Good leaders place their will to justice over their will to power. They put the interests of their people ahead of their own.
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A monumental, historic betrayal of Canadian Aboriginal children and youth is being perpetrated against them by their own leaders, and by non-Aboriginal leaders, all of whom disgracefully prefer their own selfish personal, power and money interests over their moral and fiduciary leadership duties owed to these increasingly vulnerable, marginalized and now abandoned young Canadians.
Irremediable social and living conditions on reserves are so dangerous and dysfunctional, and reserve young people so endangered and permanently scarred by them, that they are being condemned to a lifelong purposeless, welfare existence, and to being robbed of all hope of having healthy, productive lives.
The causes of this tragic situation have nothing to do with racism, colonialism, residential schools, underfunding of child welfare systems or poverty, the usual reasons trotted out by Aboriginal leaders when they make their incessant demands for more money to ameliorate the tragic situation of Aboriginal children and youth- more money to solve a problem that cannot be solved by money.
The causes of this tragic situation are rooted in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 and the racially divisive way it has been interpreted by governments and the Supreme Court of Canada, which has entrenched an ever-expanding “separate but equal” legal regime oppressing Aboriginals, (but enriching their elites), just as the separate but equal doctrine oppressed Blacks in America for 100 years. The causes are structurally rooted in the very existence of Aboriginal reserves themselves, and in the anomie, hopelessness, civic infantilization and social dysfunction that is characteristic of them.
Aboriginal leaders, endorsed by Prime Minister Trudeau’s disastrous UNDRIP Action Plan, are please to imagine that their reserves and territories are “independent self-governing nations”.
They are nothing of the sort, nor could they ever be. They are mere tiny, totally dependent, tribal villages, bereft of all the basic institutional requirements of nationhood, two of which are institutions to maintain law and order and institutions to protect vulnerable, at-risk children and youth.
For example, on the Pelican Narrows reserve in northern Saskatchewan lawlessness is so rampant that residents are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being robbed, shot, stabbed or sprayed with bear mace. The medical clinic is overwhelmed with the results of it. Drugs, violence and gangs rule the streets at night. The Band Council of this “nation” has asked the RCMP of the “neighbouring” nation of Canada to enforce the Band’s law-and-order bylaws. Reflecting the grave risks to children and youth, Elder Antonia Sewap said: “It’s crazy out there. I’m really worried about the young people’s lives.”
Such lawlessness on Ontario Aboriginal reserves has reached the point where the “Chiefs of Ontario”, all exponents of their respective reserves’ supposedly independent, self-governing nationhood, in a fantastic display of two-faced hypocrisy, because they have no institutions of law and order, have threatened to sue the Ontario government for a mandatory order forcing the OPP to enforce their respective reserves’ law-and-order bylaws.
On the James Smith Cree Nation reserve in Saskatchewan a “citizen” of that “nation”, Myles Sanderson, a man with a history of attempted murders and numerous assaults, murdered 11 people.
At the time of the murders there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest. Knowing of but ignoring this, the entire citizenry of this “nation” allowed him to hole up on the reserve for weeks before the murders. Such is the state of civic passivity and general personal and social dysfunction on this “nation” that nobody called the police on him. His girlfriend- the tragically incompetent mother of his four children- even helped him sell cocaine on the reserve on the weekend of the murders.
The recommendations of the coroner’s inquest – a whitewash consistent with the general Canadian treatment of Aboriginals as civic children who possess no responsibilities- only rights- placed none of the deserved blame on the reserve residents who for weeks had harboured this psychotic, murderous criminal. The reserve leaders, with whom in non-Aboriginal communities the buck usually stops, all got a pass as well.
One reserve resident, Darryl Burns, whose sister was murdered by Sanderson, said that the “systemic issue” of “intergenerational trauma” was not addressed by the coroner’s inquest, and that:
“Looking forward, for my grandchildren and great grandchildren and the ones who haven’t been born yet, the future doesn’t look very good for them.”
No, it doesn’t.
But not because of the bogus concept of “intergenerational trauma”.
The future looks terrible for them because of the systemic reality of the Indian Act and the institutionally bereft reserves, the diseases at the root of all Aboriginal dysfunction and suffering, which no amount of money can ameliorate and which Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal elites, through the UNDRIP Action Plan, preferring their own Canadian taxpayer-funded careers over the pressing, existential needs of their people, shamefully want to expand!
