1  2  Next

MONTE SOLBERG, QMI AGENCY

Some public policy issues don’t lend themselves to productive conversation. How do we fix health care? Honestly, if I hear that question one more time I think I’ll need medical attention. Too bad the wait times are so long.

Anyway, health care is one of those issues that is difficult to tackle, partly because we are tired of hearing about it. In fact, I’m sorry I mentioned it.

The subject of constitutional reform is tricky for other reasons. Constitutional reform holds the distinction of being able to elicit both mind-numbing boredom and red-hot anger in the span of about 20 words.

Back in the ’90s, that discussion, designed to unite us, almost blew the country apart. Finding solutions for aboriginal Canadians is another one of those difficult discussions.

After just 80 or 90 years of trying different things, all the good intentions, blab-fest conferences, consultations, accords and strategies have got us exactly nowhere. Despite tens of billions of dollars of “help,” if anything the problems have grown worse. It’s understandable if there’s skepticism about yet another new initiative to make things better. But this time we have reason to be hopeful.

Pretty much all of the previous attempts to reform things on reserves involved working within the reserve system. Unfortunately, the reserve system and the communal ownership of land often causes many of the problems that need fixing. But now the Conservatives are moving forward with a plan to allow private property ownership on reserves.

Once people are allowed to own and sell their own homes, a whole bundle of powerful incentives come in to play. Home ownership encourages the owner to maintain the home and to build equity. In turn, the equity can be leveraged to start a business.

Of course, western civilization has only recognized for, say, 600 or 700 years that private property and markets incent beneficial behaviour and create tremendous prosperity. How nice that we’ve now agreed to offer the same opportunities to on-reserve Aboriginals.

Unfortunately, not all aboriginals will benefit to the same degree, especially those who live on remote reserves. Without several potential buyers for homes, the benefits of private ownership aren’t nearly as great. That said, many northern reserves are close enough to oil and gas, mining or forestry operations that they could still benefit.

At the same time, the government wants to reform education on reserves, which is way overdue given how few Aboriginal young people actually graduate from high school.

That may be a much tougher nut to crack. In the past, the government has mused about calling in the provinces to do the teaching, but we should question whether their results would be much better. This might be the time to try a variety of approaches, ranging from charter schools to private education providers.

Just as interesting, these initiatives, along with the government’s proposal to give matrimonial property rights to aboriginal women, make it hard for their critics to label them as mean-spirited. Thanks to these initiatives, for the first time in decades on-reserve Aboriginals have reason to be at least mildly optimistic about the future.


http://www.torontosun.com/2012/08/10/gi ... -ownership

   

Instead of recognizing the right to own property for just the FN, how about doing that for ALL Canadians?

Then we will no longer be treated to the spectacle of FN thugs terrorizing neighborhoods that they claim as 'theirs' while the police sit on their a$$es and do FA about it.

   

Although I agree that something different needs to be tried, and I agree that being able to own property is a very good thing, UI do worry about how this would be impemented. I can easily see reserves getting completely sold off to non-natives by short-sighted people who will in the end have even less than they do now.

   

Personally I don't think that would be such a disaster. It would force those people to live like all other Canadians instead of insisting on their special race-based privileges. It might initially result in many being on welfare, but since welfare for non-natives is such a lousy deal, many, especially the children, would just find their way into the workforce like anybody else. No more sitting on your patch of land where there's no hope in hell of earning a living and demanding ever more money from the white man.

But the chiefs aren't stupid, they'll never let fee simple ownership pass. At the least there's be restrictions on non-natives owning the land. I don't see how this would help, since if I was a bank I sure wouldn't lend money with that property as collateral - no way to foreclose. But then it's not beyond the ken that our govt will pass a law that the banks have to lend to the Natives anyway, since not doing so would be racist.

   

Just like what's going been going on with the Six Nations for far too long now.
They are suffering from what I call "ancestral seller's remorse."

   

I think the native's current condition is at least as bad as, if not worse, than the "non-native welfare" you describe above.

Banks already can and do lend for aboriginal housing but as you mentioned there's no collateral so the rates are usurous and often the Reserve is on the hook for paying them.

I think the key to success is that the program is a collaborative one, and not another top-down arrangement where big government simply dictates whats going to happen without consultation and participation.

