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Originally Posted by DowntownWpg

My great-great grandparents had a horrid time in the Ukraine, and it hasn't affected my or my family members' ability to put in the effort to make something of ourselves.

Your great-great grandparents didn't suffer from drug and alcohol abuse and neglect your great-grandparents, who didn't suffer from drug and alcohol abuse and neglect your grandparents, who didn't suffer from drug and alcohol abuse and neglect your parents, who didn't suffer from drug and alcohol abuse and neglect you.

As I explained in the Winnipeg Crime thread, the majority of the problems aboriginal people are dealing with, and the main cause of crime from them, is a result of the treatment of their parents, grandparents and so on in the residential school system, as well the a result of the isolation and deprivation of rights and responsibilities caused by the Indian Act.

To say that many of their problems are the result of actions allowed by the government during "colonization" (residential schools, the forced relocations and revocations of reserves, etc.) is not to claim that they are somehow genetically inferior. It is to say that the actions committed against their people during that time resulted in people who were emotionally and psychologically damaged, and passed their flaws down to their children, who passed those flaws down to their children, and so on. It is an extremely difficult cycle to break, and if Europeans had been subjected to something equivalent, they would have problems very similar to what our aboriginals experience.

There was a feature on CBC news the other day about a documentary focusing on aboriginal people in Ontario's far north. A little boy showed where he slept at night, then pointed up to the patched hole in the ceiling where his parents hanged themselves. How do you think that kid and his seven siblings are going to turn out? In some communities in Ontario's north, 90% of the population is on welfare and more than 75% of the population suffers from some sort of substance abuse or mental health issue. These problems are not inherent, they are passed down, and they can be cured.

Undemocratic and/or corrupt governance of band councils along with unresponsive and sometimes ignorant provincial and federal governments leaves them disillusioned with government in general, they become discouraged from becoming leaders, believing nothing can be changed; at least not by them. This can be cured by having upper levels of government that are more attentive to their voice, respond to their complaints and gives them a role to play in leading themselves. Establishing stricter rules on aboriginal governance and giving them a bigger part in provincial and national governments will show them that they have a role to play in Canada, that they are responsible for something, and they will step up to the plate and carry out those responsibilities.

Reserves that have concentrated aboriginal people in isolated sections of the north, far from economic activity, have left them with no jobs, even when they want to work, and living on land that can barely sustain them, let alone provide economic opportunities enough for them to thrive. When economic opportunities do appear, aboriginal people in the remote north don't benefit as much as the general population in southern communities does with similar developments down here. They're typically only hired for lower end jobs, and have almost no upward mobility. Many of those projects will fly non-aboriginal employees from the south, often saying they're "better skilled". Why not train the people who live near the mine to work in it? And those resource extraction projects disrupt the natural environment surrounding their communities, which is essentially their grocery store. Shouldn't the community receive some sort of compensation for this? Thunder Bay receives tax revenue from the mine operating in unincorporated territory north of its city limits. Why can't Attiwapisakat levy taxes on the nearby diamond mine? Why can't Nishnawbe-Aski Nation receive revenue from industry in its territory (Treaty 9) so that it isn't dependent on funds from Indian and Northern Affairs?

Education might be free for aboriginal people, but there are no post-secondary institutions in their communities in the north. In Ontario, they have to move to cities in the south to attend high school, and when they're here, they have to pay for housing, which is not covered by the treaties. Lucky students come from reserves that can afford group homes, or attend a high school that offers free housing. If they do make it to university, again, they have to pay for housing, for text books, anything else that isn't paying for the education itself. It is difficult to get to that point, as many aboriginal communities lack proper public schools. Modern technology makes remote education possible, but we still have a long way to go before education standards in remote communities is equal to the standards and opportunities of the south. Nishnawbe-Aski Nation has to fight with INAC to get funding for its education programmes. Shouldn't these programmes be funded? If there is no protocol to fund educational programmes operated by regional First Nation governments, there should be.

Aboriginal who arrive in cities for the first time experience culture shock as a result of their isolation. Students going to the aboriginal high school in Thunder Bay have to go through a programme that teaches them how to cross roads safely using traffic lights (which many have never seen before), how to use a bus, how to shop for groceries at a grocery store, and so on. They are introduced to drugs, alcohol, and other vices that are much more accessible in cities than on reserves. Every couple years a student from that school dies as a result.

Even if we ignored race altogether in developing a social policy to deal with these problems, it wouldn't change the fact that aboriginal people would be the largest users of those programmes in our communities. It doesn't negate the fact that those programmes would have to be sensitive to their cultures, just as multicultural integration programmes are sensitive to the cultures of people from other countries. Many aboriginal people in Thunder Bay who are elderly cannot speak English, so any problems they might have go unsolved. If we have social assistance programmes offer services in Ukrainian, Finnish, and Italian to elderly people from those cultures, why would you consider a programme offering Cree to be wrong?

I agree, as do many aboriginal people, that the Indian Act has to be, if not abolished, heavily reformed. While aboriginal people might "enjoy" benefits such as tax exemption and free education, they also "enjoy" the loss of economic freedoms, leadership responsibilities, and the ability to hold their governments accountable. The ability to recall a corrupt band council is only just now being considered. I know it is tempting for many people to point out the "benefits" of Status, but you have to understand the negative side as well. Status Indians have only been allowed to vote for 50 years. Before 1960, they essentially weren't even Canadians. It was our law that stated that. It is our law that has to change. They can't do it themselves, and that is where our responsibilities lie. We aren't to blame for their problems existing, but we are to blame for allowing them to continue when there are ways to prevent them. We simply have to try harder to help them help themselves, because right now they are not often in a situation where they can easily help themselves.

We're all Canadians. We have to help each other build a better country for all of us.