Quote:
Originally Posted by afc wimbledon
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.
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Or treat the band councils in the same way as municipalities and Provincial governments, have oversight rules in place and require proper financial reporting before they can get their next allotment of cash.
I also think that thier needs to be a native ethic committee and a whistle blowing program. When you hear stories of band councils withholding peoples welfare checks and other services is disgusting. Spence should have been reported a long time ago, but as a government they have too much power.
Realistically though, it seems like the First Nations think that Self Government means give us the money and don't interfere, while fault lies on both sides its clear that Self Governing without oversight is a failure and Indian Affairs needs to take a bigger role. Maybe an Auditor General needs to be put in place at the First Nations and an ethic commission with annual reports to the Canadian taxpayers and First Nations members.
Spence and a lot of other Chiefs and Councilors should be in jail, not marginalizing Idle no more.
If Spence is a government then she's failed to deliver on the social contract that she's obligated to stand by. Housing, proper medical and other services etc. In the same note the leadership at the FN assembly has also failed to deliver on that social contract as has to an extend the Federal Government.
The answer is not more money, you can't keep throwing money into a well if its not going to be used effectively. When your spending $7.9 billion dollars for a population of 1.1 million per year, there's a problem with disbursement not budget.