Endless billions haven't eased Natives'woes

Endless billions haven't eased Natives'woes
By Ted Byfield

Canada has just finished celebrating what might be called Native Week.

For three consecutive days in the week just ended, Native affairs were in the news, and all of it was bad.

For instance, one chapter in a federal report called How Ottawa Spends was devoted to Natives.

It disclosed:

# That despite decades of expanded social and economic assistance programs, Natives are as likely as ever to live in substandard housing, suffer from chronic diseases, and remain gravely under-educated.

# That while Natives make up only 3% of the national population, they account for 20% of the prison population and this percentage constantly rises.

# That Natives are three times more likely to suffer from spousal abuse, six times more likely to get tuberculosis, and up to eight times more likely to commit suicide,

Meanwhile, the Canadian Taxpayers Association said that the funding for Native programs has doubled in 12 years from $3.3 billion to $6.6 billion.

How this money is spent varies from one band to the next.

It's particularly high in a band such as the Samson near Edmonton, where 80% of the residents are on welfare, and 85% are unemployed.

This in the province with the hottest economy in the country.

Of course, what happens to this money, says Auditor General Sheila Fraser, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs doesn't actually know.

It simply turns the money over to the chiefs and band councils, and what they do with it is up to them.

It is not subject to departmental audit and she isn't allowed to inquire into it either.

And in a further celebration of Native Week, Ottawa announced that an extra $4 billion is being paid out in compensation claims for Natives abused in Indian schools, mostly back in the '60s.

Some $800 million of this was for "victims of serious physical, sexual or psychological abuse."

Sexual abuse no doubt occurred -- in three cases out of every 100, I believe.

But what is "physical abuse?"

That was spanking, no doubt, in which case almost the entire population of Canada was "physically abused" back in those dreadful days of oppression.

Where's our compensation package?

And what is "psychological abuse?"

Some teacher bawled them out maybe? That should be worth $10,000 or $20,000.

The other four-fifths -- $3.2 billion -- was for others forms of "abuse," such as teaching them English instead of Native languages, for instance, depriving them of Native folklore, failing to preserve the oral tradition of "the elders." (The elders, as far as I could ever figure, were a group of University of Lethbridge anthropologists).

Anyway, all this sort of "abuse" plainly required compensation.

We also discovered last week that one Saskatchewan resident in seven is now Native, and by 2050 one person in four will be Native.

The total population of the province has scarcely changed in 40 years, but the Native proportion is steadily rising.

So the wise guy who once suggested "they should give Saskatchewan back to the Natives" seems to be getting his way.

All of which brings to mind what was known as "the notorious white paper" of the 1960s, in which the government formally proposed dismantling the reserve system and making the aim of federal Native policy assimilation into the white community.

But this was the era a New Canada was coming into being.

The word "multiculturalism" was likewise on the way in, and along with it a new appreciation of Native culture. The white paper was denounced and withdrawn, and instead we resolved to retain the reserve system, and "adequately" fund it.

So now, four decades later, how is it doing?

Take a look. It's a first class disaster whose chief victims are the Natives themselves.

And the reason is an indisputable and elementary fact of human nature.

If you persuade people they are deserving of help simply because of who they are and where they were born, you will destroy them.

One of the facts that emerged last week in a letter to the editor was: If you take a hard-working diligent Native who lives in the city, and send him to live on a reserve, in six months he'll have likely fallen into lethargy and substance abuse.

I think we should take another look at that "white paper."