419 replies to this topic

[rjag]

https://vancouversun...yu-clan-meeting

 

 

People of Canada,

I don’t speak for all Witsuwit’en, because our population, like any group, has different opinions with pipelines and other projects. I have permission from my clan to release this letter following the clan meeting held on February 23, 2020. I have reviewed this letter with my father clan, and listened to their words.

 

[Nparker]

This.

...I see our laws being changed or cast aside during this event in our territory, mostly to justify the actions of some of our house chiefs, who act to make the outside environmental activists that have come into our territory happy. It seems they have been manipulated to fight their fight...

https://vancouversun...yu-clan-meeting

 

[Sparky]

^^ WOW. It would appear that First Nation laws are not very democratic.

[Nparker]

...It would appear that First Nation laws are not very democratic.

Which aligns well with the protesters who have disdain for most things democratic.

[Bernard]

You can not generalize about First Nations. There are people in all societies that disagree with democracy.

I am very glad to see this letter being published. It speaks the truth of the situation and only a Wet'suwet'en member can tell this story. I like how he was very diplomatic and pulled his punches. He worked hard not to attack the Wetsuweten protestors with all he could have.

[spanky123]

You can not generalize about First Nations. 

 

Very true. For the past 30 years it has been useful for bands across the country to work together on political files and reconciliation demands even though individually they had little in common from any historical or cultural perspective.

 

What inevitably happens with any disadvantaged group that finally starts to gain acceptance is that internal factions appear who believe the struggle is more important than the cause. They take control of the narrative while the former leaders are afraid to speak up. 

 

A large majority of FN bands are well run, work with local and regional Governments, and have found economic opportunities for their members. Unfortunately 100% of FN bands are starting to feel public backlash and intolerance and risk the gains of the last 30 years being wiped out due to the actions of a very few people who they had probably never even heard of until 6 months ago. 

[Victoria Watcher]

A large majority of FN bands are well run, work with local and regional Governments, and have found economic opportunities for their members. 

 

absolutely incorrect.  please provide stats to prove me otherwise.

 

most - "a large majority" - of reserves have the general population living in squalor.

 

 

 

 

 

,

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 29 February 2020 - 04:06 PM.

[Awaiting Juno]

absolutely incorrect.  please provide stats to prove me otherwise.

 

most - "a large majority" - of reserves have the general population living in squalor.

 

 

 

 

 

,

I believe first nations are entitled to hold their leadership accountable and to transparency on financial matters.  I think when leaders embezzle from their members, those members should be enabled to hold them to account via our legal system.  I also think there is tremendous opportunity to build capacity (leadership and business capacity) among first nations.  

[LJ]

Which aligns well with the protesters who have disdain for most things democratic.

[Nparker]

Give the duo in the above cartoon a couple of cell phones - not the most environmentally friendly object ever produced - and it's right up-to-date.

[Victoria Watcher]

Wet'suwet'en chiefs, ministers reach proposed agreement in pipeline dispute

 

A Wet'suwet'en hereditary chief and senior government ministers say they have reached a proposed arrangement in discussing a pipeline dispute that has prompted solidarity protests across Canada in recent weeks. Federal Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett and British Columbia Indigenous Relations Minister Scott Fraser would not give details on the proposed agreement, saying it first has to be reviewed by the Wet'suwet'en people.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 01 March 2020 - 10:04 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

whatever this is it probably won't stop all the clowns protesting at the legislature. 

 

if we are lucky it'll just be taxpayer dollars to support some kind of crazy environmental monitoring regime handed over to the hereditary chiefs.  a fund for them to dip right into.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 01 March 2020 - 10:18 AM.

[Nparker]

 

it probably won't stop all the clowns protesting at the legislature

Mostly because the power brokers behind legislature protests are just using the Wet'suwet'en situation/people for their own purpose. These folks would have latched onto anything that furthered their anarchic cause.

[Victoria Watcher]

whatever this is it probably won't stop all the clowns protesting at the legislature. 

 

A group Indigenous youth camping camped outside the legislature say they’ll wait to see how the Wet’suwet’en people respond to a tentative agreement in the Coastal GasLink pipeline dispute before making any moves.

