Turn aboriginal reserves into provinces

So, if we ignore the whole debt is going to destroy the world crisis going on, let's talk about aboriginal reserves in Canada.

I propose this as a solution: turn the reserves into provincial status units.

• Settle land disputes and turn reservations into provinces
• Each native province will conduct its own elections, collect taxes and provide the social services
• Provinces will be part of the equalisation formula, and I would expect, given that most reserves are not doing well economically, they'll be considered have-not provinces

This directly ties the chiefs to the people they rule over, because instead of getting magical cheques from an Indian Affairs minister (who then washes his hands of the matter), the local community pays them tax dollars which they then have to use to improve the community. Fail to do so, and they get the beats. Right now, they can always shift the blame (and they're pretty much correct) to an uncaring provincial government.

This also eliminates the two-class system in native communities where chiefs receive money from the government, and then the chiefs keep everyone else poor, stupid and angry at the white government so they can pocket all the cash.

It sounds like a good idea in theory.

In practice how do you handle the land disputes fairly? What do you do with land that has been settled for a long period of time?

They can still run into similar issues just not as directly and it would give the individual tribe members more indvidual power over who runs them. They then have to contend with the assorted issues modern demorcratic models have to. Corruption and such.

edited 4th Aug '11 4:21:05 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I do not like this idea one bit.

Well in practice, the land disputes are handled by the Federal court, so this doesn't change that process. Whatever they end up with however, the treaty would be replaced with the land being turned into a province if the reserve is going to continue to exist. In that way, the land dispute basically ends forever since you can't very well take land from a provincial government, but you can take land from a reserve.

As for dealing with corruption and such, it'll basically be no different than our society. It's basically giving them the same political rights as everyone else in this case, rather than living under a government that is appointed by the Indian Affairs minister.

@ Erock

Elaborate?

edited 4th Aug '11 8:09:50 PM by breadloaf

Giving them that kind of autonomy without ecouraging them to integrate is a terrible idea.

edited 4th Aug '11 8:18:12 PM by Erock

You mean like Nunavut? ;)

But, would you care to explain more about what you mean by encouraging them to integrate?

edited 4th Aug '11 8:20:15 PM by breadloaf

Wait, the chiefs keep the money? I think here (America) the idea is to spread the profits fairly evenly to everyone. But that's with the tribes that have casinos. *shrug*

Is that really how it is in Canada?

They should join us. The reserve system doesn't work because they don't particpate in our industrial economy, but they don't practice their old ways. Pacific Coast Natives are a great example of keeping the course.

@ Aceof Spades

I'm simplifying it. The process of getting money into government projects on reserves (and social services) is complicated but in general I can say that it follows the rough manner of...

• Federal/Provincial budget sets out an amount to give to each reserve based on what they think they need
• Indian Affairs minister cuts the cheques and hands it to the tribal chiefs to use based on what they think they need
• What the government thinks a reserve needs is based on their own assessment and requests by the community and what the chief tells them
• The chief's administration then gets the money and then uses it on the projects
• Somehow, most of the money stays in the hands of the chiefs and his buddies

@ Erock

In that case, why the contention against my idea? Do people of Alberta and people of Ontario not integrate with one another, or are not part of the same union?

Once they're provinces, there's no need of Indian status, because their special rights are determined by their provincial government. If they feel like deciding all of them should receive money to go to university for free, they use their own tax dollars to do so.

But more to the point, what exactly is your solution for getting them to integrate?

How do the chiefs become chief ? appointed by government ? Democratically elected ? If they already elected, wouldn't they just continue getting rich with equalization payment ? what the difference ?

The reserve system doesn't work because it was corrupted from the beginning; the powers taht be when these things started didn't give a flying fuck if the Indians' culture survived. It's better now, but things have been broken so long that a lot of people have just gotten used to it. And it turns out that humans can put up and live with some ridiculous things.

The good thing about casinos is they create wealth, which they can then use to educate themselves and gain power. I believe some have done just that in an attempt to get more of the land that was promised to them some 100+ years ago. Takes a couple lifetimes, but is probably the most sensible course in this day and age. (And, considering the requirements to become a state requires a pop of 60k people, a lot of these reservations aren't going to become states simply because of that.)

Sad thing is, not all of them can do that. In Arizona, especially, some of them are in really remote areas.

@ Phillipe

Well, it's complicated and there's no straight answer. Basically it is all of the above. Each band/tribe can have different rules and procedures for selecting the chiefs.

