Aboriginal Provinces

I've probably mentioned this a few times but I felt that I should compile the ideas into one thread and post it.

http://politicallyuntenable.blogspot.com/2012/07/aboriginal-provinces.html

Canada's aboriginal communities have been suffering high rates of poverty for a long time now. They've also been abused for a long time with the residential school systems (basically a giant re-education program to conduct cultural genocide) ended in the 90s. So I'm proposing a way to get Aboriginal communities up to the average Canadian standard of living.

Basically:

• Aboriginals treaty lands are turned into provinces
• Aboriginals have their own provincial governments with however voting system they feel like and whatever taxation system they want
• Federal taxes will now be imposed on Aboriginals BUT they also get to enjoy full participation in Equalisation Program, healthcare spending etc by the Federal government
• A slew of anti-poverty programs will be run across the country

And this will result in

• Provinces can't "lose" land. Natives can now sell the use of their land for commercial development without losing it. They can impose property taxes
• People can use native land as security to obtain mortgages. Previously they could not get mortgages resulting in a ridiculous level of housing-expenditure by the Federal government
• Spending per capita on social services in Aboriginal areas will now match what non-Aboriginals get

The main difficulties

• Setting the borders
• Putting them as part of the equalisation formula
• Setting up the new tax systems and governments

(Only read below if you are confused as to what I'm talking about)

EDIT:

For context, especially those who don't know how it works is that each Aboriginal tribe has a treaty with the Federal government over what land it owns and what rights Aboriginals have in those lands. In general, this means that "native land" is different from non-native land. For instance, let's say you want to build a strip mall in a Mohawk reserve and you are Corporation A. This means you buy the land off the Mohawk tribe and then build your mall. The Mohawk tribe forever loses their rights to that land.

Canadians, primarily non-aboriginals, think this is "fair" because it's a "business transaction". It results mostly from a misunderstanding of how different that is to how non-aboriginal land works. If a corporation wanted to build a strip mall in Ontario, they "purchase" the land but in fact they don't own it. The government always owns it. Hence even after you purchase land you pay taxes.

In fact, this actually prevents aboriginals from even getting mortgages. There's no "collateral" because banks can't just take native land if you fail your mortgage payments. Thus the Federal government spends a lot on housing to provide housing for Aboriginals because nobody can be expected to fork out 300k for a house just like that. This is why there is a massive housing crisis on native land. This is important because a lot of Canadians don't understand why natives don't have proper housing, this is one of the reasons (of course not the only reason).

Replacement of treaties with the rights of a province is "tricky" but overall I think is preferable to Aboriginal tribes. They retain resource rights and royalties and can enact a slew of legislation if they feel like it. Provincial governments certainly have much more power than any treat rights.

edited 20th Jul '12 7:04:39 PM by breadloaf

That's an interesting idea. How does it compare with equalization policies for indigenous people in other countries like Australia and New Zealand? Is it similar to what the aboriginal people themselves are asking for?

I'm not that familiar with the equalisation formula of Australia and New Zealand, do you have a link to descriptions or perhaps got a summary of it?

As an Australian, I may be able to shed some light on the Aboriginal situation here.

While I know this thread is mainly talking about land rights. It's good to know the basic history of Aboriginal rights and policies. We've had around five different policies regarding our indigenous people. Protection (Which was meant to be a "Pillow Smother-er policy), Assimilation (Basically cultural genocide. It was with this policy that the abominable Child Protection/Removal policy came about), Integration (The last paternal policy), Self-Determination and currently the Reconciliation policy. It was under this policy that the Mabo Decisions of 1991 happened. The Mabo decision overruled the previous legal statement of Terra Nullius (Uninhabited Land) that prevented Aboriginals from claiming land rights (in most cases, there were exceptions before this policy such as the Handover of Uluru and Kata-Juta in 1980)

The Mabo decision allowed for Aboriginals to claim land that they had cultural links too. Once the tribes had proved a minimum of 10 cultural links to the land (which could be anything from rock art to the practice of customary law), the land was theirs and it was to be used by them and them only. Any farmer or miner who wants to use the land can be refused by the tribe or, on the rare occasion that they're allowed to use the land for commercial uses, pay a high compensation fee to the tribe. It was due to this that the Mabo decisions came under heavy fire by the agricultural and mining industries, the rich, the political right of Australia and the Media Watchdogs who thrive on promoting baseless hysteria (Which basically amounted to "THE NATIVES ARE GONNA CLAIM YOUR HOUSE, THE LOCAL PARK, THE SWIMMING POOL, THOSE DAMN HIPPIE, NATURE LOVING COMMIES DOLE-BLUDGING ABOS!"). Once the power shifted from Keating to Howard, one of the first things he did was make a change to the Land Rights Claim to appease the Farming and Mining giants.

