Canada Kicks Ass
Non-Native Actions Have An Impact, Too

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ShepherdsDog @ Sat Jun 18, 2016 2:37 pm

Same thing happens in non native communities too. Politics seems to attract the worst we have to offer. Self serving rather than self sacrificing types.

   



Thanos @ Sat Jun 18, 2016 3:34 pm

It's a difficult problem because a self-serving society will produce self-serving politicians. If saints are expected then we'll always be bitterly disappointed. Maybe pay them $1 million per year with a one-term limit in office and it might be sufficient to keep the favouritism out. Either that or leave the decisions to an eventual AI to make because humans are always going to be human. Expecting selfless objectivity from anyone anywhere is really quite ridiculous.

   



herbie @ Sat Jun 18, 2016 3:49 pm

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:
$1:
The biggest difference is natives have ACTUAL concern for their communities.

Really?? Some do...many, too many, don't. It's naive, and bordering on racism to say that they all think and behave the same way. They're like everyone else. Some are altruistic and compassionate and others are greedy scum...just like you find in any community.

And have you become a Martin or Fiddle by deflecting any pointing out of possible racism or any pro-minority stance as racism against you?
Of course individuals don't all behave the same way. Thank God you recognize that fact. Pretty clear in any Muslim thread that many can't.

   



Thanos @ Sat Jun 18, 2016 3:56 pm

Which part of "racism" is it that apparently "forces" a Native chief or band council to steal the federal funding their reserve gets and put it in their own bank accounts? The last PM that took this issue seriously got defeated after eight-odd years of being called a racist for daring to call the chiefs out and the first thing his selfie-obsessed replacement did when he took power was to remove the pitifully small amount of federal oversight that the reserves were subject too. It's a field day again on any reserve where the chief or council has no hesitation at all to put their own enrichment ahead of the overall health of their own people.

   



andyt @ Sat Jun 18, 2016 4:29 pm

Thanos Thanos:
It's a difficult problem because a self-serving society will produce self-serving politicians. If saints are expected then we'll always be bitterly disappointed. Maybe pay them $1 million per year with a one-term limit in office and it might be sufficient to keep the favoritism out. Either that or leave the decisions to an eventual AI to make because humans are always going to be human. Expecting selfless objectivity from anyone anywhere is really quite ridiculous.



Very limited view. Pols don't just go into office to enrich themselves. The favoritism comes from wanting to be re-elected, and the power that the favorites have (the powerless are never favorites) to sway votes or help or obstruct projects. Of course there's some rubbing each other's backs - you give money to my campaign, I send some govt money your way. It's on a lot lower level than with FNs because we have a lot more strictures in place.

Politics is making compromises to make enough people reasonably happy to or just not pissed off enough so they will re-elect you. Many pols can make much more money in the private sector, so it's not straight ahead greed. The problem is everybody thinks a pol that does something they don't like is corrupt or in somebody's pocket. But they're usually just trying to make compromises to make enough people vote for them next time.

Look at bill C-14. It's got people on both sides of the issue pissed. There's no money in it for JT, no corp fat cats telling him what to do. He's trying to balance the differing opinions on the issue in this country. I'm disappointed he didn't go further with the bill, as are a lot of people, but some think the bill goes too far down the slippery slope.

   



ShepherdsDog @ Sat Jun 18, 2016 5:56 pm

herbie herbie:
ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:
$1:
The biggest difference is natives have ACTUAL concern for their communities.

Really?? Some do...many, too many, don't. It's naive, and bordering on racism to say that they all think and behave the same way. They're like everyone else. Some are altruistic and compassionate and others are greedy scum...just like you find in any community.

And have you become a Martin or Fiddle by deflecting any pointing out of possible racism or any pro-minority stance as racism against you?
Of course individuals don't all behave the same way. Thank God you recognize that fact. Pretty clear in any Muslim thread that many can't.