@ Aceof Spades

Well one thing that the Federal government of Canada did was make tuition fees free for natives. Granted, very few take advantage of that because so few can even get to post-secondary education in the first place, but what you saw after that was a major explosion in lawsuits against aboriginal people suddenly turn in their favour. Once there were natives actually get some education and law degrees they were able to defend their land against unscrupulous corporations from stealing it. I think overall it's quite positive, although I've seen many disagree with my sentiment because they think that an aboriginal group winning a lawsuit is automatically some kind of concession to them, as if the rule of law didn't matter when it came to those people.

I read recently about lawsuits (Probably up in the Northwest, now that I'm thinking about it) where they started suing for land that others were using for something that was pretty important at the time.

Basically, the government is holding a lot of that stuff in trust, and with access to not just higher education but legal documents about the deals regarding what land the Indians should have, they're taking steps to get what, legally, the American government should have given them. (In some cases, the government is dumping trash/radioactive waste without consent.)

The fact that modern day courts are enforcing the deals and giving them what they ask for should tell the public that they've basically been cheated for an unbelievably long time.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems kind of stupid to base modern day policies on treaties that are over a hundred years old. And this doesn't just apply to reservations; in my opinion, all treaties between nations should have to be renewed and/or revamped periodically for them to still be applicable. Otherwise you end up with shit like World War I.

You mean like constitutions? It's not inherently bad to keep it the same for centuries if there's no actual reason to change it. It's far more dangerous to state that treaties that are old are instantly silly. It would justify us simply taking everything from the aboriginals yet again and besides we've only now just started respecting some of the treaties we signed in the first place. If a government can't be trusted to respect the treaties it signed, there's no point to treaties.

Like for example, "Bah the treaties we signed with the natives are over a century old, it's pointless. Let's just take all their land, sell it off and then they'll really know that they were ungrateful bastards the whole time. We didn't genocide them or anything for at least 10 years! Why can't they see how good they have it?"

Breadloaf, there are no universities on reservations. My opposition is based off the fact I think they should either go ful on old school or integrate with us economically and go to work.

Except that they're much more respected in national politics then they were when the treaties were signed. Shouldn't they be able to get a better deal now?

Yeah, that's my point too. There are no universities on reservations because the government is barely willing to build elementary schools and high schools on reserves, let alone universities. You're assigning blame on them for not having a university but guess who pays to build those? The province. So it's solely up to the education minister of the province to build one on a reserve or not. If it were up to you, as a politician, would you build stuff in impoverished neighbourhoods whose vote doesn't matter or in places where you can win a riding?

I don't know much about Canada, but... I thought Nunavut was basically what you're suggesting here?

Yes it is. They've been quite successful, but they were also far less oppressed than the First Nations and other tribe alliances.

I also thought First Nations was just a Canadian catch-all term for people whose ancestors came across the Bering Strait. I do have a lot to learn.

For anyone who's curious now.

edited 5th Aug '11 8:12:06 PM by DomaDoma

Aboriginals would be the catch-all term they like today. Back a decade it used to native americans. It's been a long time since anybody said Indians, although interestingly all the government institutions still use the word.

EDIT: Oh you provided a wiki link. That's probably a better description.

edited 5th Aug '11 8:16:09 PM by breadloaf

Wait, I thought reservations worked kinda like Amish communities? Y'know,where they try to keep influence from the outside world to a bare minimum (except for selling stuff to tourists, of course)? I've certainly never heard of the government building schools in Amish country.

The main difference is the Amish pretty much settled and stayed where they wanted and were left alone. The Indians were forcibly moved, negotiated with in treaties that consequently weren't respected, and had to deal for decades with forced assimilation which only ended during the Great Depression because it was too expensive to force them into the schools.

And the point of honoring those old treaties is to give back what was stolen. And the point of them suing for it is to gain back their power; they were basically cheated. This isn't anything like the situation that led to WW 1. These groups largely aren't interested in starting a war, only with putting their tribes on good economical footing and preserving their culture. Some of them have their own schools/colleges down here.

edited 6th Aug '11 3:19:44 AM by AceofSpades

But that's the thing I don't really get about the reservations: they were started as basically concentration camps; if you're looking to right the wrongs of the past, shouldn't the reservations be either abolished or granted full autonomy? This whole seperate from the nation only not thing is just . . . weird.

edited 6th Aug '11 4:52:27 AM by RavenWilder