   

More likee they'll end up with one or two families in short order ending up owning evrrything on the reservations and the rest of them are still stuck living in something that Charles Dickens used to write about. Solberg's the same utopian hack he was back when Reform and their libertarian nonsense first showed up on the scene.

Get used to it. There is no solution to the crises that afflict the natives.

   

That's how it's run now, so it's not much different. One or two families typicaly control everything on the reserve anyways, at least the people would get some money out of this by selling their land.

There are solutions, but nobody is willing to address the problem head on.

   

Shall moan about the Hutterite who should be able to buy his own piece of land inside the colony? Or the sharecropper's right to buy his shack and lot off the farm owner?

The rez here bumps up against the town. Anybody, no matter what race, religion or sexual orientation can buy a home on this side of the street. And a hell of a lot of Band members do just that!

Start by letting the Band actually OWN the rez property, not the gov't. Then they can vote in a Council to do whatever they choose with the lots.

   

Except that those ancestors sold with a gun to their head, so it's somewhat justified.


I guess that's a start.....maybe.....

   

Oh Bulllllshit. Joseph Brant sold those lands willingly and without being put under any duress. It was HIS decision to sell those lands. The Mohawk were given the lands in 1784, Brant died in 1807. In 1785, Brant granted land to several white families, particularily those who were former members of Brant's Volunteers and Butler's Rangers from New York. Hell, between 1795 and 1797 alone, Brant sold well over 1/3 of the land granted to the Mohawk.

Gun-point my ass. When Lord Dorchester went to issue another deed for the land in 1796, empowering the the people to lease or sell their land as long as they offered it for sale to the gov't first, Brant told him to stuff it.

   

1795: The Six Nations granted its chief, Joseph Brant, the power of attorney to sell off some of the land and invest the proceeds to provide annuity for tribal members, who were struggling to survive in new settlements. The Crown initially opposed the sales but eventually conceded.

1795 to 1797 Joseph Brant sold 381,480 acres (1,543.8 km2) to land speculators comprising the northern half of the reserve for £85,332. Simcoe opposed this sale....The land speculators were unable to sell farm size lots to settlers fast enough and, by 1801, all of the land speculators had fallen behind in their payments to Six Nations.

1825: The Crown approached the Six Nations about developing Plank Road (now Highway 6) and the surrounding area. The Six Nations agreed to lease half a mile of land on each side for the road, but did not surrender the land. Lt.-Gov. John Colborne agreed to the lease but his successor, Sir Francis Bond Head, did not.

1841: The Crown alleges the Six Nations council agreed to surrender for sale all the lands outside those set aside for a reserve on January 18, on the agreement the government would sell the land and "invest the money for them." On February 4, and again on July 7, then again two years later in 1843, the Six Nations petitioned against the surrender, saying they agreed only to lease the land to the Crown. After 1845, despite the protests of the Six Nations, the government sold Plank Road and surrounding lands to third parties.

The Crown has never shown eveidence that all the purported sums paid on the tier of lots on each side of the Hamilton-Port Dover Plank Road were credited to the Six Nations Trust Fund Accounts. Six Nations never received compensation for the lands used to construct the Hamilton-Port Dover Plank Road, nor did they receive full compensation for the tier of lots on each side of the road.

   

Uhhh I notice that you neglected to mention that after the land speculators had fallen behind on their payments, Brant released even MORE land for sale. To the tune of another 350,000 acres. That makes well over 700,000 acres sold of the initial 900,000+ acres the Mohawk were granted, in just a few years.
When Brant went to sell off the first blocks of land, Simcoe did try to prevent it because he was afraid Brant would sell to Americans. And that's just what happened, only they were American land speculators. That's not the fault of the Crown.
Even today, despite CLEAR records that Block 2(now the Region of Waterloo) was bought and paid for IN CASH, the Mohawk still insist the City of Cambridge is their land. Not only was the land bought and paid for, but the Mohawk actualized an initial annuity of 9000 British pounds.

The simple fact the Six Nations have laid claim to lands that were CLEARLY sold, makes any of their claims highly questionable when it comes to lands where there is some confusion about who owns what.

   

   

Is it even politically correct to call them aboriginals?? I think we should call them natives!

   

1  2  Next