The reformed Land Rights bill (Known as the Wik Decision) bumped up the number from 10 links to 20 links. It became much harder for the aboriginals to claim land due to many cultural links being destroyed or forgotten because, you know, the Stolen Generation was a thing. There was a protest (A revival of the Tent Embassy protest that happened back in the 70's) where two blokes nicked Julia Gillard's shoe and claimed that she could have it back... once she had made a list of 20 cultural links she had with the shoe. The current stand on reforming the land rights bill once more is pretty much "Not gonna happen. Not while Rhinehart is around and not in this crisis"

As for how communities are faring in this day and age.. it's atrocious. Some remote communities have the standards of third world countries and diseases like cholera and malaria run rampant there, decent doctors and teachers are staggeringly sparse and the rampant problems with alcohol that indigenous people have suffered from the time of the Protection act is still going on. The worse thing is that the government is doing absolutely nothing about it. They would rather bitch at each-other about carbon tax and how useless the opposing party is like a bunch of immature kids. It kinda feel like they think their in the moral green because they [Labor Party] said "Sorry" back in 2008. It's embarrassing really.

As for New Zealand. I do know the Maori people were actually highly respected. As the Waitangi Treaty was written and signed in both Maori and English and that the Maori were considered citizens in both Australia and New Zealand... In fact, one of the big reasons New Zealand ISN'T our "Glorious 7th State" (As it was intended on federation) is because the Kiwis HATED the native policies of Australia and feared that the Maori's would have their citizenships revoked by the new government (They changed it to allow the "Intelligent and sophisticated native" Maori as "honorary citizens" to appease NZ. Didn't work out in the end). Then again, this was back in the days when America actually upheld the Monroe Doctrine and is highly outdated. So a NZ Troper could probably explain the situation there better than I can.

/ The More You Know.

edited 22nd Jul '12 8:21:32 PM by PippingFool

While this is a more fair proposal over the old "Kill the Natives and Take Their Stuff!" policy, I can't help but worry for the Abo.

On one hand, having no say in your governance is bad.

Yet having no ability to formally govern yourself with a system that is historically/culturally alien to you means its going to be a disaster too.

As said above, the Abo have a rather infamous alcohol problem (which may or may not have been worsened by the welfare money handouts...), poverty and poor education.

(Self-governance is a big problem if your people don't have enough lawyers to write the rules, and not enough litteracy in the population to read it.)

edited 21st Jul '12 8:50:04 AM by Natasel

Is this comparable with what happened with Nunavut?

Yeah, it's the same idea as Nunavut. They're doing "fine", but they have increased problems of poverty mostly due to the high cost of living. The general intent is to have First Nations have it as good as at least the Inuit groups, and then from there get all Canadians on equal footing.

As far as I know, Australian aboriginals have it way worse than Canadian ones and the Maori are doing okay but not that great.

The alcoholism and drug abuse rates in Canada, within reserves, is said to be comparable with non-Aboriginal communities that are in poverty. That is what I gathered from Stat Can.

Also, giving them provincial status means they get to form their government as they choose fit. It does also mean that all residents (status Indian or not) would be allowed to vote but I don't think that's a big problem. If they were allowed to live there, then they're there.

I think the formation of native provinces is an interesting approach that could be highly effective. It'll be fought tooth and nail, though, because no existing province will want to give up that territory, especially since many First Nations are located on prime logging and oil real estate.

I'm kind of ambivalent because I don't like the power of the provincial level of government in Canada. The federal government has its hands tied in many cases, and the municipalities are frequently exploited as cash cows (yes, I live in Toronto, could you tell). I like the thought of making provinces of the First Nations for the same reason I like the thought of Toronto seceding from Ontario, but at the same time that seems to be just compensating for flaws in the organizational division of power no one seems to be willing to address in this country.

Then I remember not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Aggh, indecision.

The two main issues I'm tackling with the province idea are:

• Self government for the different aboriginal groups. A province has its own government, taxes and regulations.
• They no longer have to worry about losing land.

It never made sense to me that natives should lose land in return for commercial development they don't profit from whereas non-aboriginals collectively get to own all land through their respective governments. It's just a big misunderstanding of how our land-ownership works in that people believe they "own" own land, not just own the use of the land and the government has restricted powers over taking it from you.

Also which powers of the province do you think are too little?

Ummm, do you mean which powers of the provinces do I think are too overreaching?

Uh, either one I guess. Just however you think the power system doesn't work.

Large municipalities don't get a fair share of the funding for the tax burden they carry. Toronto, for instance, gets a lot less in funding than it gives to Ontario in taxes, and I'm sure it's not the only city that does either.

Small municipalities don't have the negotiating power to fight off interests like resource extraction companies, land developers, pipeline construction and so on - especially when those countries can pay more than enough to fool the residents of small municipalities with good PR campaigns.

Finally, a number of issues (the organization and distribution of health care and gun crime, to name two examples) are highly dependent on population density, and urban areas and rural areas should have the autonomy to construct their own legislation regarding them to a degree.