Attawapiskatt, Dependence and Cultural Suicide

The situation playing itself out on the aboriginal reserve of Attawapiskatt and the national news is demonstrating how very little has changed on one hand, while everything has changed on the other.

The situation on the reserve is appalling, but it is not unique on aboriginal reserves in Canada and that hasn't really changed in my lifetime. I can remember the stories on the news about the terrible living conditions on reserves for as long as I've been watching the news. Nothing has changed on the reserves.

On the other hand, nearly everything has changed off the reserve in terms of the attitudes of other Canadians towards the problem. The media is no longer willing to blithely engage in a smear the government campaign. The media and the public won't buy the tragedy story being sold by the professional 'Indian' representatives. Aboriginals both as individuals and as groups are starting to ask themselves and their leaders the tough questions about what is going wrong and other Canadians want to know as well.

The NDP has tried to play the old game of photo op outrage, but it has not been treated with a lot of respect by the media and has gained no traction with the public. There was a time when this situation would have been political gold for opposition party's, but now that isn't true.

The physical reality on the reserves is not changing and likely won't change for many years. The social reality however has begun to change drastically, and it is this change in the social reality that ultimately will lead to a change in the physical reality and a significant improvement to the quality of life for the residents of the reserves.

Attawapiskatt is a difficult situation from every perspective: political, social and economic.

Politically, it is difficult for the government to deal with the issue because of historical issues of unnecessary paternalistic interference in band affairs. Added to that problem is a cabinet minister who has appeared entirely inadequate to the task appointed to him. Consequently, the government has come across very ineptly, but that hasn't translated into unconditional support for the band council. The public might see the federal minister as inept, but that doesn't mean that they believe the band council must be saints. The public is more than willing to believe that the band council took a bad hand dealt to them by the federal government, and made it worse.

Socially, it is now coming out that not only does the band suffer the social ills of substance abuse, but there are also allegations of widespread sexual abuse of children. When you consider this in the context of the over crowded living conditions, the social problems make the political problems look simple.

Underlying everything however, are the economic problems. There can be no solution to the social problems or the political problems without simultaneously solving the economic problems. The solution is not for the government to pour more money into the reserve, the solution is to find meaningful economic activities for the people to engage in.

This is the crux of the matter for many aboriginal reserves in Canada: they make no economic sense. Every other community in the country has an economic reason for existing. The communities that lose their economic reason begin to wither and die, those that continually add or adapt their economic reason for existing, grow and prosper. What economic activity does Attawapiskatt support?

Yes, I know, it is their ancestral homeland and they feel an attachment for it. So what. Their ancestors survived in a harsh and forbidding land. That feat is worthy of great respect and if all the people of Attawapiskatt want to do is survive like their ancestors, they don't need government support for that.

If they want to join the rest of the world however, they need to find some good, some product, some service, to trade with the rest of the world. They need to find an economic niche that they can fill. If they can't do that then they have to face the same reality that everyone else in the world faces, you have to move to find better economic opportunities.

Perhaps my point of view is biased because so many of my friends were born in other countries and chose to come to Alberta in search of better economic opportunities. The biological imperative dictates however that adults seek out the best opportunities for their children to survive and thrive. That means finding the best economic options available, getting skills and then marketing those skills where they can provide the best opportunity.

Some people have suggested that the future for Attawapiskatt is to be found in the mining industry. I disagree. Mining is a transient industry, particularly with modern mining techniques. A mine operates for 15 or 20 years at most, exhausts the ore supply and shuts down. The miners move on to the next mine. This is not an industry on which to build a sustainable community. It can add to it, but it can not be the foundation. Just look at all the abandoned mining towns that litter the country, the world.

The suggestion is never really about jobs, it is usually about royalties from exploiting the mineral. This is a fools proposition. Unearned money only makes social problems worse. The value of money is not inherent in what it can purchase, the value is in the labour required to acquire it. Rich people do not spend money frivolously because they have so much of it, the spend it frivolously because they put so little effort into acquiring it. This is why substance abuse problems are as rampant amongst the wealthy celebrities as they are on some of the aboriginal reserves, and why the euro-trash nobility who inherited fortunes built up over generations have been known to blow it up their nose within a few years.

