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This Message Is Reprinted Under The Fair Use
Doctrine Of International Copyright Law:
_http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html_
(http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html)
************************************************** ************
FROM: THE GLOBE AND MAIL NEWSPAPER
_http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051124.wxaboriginals24/B
NStory/Front_
(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl.../BNStory/Front)
Violence, Suicides and Social Ills: Welcome To Our Native Reserves
By DAWN WALTON and _MURRAY CAMPBELL_ (mailto:[email protected])
Thursday, November 24, 2005 Posted at 5:03 AM EST
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Calgary and Toronto — The gangs have names such as Indian Posse and Redd
Alert.
Their members tap recruits as young as 10 to peddle crack cocaine. Beatings
and drive-by shootings have become their calling cards as RCMP from the
Hobbema detachment issue almost daily news releases about violence at a cluster of
reserves south of Edmonton.
"We think it was always simmering there somewhat because we would get
complaints, but it never boiled over," RCMP Constable Darrel Bruno said.
"Then, all of a sudden, people got more and more aggressive toward each other
with regard to these gangs."
Hobbema is the community at the hub of four native reserves -- Samson,
Montana, Ermineskin and Louis Bull -- where a staggering list of social ills
plagues the 12,000 people who live on them.
The unemployment rate is more than 80 per cent. Drug and alcohol abuse is
rampant. The suicide rate is high. Child-welfare caseloads have swelled 59 per
cent between 2000 and 2004.
The RCMP caseload jumped 68 per cent. Constable Bruno, a 22-year veteran of
the force, said young people in Hobbema are influenced by peer pressure and
end up in gangs in place of the family. He came to Hobbema 7½ years ago, but he
spent his childhood on the Samson reserve.
"Back then," he said of his youth, "I remember it being relatively quiet. I
remember the elders had a lot of respect. When they spoke, you listened.
That's gone by the wayside now."
This is the bumpy road that Canada's natives are travelling. There is another
road that wasn't taken that offered a vastly different future. It still has
a certain allure for Canadians who observe the dismal conditions in native
communities and wonder whether radical change isn't needed.
In 1969, the newly elected government of Pierre Trudeau proposed such a
radical break in a slim policy statement that proposed undoing the link between
the Crown and Canada's native peoples that had existed for more than 200 years.
Ottawa wanted to end the separate status of natives, abolish treaties and
allow the sale of reserves.
Under the policy in this unofficial white paper, natives would have become
full citizens of Canada without federal government guarantees to protect their
lands or identity or to sustain their standard of living. The federal
Department of Indian Affairs would be dismantled within five years and, after that,
the provinces would be expected to treat natives as non-natives.
One prominent leader called the policy "cultural genocide" but Jean Chrétien,
who was then the minister of Indian Affairs, defended it. "Canada cannot
seek the just society and keep discriminatory legislation on its books," he
said.
Native leaders were surprised and angered by the proposals because they
didn't reflect the previous year's consultations. (In fact, an original document
advocating the sort of native involvement on display today at a first
ministers meeting in Kelowna, B.C., was heavily rewritten by a senior policy adviser
in the Prime Minister's Office.) Mr. Chrétien fought for the white paper
despite the evidence that native leaders hated it. In July, 1969, he met 30
leaders of the Union of Ontario Indians in Toronto and listened to their
complaints about his department.
As he left the two-hour meeting, he exploded.
"They don't like the department and I proposed to phase out the department
and then they want to keep it," he said.
A few days later, he pleaded his case for a radical break from the past in an
article in The Globe and Mail. "Many will criticize but few will defend the
present system," the future prime minister said. "The persistent control of
other peoples' lives is ruinous to them and futile for government."
Assimilation wasn't a new idea.
Indeed, people around Hobbema say that the government's desire for "equality"
is to blame for many of the problems they are facing.
They point to the legacy of residential schools, set up by the federal
government in partnership with religious organizations, which were designed to
assimilate aboriginal children into "white" society.
About 100,000 children attended these schools over the past century or so --
about 100 schools were operating at any one time.
Among them were the parents of the troublemakers around Hobbema who were
yanked from their homes and in many cases suffered physical, mental and even
sexual abuse, before most residential schools were closed in the mid-1970s.
That system stole an important component of family values -- parenting,
according to the elders.
"A lot of people that did come back lost that sense of belonging, sense of
identity, loss of culture, language," Constable Bruno said. "A lot of them feel
that is part of the problems we're dealing with now. Then, when people
understand that, they have a better understanding of what we're dealing with
here."
Yesterday, the federal government offered $2-billion in reparations to former
students and their children. At the same time, Hobbema's 32-member
detachment learned that it would get nine more officers.
Last year, the detachment handled an average of 292 cases an officer. That
compared with an Alberta average of 116 cases an officer and the national
caseload of 66 cases an officer. Last year, the Hobbema RCMP received 899
complaints of assault, up from 490 in 2000. Last year it handled 105 drug charges,
up from 36 in 2000.
About half of the band members who live around Hobbema are under 18 and the
vast majority are under 30, with a lot of time on their hands.