In British Columbia Aboriginal children and youth make up 67.9 % of children and youth in government care, despite only accounting for 12.6% of people under nineteen years of age in the province.
In Manitoba there are about 10,000 children in government care, of which 90% are Aboriginal.
Nationally, Aboriginal children make up more that half the children in government care, despite representing only about 8% of the child and youth population.
In northwestern Ontario the Sioux Lookout First Nation Health Authority reported that “unnatural death” rates in their area from mental illness and addictions are triple the Ontario average. Patricia Keeshickquayesh, speaking for that organization said:
“Throughout my childhood…it was shushed. We couldn’t talk about it, and nobody would listen.”
The late Cree lawyer and author Harold Johnson wrote about this enforced secrecy, the poverty, the violence and the hopelessness characteristic of modern, remote First Nations reserves, all of which represents the true reality of modern Aboriginal culture- the true, innately dysfunctional, demoralizing and ever-dependent “Indigenous difference”. (See below.)
In Peace and Good Order- The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, he provides a harrowing and depressing description of the terrible physical, social and psychological conditions of the typical Western Canadian Aboriginal reserve.
He describes the “clan justice” system typical of many reserves, where clan and family ties and the risk of clan and family retribution influence the reporting of crime, law enforcement and legal outcomes. This was clearly an unacknowledged factor in the James Smith Cree Reserve murders.
He describes the RCMP themselves, developing mental health issues because of what they see happening on the reserves, which they are essentially helpless to control or prevent.
His descriptions of the constant and excessive consumption of alcohol, horrific sexual assaults, (many against children and many related to alcohol), drugs, “extreme violence” and child neglect, (also closely related to alcohol), school dropout rates, sense of hopelessness, PTSD and other severe mental health issues existing on the reserves, are searing and heartbreaking.
He further described these reserves as:
“…impoverished areas…pockets of hopelessness, with their shabby housing, unemployment, addictions, underfunded primary schools, scarcity of healthy food and scarcity of natural space and where predators from neighbouring communities come to buy drugs and sex.”
How can mere money ever solve terrible, entrenched problems like this?
In a previous book written by him, Firewater, Mr. Johnson states that the death of about half of all Treaty Six residents is due to alcohol!
He describes the populations of Treaty Six reserves as “traumatized.”
He writes that:
“When we have a traumatized and inflated police force interacting with a traumatized population, we should not expect good results.” … Justice has nothing to offer such a community.”
Retired Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht, who in his career personally witnessed much of what Harold Johnson wrote about, confirms it in his article, The Untold Story of Indigenous Child Neglect and Alcohol Abuse- The Firewater Complex.
(Parental neglect stemming from alcohol abuse is a reality essential for any proper understanding and discussion of true reserve life and the entire residential schools issue. It’s a tragic reality, as Judge Giesbrecht in empathic and scholarly manner writes, that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission either deliberately or gross-negligently omitted to discuss or consider.
Reader, please patiently work your way through Judge Giesbrecht’s eye-opening and heartbreaking narrative of reserve tragedy caused by binge-drinking, then let it inform your judgment and imagination. Let it filter into, and then temper, all the simplistic notions you have been force-fed by self-serving Aboriginal elites, a cynically indifferent political class and a negligent mainstream media about such truth-deflecting issues as “the Murdered and Missing Women”, (mainly victims of Aboriginal men), the so-called “60’s scoop”, (genuinely at-risk children properly removed from their dangerous and dysfunctional reserve homes by responsible child welfare authorities), and about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s shamefully false, horror comics depiction of residential schools, which in fact were necessary and generally beneficial.)
The general situation described above- rife with grave social harms- is morally wrong and a disastrous and disgraceful human, social and political failure not amenable to improvement by money. The only solution is to bring these places to an end.
One naturally asks: Where are the responsible adults to prevent these reserve harms? Where are the responsible, caring “communities” to intervene and stop them? Where are the so-called wise “elders” and “knowledge keepers”? If they exist, why have they all tolerated these harms decade after decade?
It seems that no one dares to ask these most obvious questions. Certainly no one involved with the James Smith Cree Reserve coroner’s inquest dared to ask them.
The fear is that asking these questions might suggest the seemingly unspeakable thought that these responsible adults and communities don’t really exist– that the infantilizing nature of reserve life might prevent them from existing- that the infantilizing reserve system might itself prevent them from existing, thus leading to the logical conclusion that the reserve system itself is the root cause of the harms, and thus making the vast majority of reserve residents childlike, blameless victims, as children everywhere are excused of legal and moral responsibility for wrongdoings.