Not quite the same,as you're comparing an ideology with ethnicity. However.you've done this before. You said that if most of us see a group of Indians outside a shopping center all we see is a group of Indians,while you see people suffering from alcoholism, drug addiction,FASD and poverty. As soon as you see a bunch of Indians, that's what you see? We see an ethnicity and you see a bunch of damaged individuals,yet yours is the more 'enlightened' view? This is the soft core racism of the left. It's paternalistic.

   



herbie @ Sat Jun 18, 2016 6:12 pm

no - i said I have to remind myself they're drunks first, that pigeonhole overrides their race.
I mean shit - racism is so ingrained in ALL of us that we have to make a point of thinking twice.
FFS the most shameful thing I remember is meeting a kid I used to play with when I was really litte. I told my Mom, it can't be that kid, that kid's black. My friend wasn't black. SHIT - I was too young to even see that he was black then, it obviously meant SFA to me at 4 or 5. WTF changed in 5 or 6 years, the racism got programmed into me too!
So piss off with your "left" bullshit argument. It's got nothing to do with the subject.
And paternalism would be pretending to know what's good for them better than they do.

   



JaredMilne @ Sun Jun 19, 2016 10:20 am

Thanos Thanos:
Which part of "racism" is it that apparently "forces" a Native chief or band council to steal the federal funding their reserve gets and put it in their own bank accounts? The last PM that took this issue seriously got defeated after eight-odd years of being called a racist for daring to call the chiefs out and the first thing his selfie-obsessed replacement did when he took power was to remove the pitifully small amount of federal oversight that the reserves were subject too. It's a field day again on any reserve where the chief or council has no hesitation at all to put their own enrichment ahead of the overall health of their own people.


And this differs from far too many politicians in the non-Indigenous world...how, again?

How about that same government that supposedly demanded more accountability from the Indigenous leaders had one of its senior ministers spending $50 million worth of pork and being found by the auditor general to be breach of federal accountability rules? Or how another senior Cabinet minister used search and rescue helicopters as a fucking personal taxi service?

And just to show I'm not biased in these matters, how about Adscam? Or the NDP satellite offices case?

My original post talked about how Stephen Harper constantly kept the Parliamentary Budget Officer from getting the information it needed to do its job, and how Justin Trudeau is even less transparent.

However, people seem far less inclined to complain about these things these days, except when it's the other party doing it. And instead of demanding that their own leaders do better, they simply get into pissing matches with supporters of other parties over which party does it worse worse.

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:
And why does it seem that it's always those types who end up in power.

Fixing the leadership issues on alot of the FN's reserves would go alongway to fixing the problems. Just look at what good leadership and a decent location can lead to.

http://oibdc.ca/


Clarence Louie's a great guy, but it's not as though he's simply buying into the Tom Flanagan/Barry Cooper way of viewing the world...

$1:

Chief Louie is the hero of the hard-working, tax-paying average Joe Canadian, saying things about Indigenous people that Settlers just can’t get away with these days (although they do, of course they do! Conrad Black, Tom Flanagan and many others have all said similar things, and they’re just fine). Widely lauded as the chief who “took his band from rags to riches” Clarence Louie is not only viewed as a rugged, hard-working businessman, he is also often seen as the antithesis to “all those other Chiefs” who are assumed to be rolling around in money siphoned off from the taxpayer.

Yet most of the people invoking him have no idea about some of his other views:

“Residents of Osoyoos aren’t happy that the name of Haynes Point Provincial Park will soon be changed to an aboriginal name, they can “suck it up,” says Chief Clarence Louie…“To non-native people, Haynes might be a hero, but to us he’s a land thief,” Louie said…

The agreement [to change the name] followed the discovery last year of bones buried at Haynes Point that were radiocarbon dated to about 1,224 years old – proving that they belonged to a First Nations ancestor.

Louie said the provincial government wanted [his band] “to be good little Indians” and dig the bones up and bury them on the reserve… “I told [them] we’re not going to move those bones,” Louie said.


“I told the government your armies don’t scare us, your RCMP don’t scare us, your SWAT teams don’t scare us, because if you want to have a battle like they did at Ipperwash, we could have the same battle here at Haynes Point because we wouldn’t even have to make phone calls. If a standoff is going to occur, there’d be natives from Ontario with us over there.”

