From: Celestial Junk Blog

Who needs to go to Latin America to find tin-pot dictators … try visiting some of Canada’s reserves instead, or pay attention to how the aboriginal elite in Canada conduct business.

The hallmark of Latin American dictatorships has been the ruling family … entrenched in power either through military bullying or through the approval of wealthy patron families. The hallmark of Canadian Aboriginal politics is not much different. Those of us who work on the periphery of “First Nations” see it all the time … the entrenched family group lording it over the others while pealing off millions of dollars of Federal funding and kicking it over to those who are “in favor” or part of the “family”.

As in all things though, not everything is equal on Canadian reserves.

Visit one reserve and you’ll find a beautiful school, well kept band office, houses and yards that show pride, and lots of working people. You’ll find scores of aboriginals teaching, accounting, cooking, running businesses, and above all, moving “off-reserve” to pursue careers. And usually, you’ll find an entrenched family or two in the power structure who, although they ensure their own positions of power, see to it that the funds available are spent equitably and in a way that is progressive in the truest sense. Reserves like this are evolving so fast, and making headway so rapidly, that if you leave and then return in 10 years your eyes will bug out at the positive growth that’s taken place. The sad dynamic here is that the whole “success” is often tied to the wisdom and skill of just one or two families.

Down the road from this “progressive” reserve you’ll inevitably find the opposite; the place that CBC and CTV love to film, with it’s grubby kids, run-down homes, and decrepit school. Crime will be high and Saskatoon or Regina will “benefit” from this reserve by a constant trickle of drug addicts and gang-bangers who move to the city. You’ll find a power structure centered on a couple families here too, but unlike the “progressive” reserve, this group of thugs live only for themselves. They’re adept at peeling truck loads of cash from budgets intended for schooling, housing, roads, and such, and they are sure to have a “patron” somewhere within the Canadian aboriginal elite who covers for them. This place … and there are far too many of them … is a self-made shit hole.

I personally blame Canada’s Aboriginal leadership. It’s primary function over the decades has been to whine … to race-bait … and to victim monger; and all of this with only one purpose in mind. This bunch of professional gold diggers want funds … funds to enrich themselves, to grow their own bureaucracies and family power structures, and to add to personal war chests. The system is a top-down marginally democratic scam, that ensures that elite families stay in power and that there are always plenty of poor natives around for CBC and CTV to foist infront of the cameras.

Now, you may be asking what’s the point of making the above “sweeping” generalizations. It’s simply this … there is a sea change taking place in the way the Canadian federal government is dealing with the native community, but that sea change is being ignored by the press. The Harper government, contrary to what the victim mongers say, is pushing for and exacting change that may finally wrestle Aboriginal government from the hands of Canada’s own little Latin American style dictators. Change is in the air … change which if given a chance just may alter the status quo on reserves … and may bring more prosperity, independence, and good fortune to Canadian Native Peoples than anything attempted thus far. It’s simple really … the feds intend on increasingly dealing with individual natives, not the half-done communists who keep the current system in place … where greed and personal gain drive elite family groups to prosper, while the rest go without.

Finally, Canadian values may be finding their way onto the reserve … values that allow individuals to prosper … values that minimize the collective that has enabled dirty bureaucrats and their patron families to persistently keep their hands in the cookie jar and rob their fellows in the name of the “collective good”.

If the current system seems familiar, don’t be surprised; you’ve heard it all before … in Cuba … Venezuela … Chile … Honduras … Mexico … Guatemala …

For a similar perspective by JOSEPH QUESNEL: CLICK