Posted on 10/30/2005 8:19:46 AM PST by Heartofsong83
Bad water, bad leadership
Once again Canadians have been left slack-jawed over the living conditions on a Native reserve.
This time around the fuss is over a community called Kashechawan on the shores of James Bay.
From the safety and comfort of our own homes we stare in disbelief at the newspaper pictures and television images of a community where even the most basic necessities of life can't be taken for granted.
Kashechawan, where the water that flows from the taps is so filthy and contaminated it's not fit for bathing, let alone drinking. Where residents, many of whom are on welfare, say they often spend $300 to $400 for about five days worth of groceries.
Kashechawan, a community most of us hadn't heard of until a few days ago, despite the fact the conditions described above have existed for two years or more.
Unfortunately the story coming out of Kashechawan is hardly unique.
A couple of years earlier the focus was on Pikangikum, a remote Ojibway community 250 km north of Dryden, where few of the 2,000 residents have running water.
Most have only outhouses as toilets, a terrible hardship for the elderly and young children in a far northern community where the temperature can dip to -30C. Most homes have no sewers, there's no road out, and the community has a shocking suicide rate among its young people.
In Pikangikum, in fact, the only buildings with indoor toilets are government agencies -- the school, the police and nursing stations.
Still etched into our memories is the horrible situation in Davis Inlet, where an entire community was picked up and moved in an attempt to overcome an epidemic of alcoholism and alcohol abuse.
What do the situations described above have in common?
Just that the government twiddled its thumbs -- as it is doing in its relations with dozens of other reserves -- until conditions became so desperate they burst onto the political and media agendas.
Nothing short of a crisis, it seems, can spur the Department of Indian Affairs into action. And even then the government seems inclined to do only what is necessary to end the controversy instead of finding long-term solutions.
They still ignore the fact that the reserve system isn't working. That sending billions of dollars to band councils is not improving living conditions on the reserves. That under the Indian Act, most families are denied the simple right to own their homes.
Elected officials and bureaucrats in Ottawa make decisions about what is best for the reserves, pat themselves on the back and go home to their modern houses with cozy rooms, heat and hydro and plenty of clean running water.
In a country of plenty we should be embarrassed and ashamed of the way we have marginalized our Native population. And nowhere should the blame hang more heavily than around the necks of Prime Minister Paul Martin and Indian Affairs Minister Andy Scott. Theirs is a legacy that must be remembered at election time.
And another thing ...
Canadians won't take much comfort from the latest earnings reports from the oil patch. Choose your company ... everyone from Suncor to PetroCanada, Esso and Shell was rolling in money during the third quarter.
That's the same period during which we were getting hosed for gas and being promised record high oil prices this winter.
We can't wait to hear how they'll explain this one away.
These are Canadian citizens in third-world living conditions. Yet Mr. Dithers ignores them, fearing more people won't vote Liberal as a result???
The most appalling poverty in North America is found not in American ghettos but in Canadian Native Reserves.
Yes it is. It makes me ashamed to be living in Canada, especially seeing such everyday...and there is little they can do because of the federal interference...
It was Dalton McGuinty, Liberal Premier of Ontario, who went out of his way to order the evacuation of the reserve when these evil criminals in the federal Liberal cabinet would not...(provinces technically have no jurisdiction over native reserves)
All the while the UN babbles about human right violations in New Orleans.
Wait. Canada is so much better than the US. Just ask their transgendered politicians who have made it their own personal cesspool of anti-morality, they'll tell you how much we stink here in the US. How much they get to look down their anti-gun rights noses and how much they will judge us with their bad immigration values and poor health care system. Just ask em.
/Sarcasm off.
As long as the denizens of the Toronto-Montreal Axis can sneer at and disparage Americans, nobody cares what goes on out in the hinterland. That's how the Liberistas stay in power.
Even if the Conservatives and NDP gain some extra seats from the Liberal leftovers up north...
Somewhere, in a coffe shop with $6 lattes, members of the Left are plotting to blame this on American racism/colonialism/capitalism/Reagan/etc.
"we stare in disbelief at the newspaper pictures and television images of a community"
On the other hand, the CBC audience, for one, had no trouble believing a faded "Whites Only" sign posted over the alley entrance to a building in Lubbock, Texas.
They were not told that the sign had been deliberately preserved by the black community as a reminder of past racism, or that the building was owned by the same civil rights lawyer who had brought the MSM Lubbock to report on a case he was pursuing.
A similar phenoma takes place here on Reservations in the United States:
http://www.neoperspectives.com/NativeAmericans.htm
Government causes these conditions with welfare and parental controls.
It seems a lot worse here though. They had E.Coli in their water system for 2 months and no one was contacted, despite the pleas of local MP's and MPP's...the MSM was also silent, thinking (in their minds) that why should we Toronto folks cover a sickening story in far northern Ontario, especially when it slams the "beloved" Liberals???
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