I’m not sure if the average fan of Chief Louie would consider these views incompatible, but I have my suspicions. I think people misinterpret the “no more whining about 100-year old failed experiments” to mean he supports assimilation. Certainly, the fact that the Okanagan’s first prison is located on Osoyoos land suggests an acceptance of the carceral state, but when viewed through more than a few selected quotes from a decade ago it seems clear that Clarence Louis is not letting Canada off the hook for contemporary or historic wrongs.



ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:
Not quite the same,as you're comparing an ideology with ethnicity. However.you've done this before. You said that if most of us see a group of Indians outside a shopping center all we see is a group of Indians,while you see people suffering from alcoholism, drug addiction,FASD and poverty. As soon as you see a bunch of Indians, that's what you see? We see an ethnicity and you see a bunch of damaged individuals,yet yours is the more 'enlightened' view? This is the soft core racism of the left. It's paternalistic.


Some people, when they see those Indigenous guys, assume they're a bunch of drunks who are up to no good. You might not, but they have the same kind of knee-jerk reactions as you're accusing herbie of.

Harold Cardinal was pointing it out back in the '60s-a white guy who drinks heavily could be seen as just somebody who enjoys having a good time. But when an Indigenous people drink, they're all stereotyped as alcoholic bums who can't be trusted to stand up straight.

   



andyt @ Sun Jun 19, 2016 10:46 am

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:
Not quite the same,as you're comparing an ideology with ethnicity. However.you've done this before. You said that if most of us see a group of Indians outside a shopping center all we see is a group of Indians,while you see people suffering from alcoholism, drug addiction,FASD and poverty. As soon as you see a bunch of Indians, that's what you see? We see an ethnicity and you see a bunch of damaged individuals,yet yours is the more 'enlightened' view? This is the soft core racism of the left. It's paternalistic.


Some people, when they see those Indigenous guys, assume they're a bunch of drunks who are up to no good. You might not


Guess you haven't read very many of his posts.


As for Chief Louie, at least he seems to be a straight shooter who's managing his bands resources to best effect. Of course he's lucky, because the reserve is located in an area where they can have their own money making efforts. And AFAIK, the money made is distributed equitably - ie you work you get some. I'm sure I don't see eye to eye with him on land claims and such, but I would have the same position he would if I was an FN.

So this sort of reserve already seems several steps up from some of the disaster reserves, and probably looks like the future. Ie some degree of FN separateness and specialness, but also the FNs functioning like other Canadians economically. Still doesn't help give an answer on what to do with reserves that aren't located on prime tourism and wine growing land.

   



Freakinoldguy @ Sun Jun 19, 2016 3:09 pm

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:
Same thing happens in non native communities too. Politics seems to attract the worst we have to offer. Self serving rather than self sacrificing types.


I'd agree with you except for the fact that if a duly elected Local, Provincial or Federal politician acted like "some" of the leaders of these bannock republics they'd end up in prison.

Crooked yes, but for our politicians there are a series of supposed checks and balances which limits the most obvious cases of avarice. The leadership of the reserves not so much, especially now that there is zero oversight for any finances the Canadian Taxpayers give them.

So they may all be crooked but, the chances of getting caught for a non native politician remain much higher.

   



andyt @ Sun Jun 19, 2016 3:21 pm

The First Nations leaders likely wouldn't land in prison because there are often no rules against what they are doing - ie they are the ones who set the rules in the first place. They don't have the checks and balances that our pols live with. I don't think many Canadian pols really rake in the graft or make off with tons of govt money. They might live high on the hog on expense claims, they'll reward their political friends with contracts and such (and may get a kickback there) but they can't just whole hog appropriate govt money for themselves or install all their relatives and friends the way some FN's can. And, if they are caught they are mostly thrown out, can't get elected. The FN leaders can just keep on going because of the "democracy" that exists on reserves. Canada isn't perfect for corruption, but we score pretty well in that regard compared to the rest of the world. Reserves, I would think, would be much worse in that regard.

