Just curious, but are there other places in the world where aboriginals/first nations receive government funding from government? I can think of Australia and New Zealand off the top of my head, the US, but that's about it. Reason I brought this up was hearing about the Mayans and Incans who were invaded and taken over by the Spanish, Portuguese in Brazil etc.
Great Read. Chief Clarence Louie. Spoiler tags for length.
Spoiler!
Chief Clarence Louie, Osoyoos BC speaking in Northern Alberta :
Speaking to a large aboriginal conference and some of the attendees, including a few who hold high office, have straggled in.
'I can't stand people who are late, he says into the microphone. Indian Time doesn't cut it. '
Some giggle, but no one is quite sure how far he is going to go. Just sit back and listen:
'My first rule for success is Show up on time.'
'My No. 2 rule for success is follow Rule No. 1.'
'If your life sucks, it's because you suck.'
'Quit your sniffling.'
'Join the real world. Go to school, or get a job.'
'Get off of welfare. Get off your butt.'
He pauses, seeming to gauge whether he dare, then does.
'People often say to me, How you doin'? Geez I'm working with Indians what do you think?'
Now they are openly laughing ..... applauding. Clarence Louie is everything that was advertised and more.
'Our ancestors worked for a living, he says. So should you.'
He is, fortunately, aboriginal himself. If someone else stood up and said these things - the white columnist standing there with his mouth open, for example - you'd be seen as a racist. Instead, Chief Clarence Louie is seen, increasingly, as one of the most interesting and innovative native leaders in the country even though he avoids national politics.
He has come here to Fort McMurray because the aboriginal community needs, desperately, to start talking about economic development and what all this multibillion-dollar oil madness might mean, for good and for bad.
Clarence Louie is chief and CEO of the Osoyoos Band in British Columbia's South Okanagan. He is 44 years old, though he looks like he would have been an infant when he began his remarkable 20-year-run as chief.. He took a band that had been declared bankrupt and taken over by Indian Affairs and he has turned in into an inspiration.
In 2000, the band set a goal of becoming self-sufficient in five years. They're there.
The Osoyoos, 432 strong, own, among other things, a vineyard, a winery, a golf course and a tourist resort, and they are partners in the Baldy Mountain ski development. They have more businesses per capita than any other first nation in Canada.
There are not only enough jobs for everyone, there are so many jobs being created that there are now members of 13 other tribal communities working for the Osoyoos. The little band contributes $40-million a year to the area economy.
Chief Louie is tough. He is as proud of the fact that his band fires its own people as well as hires them. He has his mottos posted throughout the Rez. He believes there is no such thing as consensus, that there will always be those who disagree. And, he says, he is milquetoast compared to his own mother when it comes to how today's lazy aboriginal youth, almost exclusively male, should be dealt with.
Rent a plane, she told him, and fly them all to Iraq. Dump'em off and all the ones who make it back are keepers. Right on, Mom.
The message he has brought here to the Chipewyan, Dene and Cree who live around the oil sands is equally direct: 'Get involved, create jobs and meaningful jobs, not just window dressing for the oil companies.'
'The biggest employer,' he says, 'shouldn't be the band office.'
He also says the time has come to get over it. 'No more whining about 100-year-old failed experiments.' 'No foolishly looking to the Queen to protect rights.'
Louie says aboriginals here and along the Mackenzie Valley should not look at any sharing in development as rocking-chair money but as investment opportunity to create sustainable businesses. He wants them to move beyond entry-level jobs to real jobs they earn all the way to the boardrooms. He wants to see business manners develop: showing up on time, working extra hours. The business lunch, he says, should be drive through, and then right back at it.
'You're going to lose your language and culture faster in poverty than you will in economic development', he says to those who say he is ignoring tradition.
Tough talk, at times shocking talk given the audience, but on this day in this community, they took it and, judging by the response, they loved it.
Eighty per cent like what I have to say, Louie says, twenty per cent don't. I always say to the 20 per cent, 'Get over it.' 'Chances are you're never going to see me again and I'm never going to see you again' 'Get some counseling.'
The first step, he says, is all about leadership. He prides himself on being a stay-home chief who looks after the potholes in his own backyard and wastes no time running around fighting 100-year-old battles.
'The biggest challenge will be how you treat your own people.'
'Blaming government? That time is over.'
Maybe someone should get him to talk to Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence.
The Following 7 Users Say Thank You to karl262 For This Useful Post:
Icecube, i have no time for someone who looks for oppression under the bed when they wake up each day. You are so out of line tossing the racism card around this thread. From my reading, you are in fact the one most guilty of painting groups with a broad brush.
The idle no more movement is about to experience a devastating public relations disaster as a result of their antics and Chief Spence's antics. The bonafide merits to the movement will be ignored and the stigma of "racist" allegations will be completely removed from any discussion purely as a result of how often it was inappropriately tossed around lately.
Youve brought the discussion to the forefront, but be prepared to hear a lot of truth from the other side. Be prepared to answer difficult questions - or at least try to formulate a meaningful respinse to a difficult question that doesnt involve a claim of racism.
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"OOOOOOHHHHHHH those Russians" - Boney M
I wouldn't call it racism icecube and I do agree with a lot of your points. I think bigotry is the right word.
Enjoy reading the debate as I do feel natives have been wronged in the past and we're, as a country, partly to blame for their problems.
Why am i to blame? What did I do?