(While, because of the inherent and fundamental defects of reserves, Aboriginals should not be strongly blamed for bad parenting, neither should they rewarded, as the profligate, wrongheaded and irresponsible Trudeau government is doing by agreeing to pay about 300,000 undeserving Aboriginals $47.8 billion, supposedly because responsible child welfare workers placed them in foster care instead of “offering support to help Aboriginal families stay together”.
This is just so wrong.
Those families, such as they were, had already been irreparably shattered by dysfunctional reserve life, and the at-risk children in them that were responsibly and necessarily placed in foster care would certainly have been further harmed had they been left with them. The Trudeau government truly betrayed all Canadians by agreeing to settle this meritless claim and pay these undeserving Aboriginals these huge windfall payments.)
But the Aboriginals who achieve elite, leadership status have no such excuses. They’re grownups in every respect. They can and should be held accountable for failing to stop these decades of reserve harms.
Aboriginals at the top levels of Aboriginal politics -the Chiefs, Regional Chiefs, Grand Chiefs, past and present Assembly of First Nations politicians, the high-profile lobbyists and influencers like the overrated Cindy Blackstock (a prime mover of the meritless child welfare lawsuit) – are smart, educated, sophisticated, strong and aggressive. They are well-travelled, well-fed, and thoroughly assimilated, Westernized people, who know how to manipulate and feed off both the Aboriginal and the non-Aboriginal systems. That’s why they get to the top. That’s why they interact so well with non-Aboriginal elites.
Their radical and excessive political and financial demands against the Canadian state and the Canadian taxpayer have no roots in authentic, pre-contact Aboriginal history or culture. They are completely rooted in Western capitalism and Euro-Canadian political ideas and practices.
Their professed “Indigenous difference”, a phrase blessed by the Supreme Court of Canada to justify it depriving 1.8 million Aboriginal Canadians of their former right to the protection of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on their home reserves and territories, is manifested mainly by their clever use of the ceremonial remnants of that now-lost, pre-contact Aboriginal culture for “branding”- marketing symbolism- in their relentless (and highly successful) campaigns for more power and money.
Aboriginal Chiefs rule their tribes, bands and reserves with powerful, often oligarchic and “extractive” hands.
Calvin Helin wrote in Dances with Dependency:
“Many Aboriginal youth feel that they are “conquered subjects” of a systemic and antiquated form of government suited to the benefit of the elites and paid for on the backs of the suffering grassroots indigenous people.”
These elite Aboriginals have betrayed their people.
These elite Aboriginals have endlessly tolerated and profited from the reserve system and from the grave harms that have been perpetrated by it against the vast majority of vulnerable, powerless, marginalized Aboriginal Canadians.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
They profess to be good leaders. But good leaders place their will to justice over their will to power. They put the interests of their people ahead of their own and encourage truthful talk. These powerful but immature leaders put their own interests first and the pressing, desperate, existential needs of their peoples a distant second, and shut down all truthful talk.
This has been classically illustrated by their eager participation in their joint project with the Trudeau government and the Supreme Court of Canada, recently successfully realized, to treat at-risk Aboriginal youth and children as a form of quasi-human property, their fates to be subject to and under the control of the subjective, political whims of their respective “collectives” exercising their now judicially approved “collective rights” over these at-risk children. They are all engaging in turning the management of all Aboriginal child and youth welfare services over to Aboriginal groups, the very people responsible for the perpetuation of this tragic Canadian reserve reality in the first place– a disgraceful foxes-in-charge of-the-henhouses situation.
The fact that these children and youth have now been deprived of their individual Charter rights by the Supreme Court of Canada puts “paid” to their complete betrayal and abandonment by Canada’s Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal elites-puts “paid” to the principle of the “best interests of the child” ever again being the sole North Star consideration in at-risk Aboriginal children and youth welfare situation, (the principle being now diluted and beclouded over with race-talk gobbledygook) – and puts “paid” to the notion of any worthy non-Indigenous couple ever being able to adopt a needy Aboriginal child.
This so tragically harmful to and against the best interests of Aboriginal youth and children!
This is Canada?
