Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
If you assume without evidence that bands are more corrupt then typical governance structures that would likely be an assumption driven by race.
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It would only be racist if you thought it was due to innate traits of indigenous people. Recognizing weaknesses due to political structures and culture is not racist. Is it racist to acknowledge that there's far more corruption in the Quebec construction industry than the Alberta construction industry?
First nations are diverse, but they tend to have the following structural weaknesses:
- Very small populations with few educated and skilled workers. Except in the largest bands, there's essentially no functioning bureaucracy.
- Because bands like to keep business contracts local, there's often a very weak (or no) tendering process for contracts.
- Little oversite. There's no functioning news media, and an indigenous leader can go her entire career without ever giving an interview or being challenged by a reporter.
- With no private property and few private business, band leadership dispenses virtually all property and wealth in a community.
Regarding leaders awarding jobs to family and supporters, in the great majority of societies in the world, leaders are expected to reward family and supporters. In-group loyalty is more normative in human societies than the universalism that Western societies have idealized in recent centuries.
When I was a reporter in the NWT, it struck me as suspect that several highly paid civil servants were the siblings of the local MLA. I asked my publisher if anyone at the paper had ever done any digging about the awarding of those positions. He took me aside and explained that was a "southern" way of looking at the issue ("southern" was a euphemism for "white"). He said that I, and the paper, would look like fools if we tried to cast the MLA as unethical because she gave plum jobs to her family. Nobody expected her to do otherwise.