February 18, 2001

Doing Natives no favours
By PETER WORTHINGTON — Sun Media

One doesn't need to be an "expert" on Indians to know something is terribly amiss with Canada's policies regarding Native peoples.

And one doesn't have to be an "expert" (historically they're wrong as often as right) to know the more money we spend on "First Nations" the worse off they are — and the more affluent (corrupt?) some of their leaders, or "chiefs," become.

Part of the problem is that sensible, obvious, solutions are interpreted as racist or bigoted, and so are often left unsaid, even though most Canadians feel neither animosity nor racism toward Indians.

We even take perverse pride that our Indians weren't treated as badly as they were in the U.S. We had no "Indian wars," no shameful "Trail of Tears" as endured by the "Five Civilized Tribes" (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole) who were forcibly relocated to the wastelands of Oklahoma in the 1830s, no hounding as was done to the Sioux and other plains Indians; no vendettas as waged against the Apache and Comanche.

If Canada's past policies were akin to benign neglect, today's policies could be called malignant overindulgence. And overindulgence can be more damaging than deprivation.

Doug Fisher is one who doesn't turn a blind eye to the problem, and has noted that since the early 1960s federal spending on Native people has risen from $60 million a year to over $6 billion, plus an added $1.5 billion by provinces. This for roughly 700,000 "registered" Indians on 625 reserves.

The number of Indians eligible for federal largesse has tripled since the 1960s — the lure of dollars bringing many back to the reserves. The result? Record poverty, drug abuse, crime, unemployment, alcoholism and neglect. (A 1996 federal study showed 65% of reserve homes lack bathroom facilities.)

The proposed cure? Throw more money at the problem and refuse to face the reality that unrestricted indulgence robs a people of self-respect, initiative, self-reliance, independence.

Tom Flanagan is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary who writes provocatively for newspapers and influences the Canadian Alliance. His new book, First Nations? Second Thoughts, is a realistic examination of the "prevailing orthodoxy" towards Indians that "enriches a small elite with power and wealth, and confines the rest to poverty."

Our Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional right of Native peoples to self-government and "nation" status in perpetuity. Flanagan challenges the definition of "nation" and warns that unless there's public debate, Canada will be "redefined as a multinational state embracing an archipelago of aboriginal nations that own a third of Canada's land mass, are immune from federal and provincial taxation, are supported by transfer payments from citizens who do pay taxes ... and engage in 'nation to nation' diplomacy with whatever is left of Canada."

This is our future unless Canadians wake up. Flanagan is not anti-Indian. Just the opposite, in the long-term, because right now Indians are ill-served by the elites. Even the emerging Native states in the north, akin to provinces, cannot support themselves and are financed almost solely by Ottawa.

Indians deserve to be treated as other citizens — with the same rights and responsibilities. Put crudely, Flanagan's book seems to advocate that there should be no representation without taxation, reversing the rallying cry of the American Revolution of no taxation without representation.

Treaties signed two centuries ago have little relevance to today, despite the Supreme Court. They were designed for that times, not ours. To presume that Indians can preserve, or return, to a life they once lived is just silly. Few Indians today live, or could live, as their ancestors did. Even the term "First Nations" is rhetoric verging on gibberish. No people have a right to anything simply and only because they were somewhere first. Especially if they can't defend or protect their land.

Indians are make-work in Canada — a cottage industry for bureaucrats and chiefs. Someday, the Department of Indian Affairs will have to be disbanded, the money reinvested among Indian communities to be run as other non-Indian communities. The "nation" idea is misleading and deceptive.

Historically, Indians were in bands, or tribes, and were not a unified "nation," with the possible exception of the Iroquois. And they couldn't wait to turn on each other.

The eventual "solution" is for Indians to become full Canadian citizens with all the opportunities and responsibilities of citizenship. Today's policies exemplify what Flanagan calls the law on unintended consequences: "While trying to help an entire group, we end up helping only a fraction — the least needy members of the group — while actually harming the chances of the majority."