“We know that agreements from the government just traditionally haven’t been upheld. If this agreement goes through, it needs to be done in the proper way,” said Shay Lynn Sampson, who is Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan.

Details of the proposed agreement will not be publicly released until members of the Wet’suwet’en Nation can review it, but Coastal GasLink retains its permit for construction of a 670-kilometre natural gas pipeline and plans to resume construction Monday.

Sampson called it “disappointing” that the tentative agreement will allow the natural gas pipeline project to continue.

“We’ll see what the proposed agreement is and if that goes through,” she said.

A couple of hours after the announcement, the scene at the legislature carried on as it has for the past week. About 100 people enjoyed brunch in the sunshine while musicians strummed by the fountain. Others sat in camping chairs gathered around a fire, while a core group remained at the top of the legislature steps in front of the building’s ceremonial entrance.

 

https://www.timescol...t-en-1.24087971

[Bernard]

As is stands the Wet'suwet'en are majority in favour of the pipeline, I have my sources with numbers and it is not close.   

 

As to government not keeping to agreements, this may have been true a couple of generations ago but in the last 30 years I can not think of examples where government has not done their part of the agreement.   The only conflict I can think of are times when there is a disagreement between the two sides about how interpret part of an agreement, but then that is the case all the time in contract law.  I have been part of those sort of disagreements when how the First Nation and the government interpreted the words in the agreement, all agreements and contracts are imperfect.

 

As to being governed well or not and corruption, there is no easy way to prove this one way or another.   I can offer from my knowledge my experience and observations here in BC.  

 

1) Living in squalor:   this is very complex due to the way the federal government has created the laws for reserve lands, the financial micromanaging of bands, and the location of a lot of reserves.   The perverse nature of federal laws governing reserve lands means that people who want to own their own home can only get a mortgage for mobile home meaning on a lot of reserves the people doing the best are living in mobile homes.   The federal government requires a very bureaucratic bang governance structure that is not all suited to communities with under 1,000 residents.   The federal government also requires bands to administer a lot of local social services for them on reserve but provides no funding to do this.   As an example, it is the bands that have to make the monthly social assistance payments through their own accounts.   Money coming from the federal government is all slotted for very specific things and if it is used for something that is needed but not quite what the funding program states the band is breach of the agreement.   

 

This happens because the federal government will not let bands make decisions on how they want to use their money and expect all bands to fit into one specific model.  Basically 90% of bands are square pegs trying to fit not into a round home but a sphere.   The obtuse and byzantine requirements together with extreme micro-management (an example, bands are expected to provide the federal government with a monthly census of all band members and all the housing on reserve which requires 1/4 of a fulltime job to deal with for the smallest of bands).  Bands are expected to provide things like fire service on reserve but get close to no funding for it and they do not have the power to raise money to pay for the shortfall.   A band I worked for did get royalties from a small mine on reserve.   This money was restricted by the federal government for how it could be used and the band had ask to use it and using for day to day operations of their government was not approved use.   

 

The location of the reserves is also a problem.   It is not like BC the reserves were set up and then the land was settled, instead the reserves were set up after the best lands were no longer available.   Also, the way reserves were allocated in BC did not allow for the First Nations people to have any decision making power over where they were located.   The reserves in BC were set up to be tiny and unsustainable plots of land that are disconnected from each other.   It means the costs in a lot of locations are much higher to do anything than otherwise either due to being remote or broken up enough that multiple things like water systems have to be built for small numbers of residents of reserve lands.

 

So why not move off of the reserve lands?  A lot of people do to better their lives.  This means that in a lot of the more remote communities the people that remain are not the brightest and best of the First Nation and can often barely look after themselves let alone the house they live in.   Moving off reserve means that more or less any benefits that a First Nations person can get are no longer available to them.  Bands that provide services to people living off the reserve are considered by the feds to be misspending money and if they find out they take that amount of money away from the band.  Off of reserve lands the only things BC First Nations people have is a right to hunt and fish in their traditional territory.