   



OnTheIce @ Sun Jun 19, 2016 6:15 pm

JaredMilne JaredMilne:
Despite all this, many non-Native Canadians seem to think that Indigenous Canadians are the only ones who have to change at all. No one ever seems to think that these non-Native actions, which affect many people still alive today, ever have anything to do with the problems.

Could it be that maybe, just maybe, they’re wrong?


Despite decades of government under different leaders.

Despite umpteen social programs.

Despite billion of dollars spent.

Despite multiple apologies, we're still in the same boat with our Indigenous people.

Maybe, just maybe, they need to stop blaming whitey for all their problems and take some personal accountability to the table rather than just coming to the table, hat in hand.

   



JaredMilne @ Sun Jun 19, 2016 7:20 pm

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:
ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:
Same thing happens in non native communities too. Politics seems to attract the worst we have to offer. Self serving rather than self sacrificing types.


I'd agree with you except for the fact that if a duly elected Local, Provincial or Federal politician acted like "some" of the leaders of these bannock republics they'd end up in prison.

Crooked yes, but for our politicians there are a series of supposed checks and balances which limits the most obvious cases of avarice. The leadership of the reserves not so much, especially now that there is zero oversight for any finances the Canadian Taxpayers give them.

So they may all be crooked but, the chances of getting caught for a non native politician remain much higher.


Er, not quite.

The band councils are actually creations of the Indian Act, and Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada has primary responsibility for providing services and for funding them-oftentimes with significant gaps in the legislation meant to govern it:

$1:

Chief and council are not just elected officials, they must also act as negotiators with Indian Affairs, and with provincial and federal government ministries (health, education, fisheries and oceans, and so many more), as well as sitting as CEO and Board for First Nations corporations. First Nations governments are responsible for filling in all the gaps left by lack of legislation and bureaucratic support at the federal level, otherwise provided to municipalities by the provinces. This requires an intense amount of reporting, travel, and personal time as First Nations simply do not have the human resources available to them in order to delegate that work.



Art Manuel also described all the hoops he and other Indigenous people had to jump through in B.C. to set up their own businesses, in the Unsettling Canada book I mentioned earlier.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Despite decades of government under different leaders.

Despite umpteen social programs.

Despite billion of dollars spent.

Despite multiple apologies, we're still in the same boat with our Indigenous people.

Maybe, just maybe, they need to stop blaming whitey for all their problems and take some personal accountability to the table rather than just coming to the table, hat in hand.


There are problems in Indigenous communities that they need to address-and leaders ranging from Clarence Louie to Art Manuel have made that clear as well as anyone.

Unfortunately, it's hard to make headway when we're stuck in the legal limbo that's resulted from originally trying to assimilate Indigenous peoples, and then officially backing off on that goal...without actually determining what it will be replaced with.

And the courts have indicated-repeatedly-that Indigenous Treaty, land use and consultation rights are part of the Constitution.

Recognizing those rights is something we've never really tried.

   



herbie @ Sun Jun 19, 2016 8:00 pm

Well I see why the problems still here by the damned tone of the posters who read about THE Chief who paid himself $1 million and saw evil casino profiteers on a TV show and formed their opinions on that.
And have the fucking gall to deflect things by claiming 'maybe THEY should...'
Nice dodge.

Just like when they UN says we don't pay enough attention to FN problems, the same people start slagging the UN. Just can't accept that they might just be a big part of the problem, no way.

It would probably make your skin crawl to attend a public function around my parts and hear every elected official begin their statement with "Thank you to the **** people for allowing this assembly on their traditional lands..."

   



Strutz @ Sun Jun 19, 2016 10:43 pm

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:
$1:
The biggest difference is natives have ACTUAL concern for their communities.

Really?? Some do...many, too many, don't. It's naive, and bordering on racism to say that they all think and behave the same way. They're like everyone else. Some are altruistic and compassionate and others are greedy scum...just like you find in any community.

Absolutely. I see that here too.

   



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