But Hobbema needs more than more cash and cops to cure what ails it,
according to Mel Buffalo, a member of Samson Cree Nation.
Hobbema sits atop oil deposits that bring in millions of dollars. Trust funds
have been set up for the young people on the reserves. At one time, when a
person turned 18, they received a windfall of $100,000, but revenues have
fallen and so have the amounts paid out.
"Now it's $30,000 or $40,000," Mr. Buffalo said. "I've heard people spend
that in three or four days."
Hobbema doesn't need handouts that the government keeps pouring in, Mr.
Buffalo said, shaking his head at the flurry of pre-election announcements of
more funding for aboriginals.
Hobbema, he said, has a huge potential labour force for the province and the
country facing a skills shortage.
"[The government] needs to work with us side by side, hand in hand, to create
economic opportunities that would be long term, that will be sustainable. I
don't see that happening. I don't see people working toward that kind of
stuff," he said.
"You'd think with all the money there wouldn't be a problem," added Mr.
Buffalo, who is also president of the Indian Association of Alberta. "But it just
goes to show you that money doesn't solve the problem."
Harold Cardinal was just 24, and the youngest-ever president of the Indian
Association of Alberta, when the Chrétien white paper was issued. Initially, he
was delighted at the prospect of the demise of the much-hated Indian Affairs
bureaucracy but he also accused Ottawa of trying to "exterminate"
aboriginals by abdicating treaties.
"This is the one thing that Canadians will have to accept and recognize that
we are full citizens but we also possess special rights," he said. By the end
of the year, he had published The Unjust Society, a white-hot criticism of
what he saw as a policy of assimilation. He summed up the government's
approach: "The only good Indian is a non-Indian."
The bestselling book introduced non-native Canadians to life behind what Mr.
Cardinal called "the buckskin curtain." Equally important, however, the
battle cry against the white paper marked the beginning of a new generation of
sophisticated native leadership.
"It was a watershed moment for the aboriginal community," Phil Fontaine,
national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said in an interview. "That was
a real catalyst."
A few years after the white paper appeared, the political and legal landscape
of aboriginal affairs had changed beyond recognition. Court decisions
established the "aboriginal rights" that Ottawa had sought to deny, meetings
between cabinet ministers and aboriginal leaders became commonplace and by 1982,
aboriginal and treaty rights were enshrined in the Charter of Rights.
The white paper is little more than an historical artifact now with its
prescriptions thoroughly outmoded. But some of the assertions from 36 years ago
retain their power.
This Message Is Reprinted Under The Fair Use
Doctrine Of International Copyright Law:
_http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html_
(http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html)
************************************************** ************
FROM: THE GLOBE AND MAIL NEWSPAPER
_http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051124.wxaboriginals24/B
NStory/Front_
(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl.../BNStory/Front)
Violence, Suicides and Social Ills: Welcome To Our Native Reserves
By DAWN WALTON and _MURRAY CAMPBELL_ (mailto:[email protected])
Thursday, November 24, 2005 Posted at 5:03 AM EST
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Calgary and Toronto — The gangs have names such as Indian Posse and Redd
Alert.
Their members tap recruits as young as 10 to peddle crack cocaine. Beatings
and drive-by shootings have become their calling cards as RCMP from the
Hobbema detachment issue almost daily news releases about violence at a cluster of
reserves south of Edmonton.
"We think it was always simmering there somewhat because we would get
complaints, but it never boiled over," RCMP Constable Darrel Bruno said.
"Then, all of a sudden, people got more and more aggressive toward each other
with regard to these gangs."
Hobbema is the community at the hub of four native reserves -- Samson,
Montana, Ermineskin and Louis Bull -- where a staggering list of social ills
plagues the 12,000 people who live on them.
The unemployment rate is more than 80 per cent. Drug and alcohol abuse is
rampant. The suicide rate is high. Child-welfare caseloads have swelled 59 per
cent between 2000 and 2004.
The RCMP caseload jumped 68 per cent. Constable Bruno, a 22-year veteran of
the force, said young people in Hobbema are influenced by peer pressure and
end up in gangs in place of the family. He came to Hobbema 7½ years ago, but he
spent his childhood on the Samson reserve.
"Back then," he said of his youth, "I remember it being relatively quiet. I
remember the elders had a lot of respect. When they spoke, you listened.
That's gone by the wayside now."
This is the bumpy road that Canada's natives are travelling. There is another
road that wasn't taken that offered a vastly different future. It still has
a certain allure for Canadians who observe the dismal conditions in native
communities and wonder whether radical change isn't needed.
In 1969, the newly elected government of Pierre Trudeau proposed such a
radical break in a slim policy statement that proposed undoing the link between
the Crown and Canada's native peoples that had existed for more than 200 years.
Ottawa wanted to end the separate status of natives, abolish treaties and
allow the sale of reserves.
Under the policy in this unofficial white paper, natives would have become
full citizens of Canada without federal government guarantees to protect their
lands or identity or to sustain their standard of living. The federal
Department of Indian Affairs would be dismantled within five years and, after that,
the provinces would be expected to treat natives as non-natives.