 

2) Good or bad governance: The very way the band structure works makes it very hard to govern quickly or effectively.   Band governments have less power than a municipality but are expected to take on roles the province and feds so.  The bureaucratic structure requires more staff and in many communities there are not enough qualified people to do the work and it is also hard to attract people from the outside to move there.  A friend worked from 2012-2016 in a coastal community with only 50 local residents and access in and out was only via boat or floatplane.  There were no commercial services available.   Getting in and out of the community cost her a lot of money each time she wanted to do it.  Lack of local capacity is a huge problem.

 

The nature of how INAC treats bands creates a distrustful and adversarial relationship and that does nothing for the development of open and transparent band governance and in fact entrenches the idea of who to screw the feds as a mindset. 

 

3) Corruption:   Yes, there is corruption but it is not nearly as pervasive as people think given the media portrayal.  The nature of the corruption is also not what most people think.    First, what can be called corruption is bands using money for what they need and not what the federal government says they could need.  I could go on with no end of examples of this, but this post is already too long so I will not. 

 

Second, the way bands are treated by the federal government and the fact that the money they get is not from their own sources, a lot of bands deliberately try to squeeze the federal government for every dime they can get.  High Chief and Council salaries come from this.   Because the federal government will cover very generously cover travel costs for the council and staff there is a lot more travel than is needed because it can be used as a perk of the position.  This is not a healthy situation and leads to negative governance patterns. 

 

Here in BC a lot bands now have significant own source revenues through the agreements they have signed with the provincial government.   This money is completely outside of the control of the federal government, if the band wants to, they can just split it between themselves.  Having money that is only their own money means  band membership are starting watch this money like hawks.   These own source revenues are in many cases bigger than the financial value of any Treaty settlement.

 

Third, a lot bands have very small populations meaning it is easily happen that one faction can hold power for decades.   It also means there is not the local capacity for oversight of the actions of the staff and everyone get comfortable with an insular and not great status quo.

 

Is there out and out corruption, as in actually stealing or doing things that illegal?  Yes, but much less common than I think most people expect given the news.  Given the constant oversight by the federal government it is actually hard to really steal.  What happens most of the time is small scale graft.

 

 

This is only the tiniest view of the complexity of this issue.   I was thinking about ending this with my estimate of how well bands are governed in BC but I think assigning numbers is much too simplistic so I will not do it.   I will say that there is a core of bands that are very well governed, a large set that generally well governed and a like number of bands that are trying the best given their circumstances and finally there are bands that are really badly governed.   I know who I would put in that last category because there was no way I would do any work for them and that list was a very clear minority.

Edited by Bernard, 02 March 2020 - 10:22 AM.

[Mike K.]

Thanks, Bernard, that was very informative.

[Victoria Watcher]

^ ^ you could apply all of what bernard says to sub-saharan africa (less significant funding like our reserves get) and it would apply about the same and explain africa's problems.

[Bernard]

^ ^ you could apply all of what bernard says to sub-saharan africa (less significant funding like our reserves get) and it would apply about the same and explain africa's problems.

Actually you can not.  Sub Saharan countries are not a single ethnic group (other than Somalia) whereas bands are.   Bands were created to be democratic whereas sub Saharan countries were not.  Bands have in most cases no direct control over any land, even the reserves, sub Saharan countries do control all of their lands.   Bands have not had the power control their financial destiny, sub Saharan countries have total control.  I could go on.

[Victoria Watcher]

well i wasn't even considering race or ethnicity.

 

most average africans have little or no land rights either.    

 

corruption is rampant.

 

and of course governments are not even close to democratic there you are right.

 

this map tells you a lot about the problems in the world.

 

 

 

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 02 March 2020 - 10:36 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Title to come

  Property rights are still wretchedly insecure in Africa

 

https://www.economis...6/title-to-come

 

COSMAS MURUNGA was always proud to show off his mud-walled home, set in a clearing on the wooded slopes of Mount Elgon; to explain how his people coexisted with, and cared for, the forest and its wildlife on the border with Uganda. But that home is no more, burnt to the ground by around 50 Kenya Forest Service (KFS) rangers and police, along with 200 other dwellings, on June 20th and 21st. “We lost everything,” he says.

 

Evictions are almost routine for the Ogiek, a group of around 80,000 indigenous hunter-gatherers who have suffered repeated expulsions since being moved by the British colonial government in the 1930s.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 02 March 2020 - 10:40 AM.