Here We Go Again

The arrest yesterday of an aboriginal youth for the brutal murder of 11-year-old Teresa Robinson in Garden Lake Reserve is one more statistic the RCMP can add to its list of who is killing aboriginal women:  aboriginal men.

Nevertheless, the government will press on with an inquiry into "missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls".  And who does the chief blame?  You guessed it, the rest of Canada because..."we need more money and resources to help our people so we can prevent such tragedies."

Not a word of responsibility ever uttered by native leaders.  It's outrageous.  The blamelessness and finger-pointing of chiefs in these communities is breathtakingly unacceptable.  What are they doing to help their own people?  The first thing natives living in remote reservations need to do is get off them, like the rest of Canadians who move from small towns and villages, with no hope of employment, to larger cities and towns where they can lead better lives. 

Why is this such a mystery?  I know I have gone on about this many times, but the reason reserves still exist is because that is how the money flows to chiefs, via The Indian Act.  Assertions to the contrary, native leaders have no intention of scrapping the legislation because the money would dry up.  Just a fact, folks.

Columnist Gary Mason wrote about this problem today.  Referring to a youth suicide epidemic in Cross Lake, Mason suggested the obvious solution:  find a better life off-reserve.  With no hope of a decent job and overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness and despair, young people simply give up, turn to booze and drugs and start having children while children themselves.  Their progeny often become wards of the state and the cycle of anguish and misery repeats generation after generation, Mason writes. 

Totally correct, but anyone who advocates natives getting off reserves is vilified and branded a racist, such as Scott Gilmore for a Maclean's magazine piece on the topic.  The husband of federal environment minister Catherine McKenna, Gilmore wrote a second, statistic-laden piece confirming  the dismal and crime-ridden life of on-reserve youth and was again pilloried for being correct.

The latest cash grab winding its way through the courts under the moniker of the "Sixties Scoop" is a class-action suit that alleges aboriginal children forced into residential schools were deprived of their heritage and culture.  Headed by the chief of the Beaver house First Nation, Marcia Brown Martel, the action seeks damages of $100,000 for each person who attended residential schools in the sixties.  That'll be a lotta dough.

Does anyone stop to think about the parallels to boarding schools all over the world?  How about Britain, where children at the age of seven are removed from their homes and sent off to boarding school for the remainder of their educations.  Funnily enough, most British prime ministers were high-achieving products of this "barbaric", yet successful, system.  Clearly, the Brits do not consider English parents competent enough to raise their own offspring.  Children may cry themselves to sleep for a while, but eventually adapt, make the "old school tie" connections and go on to success in leading the country.

That's just the way it is.