The Ripple Effect Newsletter
September 2010
Hello everyone . . . and thank you to all the new subscribers. As I reflect on the past 27 years of the work we have been doing here at Ripple Effects Ltd. I am surprised at the progress in so many areas as it relates to the Aboriginal people of Canada. Of course we cannot take all the credit because the efforts of thousands of others across Canada working with a collective mind set has worked this miracle and must be acknowledged and appreciated.
Aboriginal employment nationally (off reserves) is now close to 70% and these are tax paying citizens . . . just like everybody else. We know there are over 50,000 Aboriginal students enrolled in post-secondary studies in Canada this month. As of today there are no less than 25 different national Aboriginal themed conferences between Sept.10th and December 1st. In most provinces every post-secondary educational institute has an Aboriginal student centre. Most of these institutions also have Aboriginal specific learning programs.
There are an estimated 28,000 Aboriginal owned and operated businesses employing more non-aboriginal employees than aboriginal employees . . . paying taxes. 15 new Aboriginal MBA’S this past year. Not bad but we still have a long way to go. In Canada: If a corporation and their major contractors with working interests in the exploration and development of natural resources don’t have an active and well-planned Aboriginal Relations Program then they are not from this planet. I know they would be embarrassed to found out if they don’t have one. Some of my clients such as Weyerhaeuser, RBC Financial Group, Ledcor Group, ATCO Group, Schlumberger, Shell Canada, Encana, De Beers Diamonds and the Alberta Government have trained many of thousands of their employees in Aboriginal Awareness to ensure their workplace is ready for the arrival of qualified Aboriginal employment candidates.
With literally billions of dollars being spent on education and training, getting the workplace ready is absolutely critical. Only doing so will reduce the extremely high aboriginal employee turnover rates. There has been much measureable success but we have a long journey ahead of us and now is not the time to slow down or procrastinate.
Most Sincerely,
Robert Laboucane
President, Ripple Effects Ltd.
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Historic Agreement sees First Nation share Mine Revenue
Kamloops – A historic mining revenue-sharing agreement between the Province of British Columbia and the Stk’emlupsemc of the Secwepemc Nation (SSN) was signed today by the SSN Chiefs and the B.C. government announced Randy Hawes, Minister of State for Mining.
“I would like to commend Chief Shane Gottfriedson of the Tk’emlups First Nation and Chief Rick Deneault of the Skeetchestn First Nation and their councils for their diligence and foresight in the successful negotiation of a revenue-sharing agreement on the mineral tax royalties from the New Afton Mine with the Province,” said Hawes. “This historic agreement will provide direct benefit to the Stk’emlupsemc of the Secwepemc Nation and all citizens of British Columbia and sends a signal to the mining industry that B.C. is a stable and progressive place to invest.”
The Economic and Community Development Agreement (ECDA) is to share mineral tax revenue generated by the New Afton mine project currently under construction ten kilometres outside Kamloops. The agreement places a strong focus on community development to assist First Nations in achieving their social and economic goals.
“Since 2003 we’ve been sharing forestry revenues with First Nations, and with today’s agreement we’re expanding revenue-sharing to other resource sectors,” said Minister Responsible for the Integrated Land Management Bureau, Pat Bell. “The SSN will be able to share in the direct economic benefits of the New Afton mine.”
The agreement signed today is part of the Province’s commitment to work with First Nations to implement the goals of both the New Relationship and the Transformative Change Accord by providing financial resources to help the First Nations achieve the objectives identified for their communities.
“We are aware of and understand that development must be sustainable and that our lands and resources must be accessed in a respectful way and that we continue to cherish the cultural and traditional bonds that First Nations people have with their land. We also need to ensure that our people benefit from the opportunities gained by developing our lands and resources - and that they share in the prosperity that our resources generate,” said Chief Shane Gottfriedson of the Tk’emlups First Nation. “With this agreement we are building and strengthening our government-to-government relationships on ventures that benefit us all. We look forward to seeing the results of this work in the near future.”
