please read this it was in the toronto star, i think it's disgusting that in 2005 our natives are still being treated as second class citizens of canada

Please use only URL's in the future

Heard about this on the radio yesterday evening whilst driving home, and the presenter had a valid point, when he said "could you imagine if people in the city had to do without water, or had to boil it for 2 weks, let alone 2yrs"?

I heard one politician came out with a controversial remark, by saying "they ( the natives ) chose to live like that, why should we bother"?

yeah right as if they choose to have shi88ie water, that sort of remark just goes to show how stupid politicians really are. if this was happening in the GTA there would be an outrage, people would rise up, but as this is the natives we just watch. my aunt was telling me tonight that a pack of Weiners is $12 and a box of tide is going for $22 the governments reason for this is because they have to fly the food and supplies in this makes me so mad, these people have very little money and welfare in a lot of cases is their only income, they sure as hell can't afford £22 for a box of tide.

Please provide the URL for this article. I will replace the text with the URL as to print the text is a violate of copyright law.

Rete
Moderator.

Yes I agree. I watched this on the news last night and I was aghast at the conditions these poor Indians have been living in for all this time! Shame on Canada!!

In "normal" (i.e. outside of native reserves) remote areas, the price of all things is indeed higher due to the cost of transporting it in. Many of these communities have no roads (except during winter when surfaces have enough snow and ice to be flat and frozen enough to drive on), so everything does have to be flown in. However, salaries are correspondingly higher and residents will often receive a Northern allowance to help with the cost.

Of course, this situation is on-reserve, which is different. Housing is supplied by the government to natives that live on reserves - in fact, they are banned from buying or owning their own houses. Natives living on reserves also do not pay income tax. Also, I don't believe the average welfare rules apply. This combination of factors (and many others) make it very difficult for people to leave the reserve, since they have no collateral, no savings, and have to start paying income tax when they move off-reserve.

This (the Kashechewan situation) is truly appalling, but unfortunately is probably familiar to aboriginals living on reserves all over the country. The federal government is supposedly in charge of the health and welfare of natives but has been neglecting them shamefully for years. I have been present at many government meetings where the federal government has refused to even list their roles and responsibilities regarding the aboriginal population (I work for the provincial government), never mind make commitments to improve their lives. Maybe this event will be the catalyst for change, but I doubt it.

Which is very true in a great many reservations. My in-laws live in Kahnawake, Que (outside of Montreal) and they do not have the same poverty as other reservations do. They as do their children and their neighbors own their own homes, travel extensively, worked in decent jobs, my s-i-l as a nurse and b-i-l for the railroad. Kahnawake has their own hospital owned, run and staffed by the Mohawk Nation, their own postal department, and police and fire departments. Their schools are quite good and they offer varied adult classes in the evenings for natives to upgrade their professional skills.

My stepson, however, lives in Halifax and for him the situation is quite severe. He would not live on the reservation due to the high crime and poor housing. Instead he and his family live in Halifax proper. His major problem is the inability to get a high paying job in the computer tech industry because of this Native status. He faced much prejudice in school from the teachers in the Greenwood, NS area and that was even though he read, wrote and spoke three languages fluently...German, French and Belgium. His father, my husband, was a career serviceman and they lived most of their lives in Germany and all his children were like him; an apptitude for languages. When he petitioned the courts for custody of his son, the courts preferred to give his son to an addict mother who had lost three other children to the system rather than give him to his father because the father was Native. It was only with a new attorney provided by the Nation that he was successful and received full custody.

My stepdaugther opted to leave Canada and lives instead in Maine finding acceptance in the US that she could not find in Canada because of her heritage.

No the situation is not good either in Canada or the States for the Native American.

Indian affairs spends close on $6bn a year, from what I read there are approx 500,000 natives , each man woman and child is having $12000 spent on them ....where is it all going? .... something isn't right here

I understand that aboriginals are self governing according to their customs and traditions so the way it's done is not particularly transparent and can result in all kinds of financial and funding abuses.