Quote:
Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda
Which won't be totally pilfered by corrupt native leaders I'm sure. God I wish we could get a government with the balls to just abolish the reserve system entirely, it's the only real solution to get that population out of poverty and misery and in-tune with the rest of Canada
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Jean Chretien had an interesting viewpoint of what to do about this suicide crisis.
Take everyone at Attawapiskatt and move them south.
Now I don't know what to make of this comment, whether its keenly insightful or shows that he has a stark misunderstanding of the Native file which is stunning considering I believe that he was the Native Affairs Minister.
I may rail about the money being blown out a tree shredder, and I may firmly believe that the reservation System is a destructive system that needs to be either heavily reformed or junked. But the issue is so much more complex then that.
But there's not a solution that can be applied without creating hurt feelings to say the least on either side of the divide.
We can't simply abolish the reservation system, because frankly it goes against the Natives desire to self govern. And yes we have what feels like a lot of corrupt chiefs who almost seem at war with their own people. But we also forget that there are some chiefs that have done incredible jobs with their reservations economically.
We clearly can't allow for blanket self government though, we've seen incredibly corrupt chiefs like Theresa Spence comes to mind, she should have been jailed instead of sitting there during a fake hunger strike with our future prime minister crying crocodile tears. And its lead to poor schooling, water crisis, suicide crisis, and poor housing and a general sense of giving up. This is happening even though we're spending billions of the problem.
I think that in terms of reforming the reservation system, you almost have to do two things.
Allow Natives to own reservation property, I think thats huge. I think that there can be self government at some point, but I do think that Harper was right in terms of asking the question, where the hell is the money going, and we want public disclosure to control the corruption. I think he was too ruthless about it, but I think it was the right track. But I think that control has to come with a reformation of native leadership. I think that ultimately if Natives want self government then all of the cash put out by the Federal Government has to go through a native ruling body instead of going to individual reservations. think of him like a Prime Minister level person. If there's vanishing money or reservation crisis where money vanishes the buck stops with this guy, and he has to keep the reservation leaderships in line. Piss away the money on a zamboni instead of your water supply, that's a boot up your a$$.
But I think that Native Affairs has pretty much resigned themselves to the fact that this is an unfixable problem, so the solution, throw money at it, when there's an emergency that could be embarrassing throw money at it and hope it goes away.
Its a tired broken system, rule by corruption and self interest and its being aided by a tired and broken Native Affairs department.