Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
I honestly have no problem helping them out as long as they account for the money properly, and are able to show results.
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The currant system of administering first nations through a balkanised series of bands each run by a small (often one or two families) ruling elite that are well paid to ensure the increasingly smaller number of 'status' members basically comply with our wishes vis a vis access to resources roads etc has been in our interest for a hundred years but is and will always be utterly unable to promote growth or change.
What we should do is either pay the individual band members their 'share' of what we now give to the bands, regardless of where they live, so that the band council has to ask its people for money like any other elected goverment, and has a vested interest in keeping people on the res.
As it stands right now it is in the band councils interest to push members off the res, they still get the same money but have to divide it less ways.
Alternatively we should go the other way and pay the money to an elected provincial native administration that would then have to provide services to all natives in the province, status or non status, I would also suggest that at both the national and provincial level a number of seats should be allocated to a province wide 'riding' that would elect a number of representatives who would be solely concerned with native issues and, in all likelyhood, would be natve themselves.