Quote:
Bigotry is the state of mind of a bigot, defined by Merriam-Webster as "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially: one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"
Also show me the hate and intolerance in this thread.
If you going to blindly throw this crap around, come up with something otherwise you are now better than people who are actually racist and bigots
Newman cites this passage (I think is particularly poignant in light of current circumstances) from Binnie J. (in the SCC's decision in Little Salmon) in the conclusion of his article:
Quote:
...as the facts of this case show, the treaty will not accomplish its purpose if it is interpreted by territorial officials in an ungenerous manner or as if it were an everyday commercial contract. The treaty is as much about building relationships as it is about the settlement of ancient grievances.”
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"Life of Russian hockey veterans is very hard," said Soviet hockey star Sergei Makarov. "Most of them don't have enough to eat these days. These old players are Russian legends."
Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts on his blog.
Good idea. I think I will (tomorrow.)
Just to note: I certainly don't mean to hold a blog post to the same standard as a scholarly article that took months to research and write.
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"Life of Russian hockey veterans is very hard," said Soviet hockey star Sergei Makarov. "Most of them don't have enough to eat these days. These old players are Russian legends."
The Following User Says Thank You to Makarov For This Useful Post:
Originally Posted by icecube
Not every post in this thread is racist. Here is one that is.. It's a post that you thanked.
One of my friends who is native put this on his facebook wall today:
"Tomorrow I am joining the "idle no more" movement. At 4am my alarm clock will ring and I will be idle no more. I will go to work to support my family and maybe expand my business, instead of demanding things given to me. What a weird concept..."
It doesn't matter if the person who wrote that is native or not. It's clearly
racist.
"Let's start a coddle no more movement. I am tired of supporting these bums. They lived off the land before we were here. Let them go back to that. No more money"
There's a grocery list of posts like this throughout this thread that would take more time than i have to list them all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by valo403
How is that first statement racist? I expect you won't answer, you've already ducked this question and I assume it's because your aim is nothing more than agitation. You come in here with ridiculous accusations, you promise a response (that never comes), you fail to respond to pointed questions and critiques, and you generally demonstrate a lack of desire to debate issues.
I wouldn't be so bothered by this if you didn't decide to tar people with the "racist" brush from the start, but when you play that card you're asking to get raked over the coals if you don't back it up. So get to backing it up.
How I look at the statements quoted by icecube is that it re-inforces a negative stereotype of a lazy native. It's particularly effective because it comes from a FN person so that makes the stereotyping easy for us to believe it's socially acceptable and if it's acceptable it must be true. It isn't acceptable.
Quote:
Relationship with other types of intergroup attitudes
Stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination are understood as related but different concepts.[8][9][10][11] Stereotypes are regarded as the most cognitive component, prejudice as the affective and discrimination as the behavioral component of prejudicial reactions.[8][9] In this tripartite view of intergroup attitudes, stereotypes reflect expectations and beliefs about the characteristics of members of groups perceived as different from one's own, prejudice represents the emotional response, and discrimination refers to actions.[8][9]
You go from stereotyping to prejudice to discrimination. You may not call that racist but I do.
Quote:
Possible prejudicial effects of stereotypes[3] are:
Justification of ill-founded prejudices or ignorance
Unwillingness to rethink one's attitudes and behavior towards stereotyped group
Preventing some people of stereotyped groups from entering or succeeding in activities or fields[13]
So what is the purpose of the example in icecube's post other than to stereotype native peoples, so that you can disparage them. I know a lot of you don't discuss the issues on this site when it's easier to make a personal attack and that is what is going on here.
As for tarring people from the start, look back at the first few pages of this thread and they are filled with insults towards the natives. Even later CC was suggesting we should run the blockades with a semi or a RR engine. When i suggested this wasn't cool the thread went in to how they could do it while still being legal.
This whole thread is filled with racist thoughts and the shame of it is most of you don't even realize it. So how do you argue with the blind?
and good work icecube, I don't have the patience to deal with this.
If it was any group of people protesting like this I would call them lazy bums and wonder why they were not working. The same was said of the ####ing idiots at occupy. Just because they are FN protesters I can't say they should get jobs instead of protesting?
If it was any group of people protesting like this I would call them lazy bums and wonder why they were not working. The same was said of the ####ing idiots at occupy. Just because they are FN protesters I can't say they should get jobs instead of protesting?
Why do you presume that anyone who participates in a protest does not have a job or is a lazy bum?
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"Life of Russian hockey veterans is very hard," said Soviet hockey star Sergei Makarov. "Most of them don't have enough to eat these days. These old players are Russian legends."
The Following User Says Thank You to Makarov For This Useful Post:
I don't know how we can even discuss the Idle no more, and/or Theresa Spence's actions without sounding racist to you. I really don't.
Should we put a warning in the title that this thread may contain content that some viewers find offensive.
The funny thing is, the people who started "Idle No More" said that while they support Spence's protest, that they actually have little direct communication with her and that her actions aren't directly part of their movement. Spence is doing this on here own according to them.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
Why do you presume that anyone who participates in a protest does not have a job or is a lazy bum?
I presume that people who participate in protests that go for several weeks without stopping (Occupy) or protests that occur country wide several times during typical working hours do not have jobs. I feel pretty comfortable with my generalization. I suppose everyone involved in the Idle No More campaign could be working the night shift but I simply do not believe that is the case.
