Challenges in First Nations communities today

The extreme poverty on reserves like Attiwapiskat is not a new problem. Pam Palmater reminds us that doctors, experts, politicians, organizations, and commentators have all worked to bring it to the attention of the public for years. She raises a number of troubling statistics, including low graduation rates, a widening gap in employment rates, discrepancies in funding for social services, inadequate water and sewer systems, overcrowded homes, high levels of incarceration, and low life expectancies compared to non-indigenous populations. McMillan and Yellowhorn describe these conditions as follows:

“Alcohol abuse, violent crimes, broken families, and fragmented communities became normal conditions on many reserves straining under years of economic neglect. On reserves, Native People were accustomed to taking orders from the Indian agents and often the local priest” (McMillan & Yellowhorn, p.324).

In recent years, Indigenous scholars have began using the concept of “Settler Colonialism” as a theoretical lens to interpret these historical events, and their continuing impacts today. Settler colonialism has both negative and positive dimensions – not positive / negative in the sense of ‘bad’ and ‘good’, but rather in the sense of ‘adding something’ and ‘taking something away’.

Negatively, settler colonialism aims to remove Indigenous peoples from the lands they continue to occupy.

Positively, settler colonialism erects a new colonial society on that land base. Importantly, this positive dimension is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society, rather than a one-off or historical occurrence.

Put differently settler colonization is a persistent structure not a discrete event. It is a set of social relations that are both persistent and changes over time. And it is very much linked to land and territory.

In her book Finding Dahshaa: Self-government, social suffering, and Aboriginal policy in Canada (2009), Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox writes that:

“Injustice towards indigenous peoples in Canada is not only historical. It is also on-going. Historical injustices are discrete, specific events experienced by communities and individuals…In contrast, ongoing injustice is the complex of existing policies, state institutions and governing arrangements, and fraudulent land and resource transactions that continue to be imposed on Indigenous peoples”

She argues that much Indigenous law and policy in Canada ignores this reality. Instead, it provides a constant message that Indigenous peoples must change, and government can provide the tools, programs, and funds necessary to change.

However, she asks: Is it Indigenous peoples who need to change? Or might something else need to change?