One prominent leader called the policy "cultural genocide" but Jean Chrétien,
who was then the minister of Indian Affairs, defended it. "Canada cannot
seek the just society and keep discriminatory legislation on its books," he
said.
Native leaders were surprised and angered by the proposals because they
didn't reflect the previous year's consultations. (In fact, an original document
advocating the sort of native involvement on display today at a first
ministers meeting in Kelowna, B.C., was heavily rewritten by a senior policy adviser
in the Prime Minister's Office.) Mr. Chrétien fought for the white paper
despite the evidence that native leaders hated it. In July, 1969, he met 30
leaders of the Union of Ontario Indians in Toronto and listened to their
complaints about his department.
As he left the two-hour meeting, he exploded.
"They don't like the department and I proposed to phase out the department
and then they want to keep it," he said.
A few days later, he pleaded his case for a radical break from the past in an
article in The Globe and Mail. "Many will criticize but few will defend the
present system," the future prime minister said. "The persistent control of
other peoples' lives is ruinous to them and futile for government."
Assimilation wasn't a new idea.
Indeed, people around Hobbema say that the government's desire for "equality"
is to blame for many of the problems they are facing.
They point to the legacy of residential schools, set up by the federal
government in partnership with religious organizations, which were designed to
assimilate aboriginal children into "white" society.
About 100,000 children attended these schools over the past century or so --
about 100 schools were operating at any one time.
Among them were the parents of the troublemakers around Hobbema who were
yanked from their homes and in many cases suffered physical, mental and even
sexual abuse, before most residential schools were closed in the mid-1970s.
That system stole an important component of family values -- parenting,
according to the elders.
"A lot of people that did come back lost that sense of belonging, sense of
identity, loss of culture, language," Constable Bruno said. "A lot of them feel
that is part of the problems we're dealing with now. Then, when people
understand that, they have a better understanding of what we're dealing with
here."
Yesterday, the federal government offered $2-billion in reparations to former
students and their children. At the same time, Hobbema's 32-member
detachment learned that it would get nine more officers.
Last year, the detachment handled an average of 292 cases an officer. That
compared with an Alberta average of 116 cases an officer and the national
caseload of 66 cases an officer. Last year, the Hobbema RCMP received 899
complaints of assault, up from 490 in 2000. Last year it handled 105 drug charges,
up from 36 in 2000.
About half of the band members who live around Hobbema are under 18 and the
vast majority are under 30, with a lot of time on their hands.
But Hobbema needs more than more cash and cops to cure what ails it,
according to Mel Buffalo, a member of Samson Cree Nation.
Hobbema sits atop oil deposits that bring in millions of dollars. Trust funds
have been set up for the young people on the reserves. At one time, when a
person turned 18, they received a windfall of $100,000, but revenues have
fallen and so have the amounts paid out.
"Now it's $30,000 or $40,000," Mr. Buffalo said. "I've heard people spend
that in three or four days."
Hobbema doesn't need handouts that the government keeps pouring in, Mr.
Buffalo said, shaking his head at the flurry of pre-election announcements of
more funding for aboriginals.
Hobbema, he said, has a huge potential labour force for the province and the
country facing a skills shortage.
"[The government] needs to work with us side by side, hand in hand, to create
economic opportunities that would be long term, that will be sustainable. I
don't see that happening. I don't see people working toward that kind of
stuff," he said.
"You'd think with all the money there wouldn't be a problem," added Mr.
Buffalo, who is also president of the Indian Association of Alberta. "But it just
goes to show you that money doesn't solve the problem."
Harold Cardinal was just 24, and the youngest-ever president of the Indian
Association of Alberta, when the Chrétien white paper was issued. Initially, he
was delighted at the prospect of the demise of the much-hated Indian Affairs
bureaucracy but he also accused Ottawa of trying to "exterminate"
aboriginals by abdicating treaties.
"This is the one thing that Canadians will have to accept and recognize that
we are full citizens but we also possess special rights," he said. By the end
of the year, he had published The Unjust Society, a white-hot criticism of
what he saw as a policy of assimilation. He summed up the government's
approach: "The only good Indian is a non-Indian."
The bestselling book introduced non-native Canadians to life behind what Mr.
Cardinal called "the buckskin curtain." Equally important, however, the
battle cry against the white paper marked the beginning of a new generation of
sophisticated native leadership.
"It was a watershed moment for the aboriginal community," Phil Fontaine,
national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said in an interview. "That was
a real catalyst."
A few years after the white paper appeared, the political and legal landscape
of aboriginal affairs had changed beyond recognition. Court decisions
established the "aboriginal rights" that Ottawa had sought to deny, meetings
between cabinet ministers and aboriginal leaders became commonplace and by 1982,
aboriginal and treaty rights were enshrined in the Charter of Rights.
The white paper is little more than an historical artifact now with its
prescriptions thoroughly outmoded. But some of the assertions from 36 years ago
retain their power.
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