What about accountability?

Page 5

My wife brought the Saskatoon newspaper home the other day. On the front page was a story about the Saulteaux First Nation (which is just down the road from where I live) being managed by third parties. There are six Saskatchewan First Nations in the same situation. It got us to talking and thinking.

It would be really easy to blame the chiefs and councils of any of these bands which are having difficulties with mis-management - too easy. Blaming them doesn't cast our gaze far enough. Being married to a woman with a legal education, I just happen to hear lots about the law and the Indian Act. That's the problem. In the Act, there are no mechanisms for accountability back to the people. All the band council resolutions the chiefs and councils pass are approved, or not, by the minister of Indian Affairs.

There's nothing written down about what information the band has to share with community members. In most places it's pretty difficult to get this information.

All this in a country that prides itself on being a democracy. Not so in "Indian Country," I say.

We have elections every four years here in Thunderchild. So, if not such good "stuff" is going on in the community, you have to wait for the next election to voice your displeasure. That can be an awful long time to wait. If you disagree with the band council's decisions, there often is no appeal process.

Of course, you can go to court. But with the economic opportunities in our communities being so poor, this really isn't an option.

The real problem is colonialism. That's why we still have the Indian Act. Colonialism. That's why we have people - often families - who aren't playing by the rules of kindness and sharing that Indian law would hold them accountable to.

When you hear for decades and decades, that you are inferior. When your forms of government are replaced by a foreign system not equipped to deal with life in a First Nation, you get the message. You are inferior. It is colonialism that leads to our woes - be they alcoholism, suicide or financial mismanagement. Yet whenever you hear these financial stories reported in the paper, do we hear mention of the failures of the Indian Act system? Does the media report on colonialism as part of the problem?

No. What we hear is so close to a stereotype: those "bad" Indians mis-spending our tax dollars.

Well, that line about mis-spending our tax dollars, that could really get a guy going. When this country was settled, did Indian people get equal opportunity, access to proper farm equipment and choice land to settle on?

No. That's not what happened. What about all the stumpage fees, oil and gas royalties and the other mineral riches that have been taken off Indian land? Remember, all the country was Indian land. It seems like the tax dollars are just a small sum when put into this perspective.

Along the same lines as my point about financial responsibility in Indian community is the housing situation. We often hear that housing is sub-standard in Indian communities. My family and I have had our own "on-reserve" housing woes. Most of our renovations we are doing ourselves for one simple reason. If the band pays, the band chooses what we get. We're fussy, my wife and I, and we want the house to look the way we like it. We want to pick our flooring, our wall coverings and the kind of kitchen cupboards we get. Otherwise, it'll feel too much like living in an institution. And people wonder why some Indians just don't care about their housing. Would you?

Where is it in this band government system that we are respecting choice and helping people to unlearn their dependency. I just don't see it.

Why are we not using the resources around us to create quality housing that people would enjoy? We used to live in log cabins when we were first settled on the reserve. But now, it's next to impossible to get any help to build such a house on a reserve in Saskatchewan.

I don't get that rule. But maybe one day soon, some bureucrat somewhere is going to figure out that building log homes on reserve might make good sense. It would also give the young men in our communities a chance to be learning a marketable skill.

That's looking beyond colonialism, if you ask me.