Aboriginal elites disgracefully say that people (such as this writer) who publicly disagree with their selfish and decades-failed solutions -such as the UNDRIP Action Plan, which will merely rename the reserve system as the “nation to nation relationship” and then expand it– are racist, ignorant or indifferent to the situation. This is a manifestation of their disturbing and unjustified presumption of legitimacy, disturbing not the least because their selfish solutions to Aboriginal problems then become the issue, while the reality of the problems is forgotten, except by the police, the courts and, like with the James Smith Cree Reserve, the coroners.
We see now that too little of the billions of dollars now paid annually by Canadians to Aboriginal groups flows down to and benefits this vast, dispossessed Aboriginal underclass. The “strong men rule” nature of the tribal/reserve governance system described by Calvin Helin, with its inherent lack of accountability, with its tendency not to nurture all the excellences of which human nature is capable, ensures that, even with all the new consult and accommodate and unjustified reparations monies and entitlements flowing into the possession and control of these elites, this will always remain essentially the case.
Joe Wild, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, as he then was, in an address to the St. Andrews Conference on Aboriginal law held in late 2016, at which the writer was present, in the midst of declaiming on behalf of the federal government that Canadians must “respect UNDRIP” and “respect the bargain that is section 35” on our collective, so-called “journey of deconstructing colonialism”, in a refreshing and unusual moment of candour, said:
“For the past 40 years we have been plowing money into programs. We have no evidence that it’s working.”
The status quo will only persist if we stay on Mr. Wild’s failed, almost 50-year path- if we stay on this illusory, utopian, purely verbal, purely abstract, “nation to nation”, “deconstructing”, “reconciliation” path- something that, if it ever comes to pass, will inevitably just be the harmful status quo dressed up with more wasted taxpayers’ dollars and fancy empty phrases, to merely look like something else.
But along this illusory way there will be a lot of money made, and much more earnest, finger-pointing (at ordinary Canadians and their ancestors) at useless, expense account conferences in places like the downtown Toronto St. Andrews Conference Centre, and much pointless but gainful Canadian taxpayer-financed, “Indian industry” (a phrase used by Calvin Helin) employment and other perks to be had, which, to Aboriginal elites, really seems to be the whole point of it all.
(A telling example of this useless “feeding at the public trough” aspect of the Indian industry was provided by the sanctimonious, Globe & Mail mixed race columnist Tanya Talaga, (most of her ancestry is “white”), author of the book Seven Fallen Feathers.
In her follow up book, All Our Relations, a CBC Lectures roadshow-version of Seven Fallen Feathers, Ms. Talaga recounted her attendance in May 2018 at a “First Nations-led” conference called determiNATION held at one of the most expensive hotels in Ottawa, the Delta. She wrote:
“The conference, organized by the grand chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, Alvin Fiddler, brought together an impressive list of close to three hundred First Nations Elders, leaders, knowledge keepers, youth and lawyers at the Delta to imagine a future without the Indian Act. All the progressives, all the thinkers, were there… The night before the summit began, Alvin (Fiddler) and I went for dinner with Chief Jonathon Solomon at a chain steakhouse restaurant across the street from the hotel. The place was packed with Indigenous people from across the country. We sat down in a small booth and Alvin asked Jonathan how his (national suicide strategy) news conference had gone…” (italics added)
Three hundred people travelling (most of them flying) to Ottawa, (described by Ms. Talaga as being situated on “unceded Algonquin territory”), staying at one of the most expensive hotels there, having high-priced meals, all at the expense of the Canadian taxpayer, discussing over steak and drinks the very real sky-high suicide rate amongst Aboriginal youths and children left back on the reserves. (No steak for them!)
Something is just so wrong with this all too-typical, indulgent, insensitive, public trough picture.)
And, during the pursuit of so-called “reconciliation”, which is turning out to be merely the faux rationale and main marketing motivator for a cynical power and money grab, while well-fed and well-watered elites like Mr. Wild, Chiefs Fiddler and Jonathon and their propagandist Ms. Talaga continue to jaw and morally preen at meetings, conferences and steak restaurants, and intoxicate themselves with their empty words and phrases- which they seem to take for real things– more and more tragic, despairing and dysfunctional events continue to happen back on the reserves -(Isn’t life really about events, and not just words and phrases?)– where another lost, Aboriginal young person, strangely unaware of Chief Jonathan’s national suicide strategy as announced at the Five Star Delta Hotel in Ottawa, Ontario, (on “unceded Algonquin territory”), will climb up onto a chair, put a tied and suspended rope around her neck and step off.
