“They hear about the diamonds,” said Maryanne Wheesk, a middle-aged grandmother in the remote James Bay community of Attawapiskat, “and they think we're rich.”

I sat down with Ms. Wheesk two years ago, long before Attawapiskat had declared a state of emergency, and long before a housing crisis transformed the mispronounced dot on a map to a mainstay of the national conversation.

The plight of the inhabitants here is a familiar one among isolated aboriginal communities. They lack access to clean drinking water. They lack adequate shelter. And the persistent questions about economic viability are lost in a haze of mutual recrimination with Ottawa: Complaints about mistreatment by the federal government are met with accusations of fiscal mismanagement and poor governance.

But there is one thing unique to Attawapiskat, something that had – for a time, at least – given residents reason to believe their story would be a different one.

Just upriver from the three-bedroom home that Ms. Wheesk shares with 17 of her family members, and 500 kilometres from the nearest road, lies a deposit of low-grade kimberlite. Although there are few diamonds per ton of ore, the ones that are there are of an incredibly high quality – so high, in fact, that when experts saw the first sampling, they assumed the raw product had already been sorted. It hadn't. An average diamond sells for $80 a carat; Attawapiskat's go for more than $400.

It's why De Beers decided to develop the property and create Ontario's first diamond mine, dubbed Victor. When it began operations in 2008, the South African mining giant estimated it would contribute $6.7-billion to the Ontario economy in its 12-year lifespan. Residents, meanwhile, predicted the nearby mine would bring jobs, training, and the kind of economic permanence that had always eluded them.

But as the past few months have shown, things haven't improved. Some argue the decline has just continued.

“It's been like this for so many years – and it keeps getting worse,” Chief Theresa Spence said on the eve of her visit to Ottawa this week. “We don't have enough finances, and we never did.”

****

Band co-manager Clayton Kennedy managed Attawapiskat's finances from 2001 through 2004, and was rehired in July, 2010.

In the five years he was not with the band, he said, things became “a financial nightmare.” He believes the first nation was in over its head.

“It wasn't so much people pocketing money, or flying to Bermuda,” he said. “It was more, too many trips to Timmins and too many workshops.” The band also hired too many staff, even at the risk of running a deficit, he said. This resulted in young, inexperienced workers “occupying positions, even when they were not capable of doing the job.” Attawapiskat has an unemployment rate of more than 60 per cent, and “there was a mentality to hire as many people as possible in order to get money on the table, so people could buy food and get off welfare.”
...
Clara Tomagatik didn't mention the clear, hard gems discovered under her family's traditional hunting grounds. Instead, she talked about building wigwams out of pliable young alders for her family to smoke moose meat and dry beaver, martin and muskrat pelts. The wigwams were at a winter camp where Victor mine sits today. Every fall, she would head upriver with her brothers, sisters and her 86-year-old mother, Emelda, until De Beers put up “No Trespassing” signs. Now, the Tomagatik family is prohibited from hunting, trapping, or camping on their traditional lands. Community members can't visit the mine site without a criminal-record check and an escort.

Sounds suspiciously like a shakedown since mining operations are temporary. I wonder how many diamonds are left at the Victor mine because I suspect Theresa Spense wants to give DeBeers a final squeeze.

Didn't DeBeers help them out a couple of years ago by sending them free housing units ?

De Beers was likely forced to bring outside workers in because they don't run on Indian Time. It's extremely difficult to find consistently dependable workers in many native communities... It's not out and out laziness but they figure they'll get to something in their own time which doesn't fit into our culture which is obsessed with time. It's not just natives either. Even amongst Euros there are time 'issues' Nordic societies...Anglo(can't include the Irish in this) Societies and the Japanese run by a precise clock

De Beers was likely forced to bring outside workers in because they don't run on Indian Time. It's extremely difficult to find consistently dependable workers in many native communities... It's not out and out laziness but they figure they'll get to something in their own time which doesn't fit into our culture which is obsessed with time. It's not just natives either. Even amongst Euros there are time 'issues' Nordic societies...Anglo(can't include the Irish in this) Societies and the Japanese run by a precise clock

Mr. Ormsby noted the mine has about 500 permanent full-time employees, roughly 100 of whom are from Attawapiskat. He also said close to half the workers self-identify as aboriginal.
...
“We were not going to sit at the table with our negotiators and the community not have the opportunity to sit at the table with people of equal experience and background,” Mr. Ormsby said. “We have 120 years of diamond-mining experience, and it's unfair to think any community, at the beginning, would have a full and broad grasp of everything we do.”
...
“Since the start of construction, community-owned or jointly owned businesses have been awarded over $325-million, including $51-million this year alone,” he said in an e-mail last week. “The community owns or jointly owns all the permanent contracts in the Victor mine.”

But there are limits to what these jobs and programs can do in a remote area with chronic unemployment and no other industry.

After graduating from Vezina Secondary School in 2009, Christine Kataquapit's daughter planned on continuing her education by taking courses offered by the mine. Her mom was De Beers's newly appointed first-nation liaison. But there were no courses available, except basic first aid. Ms. Kataquapit's daughter also applied to work at Victor, but after four months without a response, she went south. “She's 19, she can't find a job here,” Ms. Kataquapit said.
...
The 198-page agreement is a dense read – so dense, in fact, that it has overwhelmed the community's small, rundown band office. There are a dizzying array of commitments: from environmental management committees and joint management committees to employee advisory committees, wildlife management plans, mining monitors and human-resources inventories.

Theresa Hall, who was IBA co-ordinator and later became chief for a term, confessed she hadn't even heard of some of the committees and positions laid out in the document. She wasn't aware, for instance, that her first nation could request government valuation reports showing the mine's production values, access laid out in section 10.11.1. She hadn't seen De Beers's annual environmental reports, and she admitted the IBA co-ordinator position had been empty for years. The agreement even gave the community an opportunity to find a native name for Victor, but chief and council missed the deadline. Keeping up with the IBA is too much, Ms. Hall said. “We can sign the best agreement in the world, but if we don't have the people with the educational requirements, then it's false promises.”

I'm starting to get an itch for a change in careers. I'm thinking of taking a trade, where I can move out in the middle of no where and make some decent coin, I have no aversions towards hard work.

Any suggestions for a forty year old fart ?

Here are a few Chief Louie lines from:

• “Never operate on Indian time, get rid of it. You’ll never become a good worker or a good student if you show up late and operate on this thing that’s called Indian time.”

• “I love hanging around with people that know how to make money. I don’t like hanging around with politicians…especially native politicians.”

• “I’d rather be from an Indian band that’s making their own money rather than going out and having to ask other people for money.”

• “Real warriors hold a job.”

• “Don’t ever think a job’s below your dignity. I find too many native youths, they think they’re too good for certain types of work.”

• “What the heck are you doing in jail if you love your family and your kids? If you love your family and kids, walk an honest road.”

• “Don’t hang out with the go-nowhere crowd… they usually go nowhere.”

• “I firmly believe every aboriginal youth needs the dignity of a job — a job defines who you are,”

• “I want my youths to work, I don’t want my youths ever to collect a welfare cheque.”

• “You got native pride? Keep yourself clean.”

One of the reasons for the blockade is vague alleagations that the "money has not been reaching the community." Seems to be a common thread.

Sometimes the sense of entitlement knows no bounds.