“As Stk’emlupsemc te Secwepemc Nation dealing on a government-to-government basis, this agreement will bring other economic opportunities and employment for our communities and stability for future generations,” said Chief Rick Deneault of the Skeetchestn First Nation.
In October 2008, the Province authorized its provincial negotiators to include revenue sharing with First Nations on new mining projects. Future agreements will ensure development of a thriving, competitive, safe and environmentally responsible mineral resource sector, and will increase the contribution to the local and provincial economy for the benefit of all British Columbians.
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First nations property rights: Going beyond the Indian Act
Legal property empowers individuals in any culture.
– Hernando de Soto
Canada's first nations are potentially wealthy landlords, with land reserves totalling nearly three million hectares. Dozens of reserves are near major cities such as Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Montreal, as well as rapidly growing smaller towns such as Kamloops, Kelowna and Courtenay-Comox. This land base represents an economic asset that could make a major contribution to raising first nations' standard of living.
Indeed, there has been an explosion of entrepreneurship on Indian reserves. First nations have opened casinos, shopping centres, industrial parks, golf courses and residential developments; they own trust companies, airlines, trucking firms, sawmills and oil wells.
But such developments are often impeded by an inadequate framework of property rights. Investors are deterred by uncertainty; legal work and litigation multiply; projects take longer than they should; and many potentially profitable developments never happen because all these factors raise the cost structure.
Defects in first nations property rights exist at two levels. The first level of difficulty is that most first nations do not own their lands; the federal Crown has legislative jurisdiction over Indian reserves and manages them for the use and benefit of their residents. In practice, this means many transactions involving reserve land have to be reviewed by the Department of Indian Affairs, adding layers of legal work and delay to an already cumbersome approval process.
Quite simply, those first nations wishing to take over the responsibility of ownership should be able to acquire the title to their reserves from the Crown, thus emancipating themselves from the stifling paternalism of the Indian Act.
The second problem is the absence of individual ownership in the full sense. Many reserves are partially subdivided through some combination of certificates of possession, leases and customary landholdings. These three forms of individual rights are useful up to a point, but they are all seriously deficient for economic purposes. Certificates of possession can be transferred only to other band members, leases are temporary and customary rights are not enforceable in court.
Legislation can facilitate an escape from the Indian Act by allowing those first nations people who wish to own land in fee simple to have the same opportunity as other Canadians without jeopardizing the integrity of their land base. The key is for first nations to possess the underlying or reversionary title, which is now held in most cases by the provincial Crown.
Once they have the reversionary title, first nations can create fee simple title for individuals on their own lands, as the Nisga'a have recently done. Like other Canadians, they can be confident that their own governments will protect their land base while also protecting individual rights created on it.
There should be a voluntary approach to property rights. First nations who want fee simple ownership should be emancipated from the Indian Act and allowed – not forced – to create those rights. This is different from what happened in the United States under the 1887 Dawes Act, when Indian reservations were subdivided and privatized in a bid to break up tribal communities.
Broadly speaking, the political left in Canada believes in aboriginal self-government, while the political right emphasizes the integration of native peoples into the mainstream. In this case, left and right can come together: First nations will be able to get underlying title to their land, an important part of self-government; and they will also find it easier to adopt individual property rights for their landholdings, which will facilitate their participation in the Canadian economy.
There are no magic wands in the real world of public policy. Going “beyond the Indian Act” will not solve all problems, but restoring aboriginal property rights will enhance economic activity on reserves, create more jobs and business opportunities for first nations people, and improve both the quantity and quality of housing on reserves.
First nations' property rights will also benefit all Canadians. As the leaders of Manny Jules's Shuswap people wrote to Sir Wilfrid Laurier a century ago, “We will make each other good and great.”
Tom Flanagan is professor of political science at the University of Calgary. Along with André Le Dressay, Christopher Alcantara and C.T. (Manny) Jules, he is the author of Beyond the Indian Act: Restoring Aboriginal Property Rights.
