Commentary
The Liberal government’s
Action Plan for self-determination, based on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), is a death sentence for burgeoning next generations of the marginalized indigenous.
Why, I ask, do Canadians espouse indigenous tribalism? Why do we withhold the respect for the individual that enabled the Enlightenment? Why do we repudiate the principle applicable for everyone else, that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian?
Orthodoxy espouses the falsehood that self-government will deliver the indigenous underclass from misery. They’re the people who live in violence-wracked remote communities having no reason to exist—what half a century ago
Farley Mowat called unguarded concentration camps—and in urban slums. Under-educated, unskilled, and many of them addicted and multigenerational welfare recipients, they live in squalor when they even have housing. One measure of this societal dysfunction is that there are more
indigenous prison inmates, about 15,000, than at peak enrolment in residential schools.
Introduced on June 20, the Action Plan aims to enable indigenous businesses. So how do you set up a widget factory in Kashechewan and expect it to compete with China? How can self-determination work without first educating and training the managers and professionals to run the show? Other than endless delivery of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, there’s no vestige of a business plan.
Almost the only template popularly cited for indigenous business success is the
Osoyoos Indian Band in B.C. While there’s no question it’s gone from destitution to significant prosperity, examination of their
financial statement calls even this model into question. The band receives millions of dollars in taxpayers’ money, some of which municipalities would get anyway. Since individuals and businesses on a reserve don’t pay taxes, I wonder whether Osoyoos adds value to the Canadian economy.
Another issue needing objective assessment is how individuals and families are actually faring. And what do children and youth say they want and need? Indigenous leaders and politicians never ask them.
Evidently, the band doesn’t enable doctors and dentists, accountants and agronomists, or enough skilled artisans to serve its own people. If they did, would they stay under the tribal umbrella? As the saying goes, “How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?” I think of two world-renowned former residential school attendees. They’re indigenous architect Douglas Cardinal and Inuit thoracic surgeon Noah Carpenter. Born on the trapline, Dr. Carpenter graduated from high school in Inuvik in 1963, before progressive education took hold.
Here now is the foundational problem with the Action Plan. Based on separation by ethnicity and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s
recommendations, it’s a manifesto for restoring the traditional tribal structure and for replicating apartheid as it was in South Africa.
Here’s the key demand: “We call upon the federal, provincial, and territorial and municipal governments to fully adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the framework for reconciliation.”
In turn,
UNDRIP says this: “Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”
But here’s the clincher. Hendrik Verwoerd, architect of apartheid in South Africa, set out his mission statement as follows in a
1958 speech:
“The policy of separate development is the basis of the happiness, security and stability which are maintained by means of a homeland, a language and a government peculiar to each people.”
The irony is that on June 18, 1990, former prime minister Brian Mulroney welcomed
Nelson Mandela in the House of Commons and said, “The very notion of South Africa’s apartheid was anathema to me.” Mr. Mulroney later
wrote in his memoirs: “I viewed apartheid with the same degree of disgust that I attached to the Nazis—the authors of the most odious offence in modern history.”
By definition, self-determination devolves accountability. But nepotism and the excessive amounts some leaders pay themselves are common knowledge. Self-determination means make-work jobs for leaders and coupon-clipping donated equity-stake investments.
Chief Ron Giesbrecht in B.C. paid himself almost a million dollars in a single year, tax-free of course. And in his book “
Bad Law,” retired Alberta judge John Reilly wrote of the Stoney tribes: “The salaries for the chiefs, councillors and administration staff total millions of dollars, but the schools are under-funded and the Stoney Medicine Lodge, which used to be a transitional centre for alcohol abuse, has been closed since 1996.” The book “
Flowers on My Grave” by Ruth Teichroeb tells how ruling cliques cover up horrendous criminality. Self-determination is mutually exclusive with accountability—let alone compassion or business acumen.
Do-gooders say remediation takes time. With the gap for the marginalized widening exponentially, that’s nonsense. There are templates, notably in Asia, where Third World peoples, enabled by effective education, have moved into the First World in a single generation—a subject for its own essay.
How can Canadians have it on their conscience to withhold equality of opportunity in the high-tech economy? How dare Canadians condemn next generations of the marginalized, based on race, to neo-communist tribal exploitation.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
