Aboriginal people have fought for Canada since well before the War of 1812.
It’s estimated that more than seven-thousand First Nations people served in World Wars I & II, and in the Korean War — not including Inuit, Metis, non-status Indians or people from the north.
In WWII alone, nearly 4,000 First Nations individuals served, including 72 women.
Marion Miller Hill was one of them.
The Tyee’s The Hook blog mentioned today that BC’s Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, has once again called for “a national children’s commissioner to advocate on the behalf of at-risk Canadian children, Aboriginal children in particular.”
The renewed call came as part of her Dr. Richard Splane Lecture in Social Policy at UBC yesterday.
According to The Hook‘s Katie Hyslop, the BCRCY office just co-released a report that found an
“incredible disconnect between the outcomes for Aboriginal children and non-Aboriginal children in every domain,” says Turpel-LaFond, referring to the report’s domains of health, learning, safety, family economic well-being, family, peer, and community connections, and behaviour. … Aboriginal children were more likely to be subjected to substances such as drugs and alcohol in the womb, more likely to smoke, met academic expectations less often than their non-Aboriginal peers, and were more likely to be put into government care at some point in their lives.”
THE WORD’s Lady V and MI’s Rick Harp cover three recent posts this time out: on-line Native American voter activism and analysis; a new poll revealing a possible generation gap in how Canadians view Aboriginal peoples’ role in building the country; and, the controversial move by Chiefs in southern Manitoba to take seats on the board of a regional child and family service agency.
MI on STREETZ, Nov. 9, 2010: [audio:https://mediaindigena.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Mediaindigena-TheWord-Nov-9-10.mp3|titles=Mediaindigena-TheWord-Nov-9-10]
Catch MI on THE WORD live on-air/on-line at STREETZ 104.7 FM every Tuesday at 12 noon central time.
The Anishinabek Nation has just announced the winner of its 7th annual Debwewin Citation for excellence in reporting on First Nations issues.
Laura Robinson won for her reportage on the 2010 Olympic Winter Games for Anishinabek News, an in-house publication of the Union of Ontario Indians (which, it should be noted, is the secretariat for the Anishnabek Nation). Beginning with the News’ Dec. 2009 issue, through Jan./Feb. and March 2010, Robinson wrote about “Anishinabek and First Nations participants in Games-related cultural activities, and a number of stories and columns that questioned the lack of even a single Aboriginal member of the Canadian team.”
Receiving Honourable Mentions were Toronto Sun columnist Mark Bonokoski for his 15-part ‘Red Road‘ series, and freelance writer/cartoonist Perry McLeod-Shabogesic of Nipissing First Nation.
Honestly, I don’t even go looking for this stuff.
Once again, the federal Indian Affairs Minister John Duncan has pretty much recanted the thunderous pronouncements he made as a Reform party critic. He’s made it a habit.
In the Nov. 8 Toronto Star article, “Minister downplays despair on reserves,” Duncan was pushed for a “comment on the growing size of his ministry [from 3,300 employees in 1995 to more than 5,100 today, reports the Star] and of the Indian industry.” Apparently, Duncan did not bite, and “would not even acknowledge that such an industry exists.”
All he had to say on the matter was this:
“We have due diligence in a way that has tended to grow our personnel because it takes personnel to do all of those jobs. We have to hire specific expertise in order to deal with very special circumstances … it costs money.”
Let’s wind the clocks back, shall we? Back to 1996, when a far less diplomatic Duncan had this to say about the department he then described as “the money vacuum”:
In 1976-76 [sic] total departmental spending for the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development was $587 million. Today that number is $4.2 billion for about 573,000 status Indians, those registered under the Indian Act, about 2 per cent of Canada’s population.
The sadness in this profligate sinkhole of spending is the continued misery and sense of hopelessness wherein so many of our native people continue to live. Despite the spending restraint placed on all other government departments, the department of Indian affairs spending to 1998-99 will grow a cumulative 12.7 per cent compared with a decline of 24.4 per cent in other departments.
This will be the only federal department in which spending in 1998-99 will be higher than in 1994-95. … If this is working, why are 43 per cent of on-reserve natives on welfare? There are certainly some people getting bloated on the morass of spending. One place is the Hull bunker of DIAND which houses 3,400 of these bureaucrats.
Accompanying these public servants are consultants, negotiators, lawyers and advisors, all taking a piece of the $7 billion in action and keeping the myth and their club memberships alive. It is an Indian industry that has made some cling-ons very rich.
Has it been left up to me to point out the irony underlying the identity of this industry’s new captain?
