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Atleo has a business background, if anyone is going to be able to bring the government around on the need for home and land ownership on reserves, it's him. Give them the ability to own the land their homes and businesses are on, and they will have pride in them. Let them build and run their own schools and clinics and other buildings, instead of bringing contractors from the south to do it, and they will have pride in them.

As I pointed out earlier, Nishnawbe Aski Nations run a system of schools and they operate a high school in Thunder Bay. Together with Confederation College's Neganewin College, Thunder Bay now has the most educated aboriginal population in Canada. Because education here is geared to their culture, they embrace it, and we're seeing the results. The next hurdle for most of them is actually getting hired. Even though they're qualified, many native people in this city don't get hired because of the stigma of race. We always complain that they don't want to look for work, but it's just as bad that when they do want to work, we prevent it by not hiring them.

Another solution that would be fairly easy to change: welfare distribution. Giving a lump sum payment to the band council instead of giving it directly to the recipients like we do with non-first nations recipients would end a large amount of fraud. Currently the system is set up to be abused. A previous council of Fort William First Nation created scores of fake people to receive millions in welfare funds, and it wasn't caught for a considerable length of time. Another important priority is a system to bring accountability to band governments, starting with mandatory elections on a fixed schedule like the municipalities, and an aboriginal court of justice so that they can punish criminals in their own way. In many cases, for cultural reasons, their forms of punishment are more effective on their criminals than ours are, and we have to recognize that.