Just as the racial grievance industry in the US traces any and all dysfunctions in the black community to the legacy of slavery and racism, rather than culture, social disintegration, and poor choices in general, so does the clamour over residential schools crowd out any honest discussion of why so many Canadian aboriginals live in poverty, suffer ill health, child abuse and neglect, and abuse substances in much higher proportions than other Canadians. If Harper’s apology allows us to move beyond this and into a substantive attempt to give natives the same rights and responsibilities as their countrymen, maybe it was worth it. (But I’m not holding my breath.)
The most heart-breaking consequence of the widespread pathologies in many aboriginal communities is the way native children are almost preordained to repeat their parents’ mistakes, if they survive to adulthood. Too often, they don’t. A culture that tells an entire group of people that they cannot support themselves without government help, cannot integrate into a thriving and functional society, and cannot compete on equal terms does nothing to promote individual responsibility, whether in terms of employment, law-braking, or parenting. After two aboriginal children in Saskatchewan froze to death when their drunken father took them outside, undressed, in -50 weather, I wondered if perhaps a tipping point had been reached, and now natives and non-natives alike would finally recognize that constantly blaming the government, the Church, or whites in general was never going to fix this sort of negligence, and we could turn our attention to a real solution.
I concluded at the time:
Aboriginals on reserve are trapped by poverty because they cannot own a home the way the rest of us can. Instead, the Indian Act creates a situation in which home ownership, as well as access to other higher education and other services, is at the mercy of undemocratic band councils. Aboriginals are told again and again, by the federal government that administers to them, that they are not the same as other Canadians, that they cannot handle the same responsibilities, that they need special privileges simply to achieve the same goals as non-natives. Gross neglect is horrifying, but when the people in question have been told, all their lives, that they are dependent, unequal, and without real hope of improvement, we cannot be truly surprised.
It is time to give aboriginals a shot at real equality, so they can share in the tremendous good fortune enjoyed by the rest of Canada. They are capable of handling the responsibilities borne by all other Canadians. When reserve residents are granted the same rights, offered the same opportunities, and treated with the respect due to autonomous adults, perhaps their weakest members, defenseless children, will be treated with care and protection, instead of being the heirs to generations of dysfunction.
The full column is here.