There's no shortage of ink being expended on the housing situation on the Attawapiskat First Nation and the deplorable state of, well, just about everything. What's even more unfortunate is that the James Bay First Nation could be stand-in for any number of reserves. It's a poster child for everything that's wrong with Canada's relationships with its First Nations, and the relationship of First Nations people among themselves.
Spending five years working with the Battlefords News-Optimist, it was very hard to stay out of band politics, yet this was something I tried hard to do. Why? It's not because there weren't stories, compelling ones at that, but because there was no end to it. You could never get to the bottom of anything. Like quicksand, as soon as you stepped in it, there was no bottom, and you would become sucked in until you breathed your last.
One day, during a band election, I got a phone call saying I should go check out a local motel because votes were being bought. So I grabbed my camera bag, drove to said hotel, and soon realized there was no way I could really observe this, because even if there were something going on, it would be indoors. Sure enough, a few years later, there were convictions of election fraud as a result of that election.
I only speak of it now because there were indeed convictions. Of all the hundreds of rumours and allegations I heard over the years, this one was substantiated in a court of law. There was no lack of innuendo for all sides, from the band members to elders to chiefs and councillors I dealt with, never mind the local tribal council at the time.
The band politics often centred around the issues we see at Attawapiskat - housing, who gets running water, education and jobs.
Prior to working with the paper, I was working on a crew installing sewer and water on a local reserve. I could not understand why these people, in 2002, did not have running water. My parents bought a farm in 1979 that didn't have running water or an electric stove, either. They burned wood in the stove and carried water in a pail from a hand-pumped well - not too far off the state of some reserves to this day.
Within a year or two they put in an electric stove, well, pump and septic tank. It took a lot of work, and cost a fair bit of money, but it made a huge difference in their lives.
The National Post's Jonathan Kay said it far better on Dec. 5 than I could, but to sum up his column, Kay said, "No one ever has washed a rented car."
When you earn something, and own it, it means something to you. If you keep getting handouts, nothing will ever be of value, and all will soon fall into disrepair.
It was on this reserve on a cold fall day when I couldn't stop scratching my head - why wouldn't someone simply buy a can of paint and fix up their houses? It's really not that hard to do. Asking a few people on the reserve why that didn't happen, I was told that was the band's responsibility.
Reserves with communal ownership are some of the last vestiges of communism in the world. Twenty years ago this month, we saw the collapse of the Soviet Union because it doesn't work. Yet on Canadian First Nations, we practise it every day and expect a different result.
Be it Attawapiskat or any one of hundreds of other First Nations, the fundamental issue is the lack of responsibility. It is the root of everything from the state of housing to band politics to the atrocious number of First Nations people behind bars. Most of those convictions have both the victims and perpetrators being Aboriginal.
Responsibility comes from taking ownership of something, literally and figuratively. That can only be built on a solid foundation of private ownership. The most fundamental thing a person can own is his or her own home. Even better, they should spend a substantial amount of time and effort working to pay for it, in order to truly appreciate it. And to do that, you must have a job.
When band members actually own their own homes, when they have to sweat blood to make the monthly mortgage payments like pretty much everyone else, they will be more inclined to keep them in repair. They will not be looking to the band, or the federal government, to fix dilapidated homes, because they will do it themselves. They will also be motivated to improve on their property - drill a well, put in a septic tank or sewer line.
Until something as basic as private ownership of housing becomes reality, there will be no resolution to the ills of Attawapiskat or any other First Nation. When the First Nations peoples, themselves, decide to take this path, and the federal government goes along, then, and only then, we will start to see things turning around.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