Everywhere, during and despite all these suicides and these other, endless reserve-based, Pelican Narrows-type horrors, there is emanating from our comfortable, sanctimonious, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal elites only a sickening, demoralizing, kick-the-ball-endlessly-down-the-road, detachment. The sense from them is that these desperate young, Aboriginal Canadians can wait – that no justice will be offered to them in anything like the near future. Rather, only when the UNDRIP New Jerusalem happens, their posterity will receive justice from the posterity of today’s mainly urban, leisurely-detached, Aboriginal elites.
Aboriginal elites act like no present, finite sacrifices on the part of their Aboriginal children and youth -no reserve harms- are too great to be endured in order to reap some big but indefinitely remote-in-time payoff. But, as the Nobel laureate Octavio Paz wrote, an unjust situation with an infinitely remote end is just a perpetual prison of the present.
Aboriginal children and youth need to be released from their reserve perpetual prisons now.
In Long Walk to Freedom Nelson Mandela wrote of the debilitating effects of apartheid laws:
“A person’s life is circumscribed by racist laws and regulations that cripple his growth, drain his potential and stunt his life.”
These debilitating effects of Canada’s version of quasi-apartheid laws will only persist and worsen for our Aboriginal children and youth so long as the reserve system – in any form – persists.
For Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal elites to continue to support the status quo, however it is renamed and dressed up, is to recklessly and indifferently support more of this disgraceful, immoral, institutionalized failure and harm. They’re like persons driving by endless car crashes involving Aboriginals, seeing them suffering on the side of the road and refusing to stop and help, but instead, throwing band aids out the window and driving on by.
We need to stop allowing efforts to remedy this tragic, existential Canadian situation to be restricted to top-down measures conjured up at expensive hotels by self-serving Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal elites and implemented only through those elites. Gandhi reminds us to:
“…recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore to him a control over his own life and destiny…?”
So far, Canada is giving a big “no” to Gandhi’s questions.
To continue on as we are going is simply wrong. It’s to stay fundamentally detached. It’s to act dishonourably towards Aboriginals. It’s to continue with a course of conduct that’s offensive to our core values and destructive to the general welfare and ultimate best interests of all our citizens, particularly our Aboriginal citizens.
To continue with the status quo-to attempt to enhance it and further entrench it – is to live a national lie – to let grow a bigger stain on Canada’s honour.
For the long-term health of our country and our citizenry, all Canadians need to work to expunge the stain. We need to expose and expunge the living lie. We all need to stop being drive-by band aid throwers.
To continue in this manner is to live in a state of permanent psychic unease, where eventually not just the mind but the body sickens. The Aboriginal part of the Canadian body politic is already sick and getting sicker – with nothing happening that can reasonably be said to be any kind of cure.
Countries, like individuals, to live right and well, need to consciously and expressly strive to live up to their higher values, such as equality under the law regardless of race, no matter how difficult that challenge seems to be.
Ordinary Canadians are feeling weary and disconnected about this situation.
We’re weary of reading about the suicide epidemics and all the poor, criminally neglected citizens of the Pelican Narrows and James Smith Cree reserves of Canada and hearing our Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal elites solely and wrongly blame ordinary Canadians and our “colonialist-imperialist” ancestors for the grave harms now happening on those reserves.
We’re weary of being held hostages to guilt.
We’re weary of our Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal elites continuing to pretend that the reserve system itself is not the real cause of these problems and that any public discussion of that fact is forbidden.
We’re weary of these elites, wielding the destructive power of ideological abstractions over human lives, continually sacrificing present generations of Aboriginal children and youth for the sake of a utopian future- the “nation to nation sovereignty” chimera- that is nothing but glorified, utopian nonsense and that will never come!
Ordinary Canadians are weary of the status quo being afforded moral recognition by our elites.
We’re weary of being marginalized and made to feel invisible, as our governments, higher courts, media and Aboriginal elites push us further away from our humanist vision of Canada as a unified country governed by one set of laws for all.
The time is fitted for the duty of starting on the path of ending the reserves and integrating Aboriginal citizens into the Canadian mainstream. It’s the only moral and workable solution. By embarking on this noble path, we will also start to end all this nationally enervating weariness.
Peter Best
Sudbury, Ontario, in ceded, former Anishinaabe territory. (Maybe -can’t be sure anymore.)
July 13, 2024
