Natives in Canada live in Third World conditions (fwd)

Leslie Schentag (wy497@victoria.tc.ca)
Mon, 12 Oct 1998 18:54:49 -0700 (PDT) 

This just came in. You should see the conditions some of the local street
kids sleep in. Most of them sleep outside.
Leslie.

  "When Freedom Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Be Free"
     

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 13:40:15 -0700 (PDT)
From: Geneva Hagen <ws222@victoria.tc.ca>
To: Leslie Schentag <wy497@victoria.tc.ca>
Cc: Jerry Schneiderman <76702.667@compuserve.com>,
    Thom Hartmann <thom@compuserve.com>
Subject: Natives in Canada live in Third World conditions


...comparable to Brazil, based on life expectancy, education levels and
income.  And despite our U.N. ranking of highest quality of life in the
world, Canada is #10 in percentage of children in poverty.  (The U.S. is
#17.)  Further comments at end of article. 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Globe & Mail
Monday, October 12
			To respond:  letters@globeandmail.ca
THE NATION
Study identifies poor state of native lives 

Canada may top the United Nations list for the highest quality of life in
the world, but a new government study shows what the ranking hides: Native
Canadians living on reserves fall far down in the pack, with a ranking
worse than countries such as Mexico and Thailand.

According to the study by the Department of Indian Affairs, the quality of
life for on-reserve natives - about 380,000 people - is on a par with Brazil
and countries considered to have only a medium level of human development.

For the more than 270,000 registered natives living off reserves, the
quality of life is somewhat better. According to the UN ranking system,
their living conditions are in line with Russia.

"This is not a surprise for us," said Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the
Assembly of First Nations. "We live this every day. People have to be
cautious about using the fact that we're No. 1, that Canada is the best
place in the world to live. It's tough to say that to a family living in
abject poverty on a First Nation."

This is the first time Indian Affairs has applied native-specific statistics
to the human-development index created by the UN to compare the world's
countries. The index combines three factors: per capita income, education
levels and life expectancy. 
_________________

I don't think this picture is completely accurate.  Real income is boosted
by the fact that Natives don't pay taxes and, on reserve, may not even pay
rent.  In Kispiox, Natives lives in good houses built for them by
"Beavers" (international youth volunteers).  But Kispiox has the status of
a "model" activist Native community; others are probably far worse.

Real literacy rates would be a better measure than "educational levels." 
I'm not convinced that in daily life a university education is that much
advantage over 8th grade!  In fact, home-schooled students actually do
best (probably because only the most capable parents even attempt
home-schooling).

Even literacy isn't the real handicap for Natives, however -- it is lack
of facility with a *spoken* language.  Their native tongue was denied them
by the missionaries, and English-as-a-Second-Language naturally doesn't
meet their cultural needs.  There's a huge communication gap between the
elders who still speak the native tongue and youngsters who speak only
English. 

The shorter life expectancy is very real, and I can see a lot of reasons
for it.  Besides poverty itself, there are higher levels of alcoholism and
drug abuse, higher incidence of violence, and ignorance of nutrition. With
their traditional diets no longer available, many natives get their ideas
of food from TV advertising. At a feast event to inform community members
about residential child abuse issues, the gifts of food were all really
unhealthy stuff like wonder-bread, candy, etc. 

Of course, the traditional diet was not unhealthy, and natives could still
fish and hunt.  However, many of the women's traditional gathering places
were no longer available.  The houses on Reserve had plenty of space that
could have been made into gardens, but few did so.  In the old culture,
gardening was not necessary, for summer in B.C. supplies every type of
edible plant imaginable.  I also think there was a period when it was
against the law for Natives to farm or operate businesses, so any such
skills they did have would have been lost. 

The most common requests for emergency assistance from women with children
were for infant formula and disposable diapers; hippie homesteaders in
similar or worse material circumstances breastfed and used cloth diapers. 
(The Reserve homes did have plumbing and were walking distance from a
laundromat.) 

Financial poverty wasn't the problem in Kispiox.  Families routinely spent
several hundred dollars on their kids at Christmas; they spent a lot of
time at Bingo, and even made group trips to Las Vegas.  (In the old
culture, gambling and potlatch were ways that wealth was redistributed
WITHIN the community -- now the gambling money generally goes to the
province or the Catholic Church, tho' some reserves are now taking charge
of their own casinos.) Seven-year-old kids came to school with $20 bills
in their pocket -- but without breakfast! 

Rather than poverty, the main problems here were alcoholism, gambling, and
lack of life skills.  Even so, however, I would lay odds that the average
Native lifespan now is longer than it was in the old days.  There may have
been more cultural dignity then, but life was still very hard -- and there
was still oppression; indeed, slavery.  Ironically, the shorter lifespan
of Natives today may result not from failure to respect their traditional
culture, but from failure to integrate them into the mainstream! 

G