It has to be said. Again.

Natives do not have a nation-to-nation relationship with Canada because guess what, they are not "nations".  They do not own the land on which reserves are situated, they cannot defend themselves and -- with the exception of the smart leaders who work with the "dreaded" oil and gas industry -- they do not generate revenue to support themselves.  They neither collect nor pay taxes.  Period the end.  Heard yet another native leader talking about nation-to-nation-blah-blah-blah on CBC this morning and I had to immediately switch the station. 

Could not listen to that drivel yet again.  The amazing thing is no one challenges this notion?!  The interviewer listened enraptured by this guy and said...nothing.  Why is this?  Please tell me!

Reading the obituary of Alan Fry in 'The Globe and Mail' the other day, I was struck by the realization that little has changed in the lives of natives stuck on reserves from his era to this.  Mr. Fry, an India agent who worked for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, wrote searing portrayals of native life on reserves in a series of books and clearly, nothing has changed. 

Because natives won't get off reserves!  That's why in a nut shell.

In 'How a People Die', Mr. Fry recounts the death of an infant on the fictional Kwasi Reserve near Vancouver.  The reserve is a human black hole, with homes in states of long disrepair, littered with empty liquor bottles and peopled with "bleary, red-eyed citizens who drink themselves into oblivion each night and stumble through their days."  Then one Saturday morning, the infant is found in her crib, her body covered in sores and encrusted with feces and dirt.  Although the parents are arrested and charged with criminal neglect, the book takes on issues that are as urgent today as they were to Mr. Fry back then:  substance abuse, domestic violence and an overwhelming sense of futility. 

"What do you do when you have no hope or expectations?  What can you do?" he asks.  His proxy in the book says, "Indians are the hardest goddamned people on earth to help."  Whenever he tries, it only encourages more shiftlessness and drunkenness -- a vicious circle in which the proxy feels complicit, frustrated and increasingly helpless.   

Get off the reserves, is what I'd suggest.  Sadly, the native "industry" won't let it happen.