Pubdate: Fri, 06 Jan 2012
Source: National Post (Canada)
Section: Full Comment
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Lorne Gunter

FIXING RESERVES AN INSIDE JOB

Jeanette Peterson and Kirk Buffalo live more than 3,600 kilometres 
apart, almost on opposite ends of the country. Yet the two are 
connected by their desire to improve their respective First Nations 
communities.

Ms. Peterson is the newly elected Chief of Nova Scotia's Annapolis 
Valley reserve, while Mr. Buffalo is a new Councillor at the Samson 
Cree band on central Alberta's Hobbema reserve. Chief Peterson wants 
to bring financial accountability to her tiny community of 112 
people, while Councillor Buffalo is attempting to clean up his 
community of 3,000, which has been plagued by murders, drive-by 
shootings, gang activity and drug dealing.

If Canada's First Nations citizens are ever to lift themselves out of 
squalor, addiction, corruption and violence, the Petersons and 
Buffalos in their midst have to succeed.

Non-aboriginals may engage in as many well-intentioned reform efforts 
as they wish, they may offer advice until they are out of breath or 
throw billions of tax dollars at aboriginal problems, but unless and 
until First Nations members themselves are behind the drive for 
transformation, there will be little meaningful, lasting change.

Over the past two years, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) has 
taken up the cause of bringing greater transparency to on-reserve 
spending of federal grants. Ottawa transfers nearly $8-billion a year 
to the country's 630 First Nations. That's nearly $13-million apiece 
for communities that average under 1,000 residents each. According to 
Mark Milke, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, on a per capita 
basis, Ottawa delivers about six or seven times the amount of cash to 
aboriginal communities that comparably sized non-aboriginal towns 
spend in their annual budgets. The problem on most reserves, then, is 
not lack of money but rather how the money is spent.

One of the biggest splashes the CTF made in its accountability 
campaign was publishing the salaries of chiefs and band councillors. 
The federation revealed that nationwide more than 600 native 
politicians earned more than $100,000 in 2009. Nearly 100 earned more 
than their respective provincial premiers, while 50 hauled in more 
than the prime minister, tax-free.

When Ms. Peterson learned what the three councillors making the 
decisions in her tiny community were paying themselves, she was 
shocked. One had hauled in $152,167, the equivalent of a taxable, 
off-reserve salary of $261,000. Another pulled down $172,325, while 
the third made $120,060 - all for managing the affairs of just 112 residents.

Appalled that councillors were making so much money, and doubly 
appalled that no one knew until the CTF published the salaries, Ms. 
Peterson decided to run for chief. Running on a platform of openness 
in financial dealings - including a pledge to let band members set 
her salary - Chief Peterson won election late last fall with 71% of 
the vote. She is now looking for a way to live up to her promise to 
let her voters determine what her annual compensation should be.

There should soon be a federal law requiring aboriginal politicians 
to make public their pay and benefits, but for now, this information 
is available only when courageous politicians such as Chief Peterson 
voluntarily disclose or through the research efforts of organizations 
such as the CTF.

Out West, Kirk Buffalo faced a different problem: rampant gang 
violence on his birch-parkland reserve about 80 kilometres south of 
Edmonton. Appalled by the September shooting death of Chelsea 
Yellowbird, 23, at an on-reserve home known for gang activity, and 
next door to the home where Ms. Yellowbird's five-year-old nephew, 
Ethan Yellowbird, was slain in a drive-by shooting in July, Mr. 
Buffalo decided to get community permission to evict troublemakers.

At a news conference in September, Mr. Buffalo vowed if those 
responsible for a surge of crime on the reserve "can't respect 
themselves [or] respect the community, we, in turn, will show them no respect."

On Wednesday, 56% of the band voted for a bylaw that would permit any 
25 members of the band to petition for another resident's removal. If 
the person is not a band member, the eviction decision would be made 
by a residency tribunal. Band members could only be banished by a 
two-thirds vote of the chief and council.

Although he has only been a councillor for nine months, Mr. Buffalo 
is no wide-eyed idealist. "This residency bylaw is not a solution. 
It's merely a tool," he told reporters after the vote. If residents 
and Mounties don't expel troublemakers and keep them from returning, 
the beatings, shootings and drug-peddling will persist. If residents 
refuse to be accountable for their actions, Mr. Buffalo explained, if 
they do not work to change the culture of addiction, family breakdown 
and crime in their community, no banishment bylaw will be effective.

That's the element that connects Mr. Buffalo and Chief Peterson: the 
recognition that the biggest problems faced by First Nations 
communities in Canada must be, for the most part, solved from within. 
Even if the poverty, despair, chronic unemployment, under-education, 
substance abuse, poor governance and crime have some root causes 
outside aboriginal communities, no permanent improvement is possible 
until the impetus for change comes from within.

Ottawa can (and should) pass laws demanding more transparency in 
First Nations' finances. It should not hesitate to insist on 
meticulous accounting of taxpayers' dollars and resist charges of 
racism aimed at deflecting scrutiny from incompetent aboriginal 
managers. But no amount of imposed, outside accountability will ever 
be an adequate substitute for demands from aboriginals themselves 
that their own leaders solve the problems their communities face.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D