Amid a flurry of finger-pointing, Dalton McGuinty's Liberals have actually done the right thing for once in evacuating the wretched community of Kashetchewan on James Bay. The media has been going full bore to bring the water woes of this Native community to the top of the news.
About bloody time.
That all levels of government, of all political stripes, have fiddled and farted around while Kashetchewan and scores of like communities have been struggling to cope with Third World conditions...for decades!...is nothing less than a national disgrace, not demonstrably different from South African apartheid.
Kashetchewan is far from the only Native community in Canada with undrinkable water. And undrinkable water is far from the only problem affecting our Native communities. While some of them are functioning reasonably well, a very great many are afflicted with rampant unemployment, alcoholism, crime, and most of all, despair. Not all of these reserves are way the hell up in the bush where rich white people don't have to think about them, either. Deer Point is two hours north of Toronto, and it's been under a boil water advisory for six years.
How is it, exactly, that billions of dollars can be spent on a relatively tiny Native population, with little appreciable change in deplorable living conditions? I fear this is yet another case of ill-gotten profit taking precedence over people's lives and livelihoods.
Why is it that in Canada, this most multicultural of societies, we can have a plethora of different cultures living in relative harmony side by side, but the Natives have to be segregated 'for their own good' and subjugated 'for our own good'? Until Canada starts treating its Natives like the human beings they are, we have no right to call ourselves a compassionate, caring country. Nothing less than a complete overhaul of the reservation system is required. Unless and until that happens, the media will continue shining a selected spotlight on individual cases of misery every once in a blue moon, and paying lip service to the extent and severity of the systemic problems.
2 comments:
What do you suggest the government does? The reserves have access to millions of dollars, why is that some are doing so well and others are not. Could it be the local government that they elect, a lot of who line their pockets and their friends and pass none onto the community. Yet the same ones get elected each time election comes around. Take a look at the housing, most of the houses are not that old but they look like slums....obviously no up keep or pride in their homes. Their is nothing stopping people moving off the reserve to towns and cities. There is more to the problem than blaming the government.
I think you're right about the lining of pockets--it happens at every level of government, after all--but I'd like to address the idea of pride.
It's hard to have pride in your home when you have none in your life. These people are living in conditions most of us in the towns and cities can't really comprehend, or at least believe exist in Canada. As for moving off the reserves, sure--there's nothing stopping someone...except, in many cases, a thousand miles of bush. Even in the more accessible reserves, people are bound to the spot by family and way of life.
What should the government do? A thorough audit would be a start. I personally favour total abolishment of the reservation system: it smacks too much of "homelands". Natives should be free to integrate into the larger society the way immigrants have done...or not, as they choose. Regardless, they are entitled to the following (as are we all):
--clean water
--access to a job (by which I do NOT mean we should just give people jobs; I mean that the opportunity should be there for them to find jobs on their own)
--access to education
--access to health care
That's just basic human decency. I do believe that everyone on earth should be guaranteed a minimum standard of living. If that makes me some kind of pinko commie, I don't care. I think it just makes me human.
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