From the eastern shores, Canada has been passing the buck on the continued fishing wars throwing the decision making power to the Department of Fisheries or worse to the provinces. Nationally Canada is doubling down on their land take over schemes.
It is not enough that Canada has control of the 99.98 percent of the land in this stolen country! No they are coming for that last .02 percent.
Canada has been parading around their new Indigenous Minister Marc Miller who does a nice song and dance routine with some Mohawk words thrown in to show that he is “accommodating” and more importantly “in sync” with Trudeau’s Indigenous people.
Who actually believes any of this blather?
Canada has the same agenda that they have always had which is to terminate or assimilate the First Nations people. Canada despises the Indian reminders. Canada hates looking at the brown faces mired in poverty and etched with intergenerational trauma lines. Canada hates being made aware of the deplorable living conditions and statistics that are unchanging for the First peoples of this land.
Canada likes to release big announcements like the forty billion being “given” in the child and family services area. There will be twenty billion released for the class action for children unnecessarily removed from their homes and for those children that fall within the specific Jordan’s principle parameters. A further twenty billion is going to reform the child and family welfare system. Recently Canada has been qualifying how the money gets to the people now saying that social workers may have to be involved. Really, Canada? The very department that was responsible for removing children or fighting about whether the federal or provincial health pay the costs to provide health care to our children, now must be included in the payout?
More disturbing are the rumours in health. Canada was able to ram through Bill C-91 the Indigenous languages Act and Bill C-92, the Child and Family services act with a compliant national chief. Canada is looking like the Indians like they’re all just one big class action waiting to happen. Canada wants First Nations to give up their Indianness and just be regular Canadians.
Justin Trudeau like his white paper father before him, thinks the best way to get rid of the Indian problem is to legislate their rights out from under them. Justin Trudeau thinks this is fine as long as there is adequate notice and then a handful of traitor Indians go along with all his “best interests” messaging.
There is talk now that there will be a payout made to First Nations – some paltry sum that was picked out of the air at a drunken whiteman leaders convention or picked out of hat- for dental care. The sum that was disclosed is six hundred and some odd dollars.
Anyone who has had to pay for braces, or get permission for corrective surgery or just pay for emergency or dental services knows that six hundred bucks might not even cover one visit. How does Canada decide these things?
It almost seems like Canada has been made to look bad, stealing children with child welfare programs and after having announced the money to be paid out, Canada is going to cut corners elsewhere – notably in health.
Remember Jane Philpott basically shut down First Nation and Inuit health branch by placing it under the Indigenous services department, before she was booted out of Trudeau’s elite circle of Liberal henchmen and henchwomen. Philpott was responsible for the opening move from the “terminate the Indian” playbook. Act one was to take a treaty or inherent right and turn it into a policy or “service” that Indians are not “entitled to” as payment for the land, but instead the message became this is a service that Canada has generously been providing.
It has been explained countless times by the handful of activists and analysts who are giving the hard information to the people at the reserve or community level that these changes were agreed behind closed doors then ratified at the national and regional levels by our “qualified” leadership. Indian Affairs chiefs and councils get in and try to get up to speed by listening to white lawyers or government Indians who tell them to take the deals.
What is happening at the Assembly of First Nations right now? Well since National Chief Roseanne Archibald questioned contracts and payouts, the whole national office seems to have gone into silent mode. Sadly, if Canada knew that contracts and payouts were happening haphazardly, they are complicit in the wrongdoing. The last information that was publicly available was that former finance or administrative staff were being called in to do the investigation.
This is where our First Nation people get all twisted. If there is misspending or alleged corruption on reserve, every Frank Fencepost screams “forensic audit”. Meanwhile, it is the chief or leadership that has to call for this investigation into financial wrongdoing. Usually the audit itself takes the entire term of the initial chief or leader or council who ask for it. Then before anything can be found or reported on, there is an election and since nothing happened during the term of the whistleblowers, they are usually voted out.
You can just see Canada washing their hands of this misspending or “corruption” because they set up the terms of reference for the investigation then make the investigation so onerous that chiefs who are trying to get information to their people are being undermined.
Canada wants to “celebrate” or having a national day for truth and reconciliation. As uncomfortable as it is, Canada is going to have to start laying down more truths or our people are going to have to start seeing the truth that is happening all around us.
Our people were once so attuned to their First Nation spirits that they could discern truth and they guarded their spiritual wellness by speaking only good words into Creation. Have we now become so colonized that we lie to our own people and talk about truth like it’s a catchphrase for a day celebrating our ongoing trauma?