Ten Little Indians!

                                   

                    

Dear Readers: I have stated many times in the past that I am NOT a racist. I don’t like, or dislike, anyone according to their RACE!

I am, however, a CULTURALIST!

There are certain cultures that have outlived their usefulness and/or relevance …….., or they are never going to do their members any favours!
The only thing they have left to do is to slowly disappear from sight!
IN OTHER WORDS, they were just a bad idea to start with!
This brings us to the subject of Indians!
As an ethnic group Indians are no different than Germans, or Italians or Spanish, or Chinese, or Jamaicans, or Eskimos, or Arabs, etc. etc. they all have their good points, and their bad points!
BUT!
Culturally, there are some I like, and others I don’t like at all!
HERE’S WHAT I MEAN:
Theresa Spence is the current chief of the Attawapiskat First Nation in Canada. She is a prominent figure in the Attawapiskat housing and infrastructure crisis, Idle No More, and other First Nations issues
The Attawapiskat reserve has been the subject of several state of emergency announcements by Spence in recent years, due to the reserve’s poor housing conditions, corruption and mismanagement.

The announcements have received national media coverage.

On October 28, 2011, Spence called a state of emergency for the third time in three years in spite of the fast that a spokesperson for the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs stated that by the end of 2012-13, the federal government will have spent $131 million on the Attawapiskat reserve since 2006, including the construction of 60 new and renovated houses and a new school.

Controversy has grown around the question of how the money received from the federal government is spent by the reserve’s own government.
Detailed financial records have not been made public to reserve residents or to the media; some residents of the reserve refused to discuss the matter with media, saying that they feared repercussions.
The De Beers company, which owns a diamond mine nearby and employs around 60 residents of the reserve full-time, has donated trailers for housing to the reserve in the past. The Attawapiskat reserve’s government receives a payment from De Beers, but Spence has declined to say how much or how it is spent.
A 2012 financial audit commissioned by the Government of Canada for the years found a lack of documentation to account for millions of dollars spent by the Attawapiskat Band Council between 2005 and 2011.
When the audit was released to the public, Spence responded by accusing Canada of acting in bad faith. Other First Nations leaders, however, were critical of Spence’s fiscal mismanagement as indefensible and undermining reserves that followed proper bookkeeping.
Spence’s combined salary and travel expenses amount to more than $71,000.
MEANWHILE, other than the Band Leaders, most of the people on the Reserve live in poverty, and nobody knows where all the money went!
ON THE OTHER HAND:
The Osoyoos Indian Band is a First Nations government in the Canadian province of British Columbia, located in the town of Osoyoos in the Okanagan valley, approximately four kilometres north of the International Border.
The current chief of the band is Clarence Louie.
Louie has pushed for economic self-reliance by expanding investments, including a vineyard and winery, a four-star resort, and a 9-hole golf course on the Reserve.
(Idle No More? Chief Clarence Louie was never idle in the first place.)

That’s not to mistake one of Canada’s hardest-working First Nations leaders as a fan of Canada’s Indian Act, or an apologist for lousy federal land deals, broken promises or residential schools. When it comes to First Nations getting the smelly end of the stick from Ottawa, the leader of the Osoyoos Indian Band is about as scathing a critic as they come. He recently branded the federal Department of Fisheries “a bunch of idiots” for allowing fish farming along a fragile Okanagan river, and he says the Harper government could use a good tongue lashing. “Sometimes that’s the only way — every government needs to be hollered at once in a while and every individual does too,” says Louie. “We all need to be scolded — I still get scolded; the old timers scold me. Everyone needs a kick in the rear now and then — it doesn’t matter who you are.”

What makes Louie different is his refusal to place all the blame outside the reserve, using past injustices and historic misery as an excuse to wallow in poverty.

If he has barbed words for the colonial past which sent Canada’s reserves into a downward spiral, Louie often saves his sharpest criticism for the defeatist attitude which continues to hobble Canada’s natives.

“If your life sucks, it’s because you suck,” he’s been heard to say at First Nations speaking events. Ouch.

It gets better: Louie doesn’t shy away from telling other chiefs and band members that the days of blaming the federal government for your woes are over — and the time has come to help yourselves.

“With Idle No more, it’s great to talk about treaty issues and land claims and the environment and all that,” he tells the Sun. “But there also has to be talk about jobs and the idleness of unemployment and the great depression of unemployment rates that exist on most of our First Nations. That’s half the problem, right there.”

It’s one thing to have a sharp tongue — but Louie has also shown he has one of the sharpest minds in Canadian politics.
Last fall, the Osoyoos Indian Band landed a $200-million federal prison contract, bringing another 240 full-time jobs to the reserve’s new industrial park near Oliver, B.C..
It’s great news, though jobs aren’t in short supply on the reserve. With the addition of the prison, there will be a total of over 1,000 jobs on a reserve with only 470 people!
The arid reserve iholds the distinction of owning the most businesses per capita of any first nation in Canada — so many that it has imported workers from 35 less-affluent bands.
Under Louie’s leadership, which started in 1985, Osoyoos Indian Band has gone from rags to riches, from Indian Affairs bankruptcy management to economic self-sufficiency.
A First Nation band forced to labour on U.S. fruit farms in the past is now an enviable power in the Okanagan, pumping millions into the local economy and employing hundreds of people.
Since Louie founded the Osoyoos Indian Band Development Corp. in the early 1980s, the reserve has launched more than half a dozen major projects, including a luxury resort, golf course and a construction company.
And there ya have it folks, a tale of two cities …………………., or should we say nations!