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First Nations’ well-being gap getting worse
Calgary Sun
Mindelle Jacobs
There is no more agonizing example of the mistaken belief that heaps of money alone will mend broken lives than the ongoing socio-economic catastrophe engulfing Canada’s aboriginals.
In a report quietly released recently, the federal government acknowledged that “there has been little or no progress” in overall community well- being among First Nation and Inuit communities since 2001.
While there was a significant reduction in the well-being gap among First Nation and Inuit communities relative to other Canadian communities between 1981 and 1996, progress between 2001 and 2006 stalled, according to the Indian and Northern Affairs Canada paper.
Not surprisingly, the lowest community well-being scores, which measure education, labour force participation, income and housing, are on reserves on the Prairies, where most aboriginals live.
Among the bottom 100 Canadian communities, 96 were First Nations. Only one aboriginal community ranked in the top 100 Canadian communities — the Tsawwassen First Nation near Vancouver.
In short, despite the billions a year Canada spends on aboriginals, things appear to be getting worse. Between 1991 and 1996, only 18% of First Nations communities experienced a drop in their well-being scores. But by the 2001-06 period, the scores for 36% of those communities declined, compared to only 10% of Canadian communities as a whole.
Tragically, the well-being gap between First Nations and Canadians in general has widened. A host of problems, including dysfunctional native governance and dependence on federal funding, have contributed to the mess, argues John Graham, a senior associate at the Institute on Governance.
In a recent policy paper he wrote, he points out that First Nations governments are huge — perhaps the largest local governments in the world.
‘Curse of aid’
Per capita expenditures of First Nations are roughly 10 times those of the average municipality, Graham observes. And while First Nations have wider responsibilities than municipalities, they lack the checks and balances that governments in other parts of Canada face.
The executive functions are “fused” in chief and council and there is no official opposition to hold the government to account, notes Graham.
That lack of balance threatens accountability and creates “in” and “out” groups, often defined by family affiliation, “with few options for the ‘outs’ other than to blame and complain,” writes Graham.
Then there’s what Graham describes as the “curse of aid” — that large fiscal transfers to reserves have created dependency and fostered unaccountable governance.
Part of the solution is for the federal and provincial governments to develop more specific initiatives to help native communities in the worst straits, Graham said Monday in an interview.
“We’ve got communities here that may be worse off than the slums of Mumbai,” he says. “If this isn’t the top issue of our social policy agenda, what is?”
Aboriginals were historically mistreated but they have to move on, warns Graham. Seeing yourself as a victim is counterproductive, he says. “It’s so compelling in one sense because it’s so nice to be able to blame somebody else. But as a development strategy, it’s a disaster.”
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First Nation Profiles
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada
The First Nation Profiles is a collection of information that describes individual First Nation communities across Canada. The profiles include general information on a First Nation along with more detailed information about its reserve(s), governance, federal funding, geography, registered population statistics and various Census statistics.
The information presented here is consolidated from a number of departmental systems used to collect information for the ongoing administrative and statutory activities of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.
These community profiles were developed by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada as a means of making the most often requested information readily available.
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Chiefs raise alarm about First Nations languages in B.C.
A Squamish Nation chief says it’s “very alarming” that the number of people who speak the Squamish language fluently amounts to one soccer team plus a substitute.
“We have about 12 fluent speakers out of a total of 3,600 people,” Chief Ian Campbell, cultural ambassador for the Squamish Nation, told the Georgia Straight by phone. “That’s less than one percent of our tribe right now speaking. The young people know a lot of words in the language, but they are not conversing in the language.”
The 37-year-old chief said he is proficient in the Squamish language, but not fluent. According to Campbell, a few weeks ago, the Squamish Nation council conducted a “strategic-planning exercise” in which he recommended that the band government “separate language from education, in the sense of really creating a language and heritage department within the Squamish Nation”.
