So many fires, so little water

Type "First Nation in crisis" into Google and Attawapiskat is just one of the many hits you'll get.

Oka, Ipperwash, and Pikangikum might pop up, since there have been plenty of native "crises" to go around over the years. There's also Hobbema, Kashechewan, Davis Inlet, and Wasagamack, to name a few more.

And those are just the ones you hear about in the media.

I hesitate to write about Attawapiskat because I've been writing about aboriginal issues for more than a decade and have seen so many communities in crisis that it's frustrating and depressing. I've seen this too many times.

What's shocking is how many people were surprised at the grim conditions in Attawapiskat. Doesn't everyone know how rough things are on some reserves?

I paid a visit to Garden Hill a few years ago and noticed there wasn't even running water in the school. I doubt things have changed much since then.

But this isn't about Garden Hill or Attawapiskat, but why some First Nations are communities in crisis in the first place.

Imagine Indian Affairs is a badly equipped fireman. He fumbles around the country with a leaking bucket of water, trying to put out little fires before they get too bad.

With more than 600 reserves there are a lot of small fires burning across the country. Many have been burning for years, or even decades. Sooner or later, one flares into an inferno like Attawapiskat.

Indian Affairs isn't the bad guy, just the fireman in charge of putting out the fires. INAC is just a political arm doing what it's told to do.

The problem is the reserve system was never meant to work. The treaties signed in good faith by the Indians were never meant to be honoured fully by representatives of the Crown.

Indian people were put on remote, mostly inferior land to die off or be assimilated into a new way of life. Children were placed in residential schools to be assimilated by force. This was the plan to get rid of the Indian and Indian rights.

Except the assimilation plan didn't work.

Despite the poverty, poor education and generations of dysfunction and learned helplessness, many of our people have survived. Some have even thrived.

Today we have a federal government that still has obligations to First Nations people, yet has never owned up to those obligations in the first place.

The Indian Affairs fireman was never given the tools to put out all the fires, just enough to keep them from getting big enough that others could see them.

Everyone takes notice when the media point their cameras at communities in distress, making it hard for Canadians to ignore. It's why I wanted to be a journalist so many years ago, but now know it won't do much to change anything.

The problem is too big. Embers can smoulder underground -- even in cities -- and then flare to strike the most vulnerable.

We've been dispersing a lot of money to First Nation communities to keep them afloat, but never rise out of the situation of poverty, poor health and education. How much of that money gets eaten up by bureaucracy, substandard housing, cheap fixes, legal costs, meetings, audits, salaries, studies, consultants and reports?

We need to do more. We need to understand what's going on.

The fact that this column will attract ignorant comments and emails is proof Canadians need to educate themselves.

Privatizing land isn't the answer. It's a backdoor tactic that takes away aboriginal rights before they're fully recognized. A people cannot be a nation without land. And how can people hold mortgages if there are no jobs?

First Nations people should get a fair share of the resources of the land so that they can learn to manage themselves properly, create their own wealth and become the strong, self-sufficient communities they once were.

Colleen Simard is a Winnipeg writer.

colleen.simard@gmail.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 10, 2011 J1