Ultimately, if Attawapiskatt is going to survive as a community it is going to have to find industries that can provide its' citizens with meaningful work that can occupy their time and make them feel like they are contributing to the well being of their community, their country, their world.

If the people of Attawapiskatt wait for the federal and provincial governments to find industries for them, then it will never happen and their children and grandchildren will fall further behind their cohorts around the globe. This is the sickness of dependency, waiting for someone else to solve your problem.

The people of Attawapiskatt know the resources available to them, and therefore are in the best position to determine what they can do with what they have. They have to take the time to assess what resources and abilities they have, and then decide whether they have a future in their current location. It is a hard choice, but if it was easy, they wouldn't be facing their current situation.

Making the hard choice to abandon their current situation is not cultural suicide. Cultural suicide would be to try and stay in their current location without making significant changes.

This is the thing that I have been contemplating all summer: when I go into Edmonton, or any of the larger bedroom communities, I can find restaurants proclaiming themselves as serving food from all over the world, Chinese, Vietnamese, Greek, Ukrainian, Japanese, Mongolian, Somali, you name a country, there is a restaurant cooking foods in the traditions of that country. What you can not find is a restaurant featuring Canadian aboriginal cuisine.

I stop in at the River Cree Casino on the edge of Edmonton a couple times a year and not once have I seen an add featuring a unique Cree food item. I don't go there to eat so maybe they are on the menu's but looking at the names of the eating establishments, they look like the food is something you can find anywhere in the world. It can't be because Cree food would be too gimmicky; they've got the fake teepee outside. It just seems to me that if you are going to set yourself apart from the competition, that is a natural way to do it.

In the bigger picture every Albertan, every Canadian, is poorer because our aboriginals choose not to promote their cultural heritage. The opportunity to eat food of a type, prepared in a style, that is unique to a geographical region is what drives the tourism industry. Canada has so few things that makes us attractive to tourists. The opportunity to sample variations of foods that have been consumed in Alberta or Canada for centuries if not millenia is one of those things that can attract tourist dollars.

Canadians would adopt these foods as their own. Those of us who were born here would feel an affinity to those food from our regions, even if we are not aboriginal in heritage, because it is a connection to the land in which we live. The aboriginal community would expand to include the larger community.

Too often however, it seems that the leaders in the aboriginal communities do not wish to embrace the larger society, but rather they want to withdraw from it. They fight to make sure that laws don't apply to them. They try to set up special rules for their communities, special privileges, special rights. This only serves to build walls between people and prevent their members from taking full advantage of the opportunities provided to them of being members of a larger community.

Russia has just gained entrance to the WTO. It took a lot of hard work and changes to Russia's laws and systems of governing their economy. By joining the WTO, Russia is de facto conceding sovereignty over parts of its' economy. It is doing so because conforming to the rules that govern everyone else will help the Russian government make its' citizens better off. Being part of a greater community creates more opportunities for everyone.

Cultural suicide does not come from opening oneself up to the rest of the world and sharing the knowledge and experience learned from ones ancestors. Cultural suicide comes from trying to shelter ones people from the rest of the world so that generations of skills and knowledge are possessed by just a few and when those few pass on, the knowledge is lost forever.

Looking at the situation in Attawapiskatt, I can not say that I am optimistic that the problems can be solved without the community deciding that they have to move. Many communities and entire peoples have migrated without losing their identities and culture: that comes from a commitment to honour and respect ones heritage and traditions, or not. Not changing is a recipe to be destroyed by the social diseases already afflicting the community.

I am more optimistic that a sense of realism is beginning to permeate the debate about the role of aboriginal peoples in the larger Canadian community and more importantly that there is an acceptance amongst aboriginal leaders that they have to take personal responsibility for their future both as communities and individuals.

Change will take time, but I do wish that some enterprising young chefs would open a restaurant that openly promotes aboriginal cuisine, sooner rather than later.