tow Tripod said:
My final point would be that we have spent billions of dollars on Afghanistan for example at a cost of 158 Canadian soldiers with poor to minimal results.

what has that got to do with the price of tea in China?  ???
 
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