Campbell said he’d like that department to oversee “the archiving and usage of language in rights and title and governance, and also have an educational role where we are teaching the children” the Squamish language.
In April, the First Peoples’ Heritage, Language and Culture Council released its Report on the Status of B.C. First Nations Languages 2010. The report found that “every First Nations language in B.C. is in danger of being lost,” according a fact sheet. It states that B.C. is home to 32 distinct First Nations languages, around 60 percent of the national total.
The report also found that only 31 percent (53 communities) have recordings of their language available as a community resource, while only 52 percent (88 communities) have curriculum materials for teaching the language.
Revitalization is important, according to the report, because language “represents the identity of a people and holds cultural, historical, scientific and ecological knowledge”.
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, told the Straight by phone that, when he was less than a year old, he was taken from his family and placed in foster care. He did not return to his community for more than two decades, and at age 60 he understands only snippets of his ancestral tongue.
According to Phillip, the report’s findings are “very much at the top of everyone’s political agenda”. He said he’s certain the issue will be raised at the Assembly of First Nations’ upcoming annual general assembly, which will take place in Winnipeg from July 20 to 22.
“It’s an enormous concern of all First Nations communities from across the province and across the country,” Phillip said.
Phillip gave Prime Minister Stephen Harper a failing grade in the area of language preservation.
“If I had to choose a word, it would be abysmal,” Phillip said. “The Conservative government of Canada has been very adverse and hostile towards aboriginal peoples in this country. When they first came to power, the first thing they did was trash the so-called Kelowna Accord, which represented $5.2 billion in desperately needed investment into our communities, in the areas of education, health, housing, and economic development.”
An opportunity was missed again in 2008, according to Phillip, when Harper apologized to residential-school survivors but did not earmark sufficient resources for the preservation of languages and culture.
“We’re at the brink,” Phillip said. “We’re staring into the abyss. And I think, by and large, the national aboriginal leadership—as well as regional aboriginal leaders, as well as local aboriginal leaders—are finally starting to offer a greater standing and priority to the recovery of language and culture.”
Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl was unavailable for comment. Strahl’s staff referred the Straight to Heritage Minister James Moore, who did not return a message by the Straight’s deadline.
Phillip said his five-year-old grandson Marcus recently gave him cause for optimism by singing a song in the Okanagan language.
“When he’s happy, he sings,” Phillip said. “One day, I started to listen to what he was singing, and I was absolutely shocked. He was singing an Indian song. That’s what he’s learning at [his band-operated] school.”
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The needs of Canada's aboriginal children
Vancouver Sun
Karen Isaac
The situation of many aboriginal children and their families is dire, and the increasing proportion of aboriginal children being taken way from their families and put in government care is a clear indicator of how the situation is worsening. In B.C., recent Ministry of Children and Family Development reports show that 54 per cent of all aboriginal children are in care.
International agencies such as UNICEF and the OECD have condemned Canada for its record on aboriginal children. The Canadian Senate committee on poverty has decried the lack of early-childhood strategy for children living in poverty. On this measure, too, aboriginal children and their families are among the poorest of the poor. Social workers who work with aboriginal children and their families are appalled and stressed by the situations in which they are placed.
Well-documented evidence presented a month ago by the Assembly of First Nations at a UN human rights tribunal shows that spending on the education of first nations children in Canada is less than that spent on other children.
Our organization's 2007 environmental scan of early childhood development and care government programs for aboriginal children shows that fewer than one-third of children aged six and younger are accessing early-childhood programs on reserve. Federal funding for early childhood development and care programs for aboriginal preschool children has not increased for several years, and we are hearing that cuts to on-reserve child care are likely on the way.
The federal flagship Aboriginal Head Start program has been shown to be effective in preparing disadvantaged children to succeed in school, but it hasn't increased in several years, and, according to University of Victoria professor Jessica Ball, it serves only 10 per cent of eligible aboriginal children.
All the position papers and studies and all the international and national condemnation don't seem to be making any difference. What will it take?
