WE LIVED WITH it every
day in small town Sask. too!!!!!
I remember being on the
school board and we 'met' with the local band council. One of the council
members called our Principal "Racist". I lost it and told them that I'd never
met any more racist people that the councillors and band members. When I fnally
sat down, you could hear a pin drop. No one had ever stood up to them (and
especially her).
The truth and nothing but the truth, folks!!
I have enough personal knowledge (over 30 years working in the NWT, Northern Alberta and Northern Manitoba) to know that most if not all of this is “right on target”. You don’t have to live in the far north to see this happening. Walk the streets of Winnipeg, Prince Albert, Regina, Edmonton and the list goes on.
This reportedly
was submitted by someone who had worked there. If it bothers you ... then maybe
it should or better yet, talk to your MP.
I worked in every “poor” northern Manitoba reserve as a probation officer for years and they are ALL THE SAME. Repeat…ALL THE SAME!!!!! And it’s a local joke!!!!
There are
more new trucks and cars, skidoos, boats, ATV’s, Flat screen TV’s, Tech toys,
and designer clothes in those reserves BUT they will not spend a dime of their
own money on their house or appliances or furniture or a broken door or a broken
window because “that is the band’s responsibility” and so they don’t, and
they wait for the band to fix it – for as long as it takes – which never
happens, and the house and everything else in it (except the TV and tech
toys) falls apart in squalor. I have seen it personally! Year after year! Band
administration takes trips across the country, hell across the world on
“aboriginal cultural workshops and healing seminars”, take cruises, stay at
fancy hotels, wine and dine and gamble at casinos every year. The chief of one
aboriginal community actually owns a very large house in Winnipeg which he lives
in and runs band business via skype
For chrissakes! Substance abuse treatment center workers all went on an aboriginal healing cruise” in the Carribean from funds that were supposed to pay for treatment patients. Another bunch flew to Arizona for an Aboriginal awareness conference (2 weeks) in the desert (happened to be Close to Las Vegas). They all came back saying they had one Hell of a good time sporting all the turquoise jewellery they bought (also with band funds) As part of their expense accounts. And it goes on and on….and if a white person questions any of that…Yup..You are Racist!!!! Hell, I was racist for recommending sending a man to jail for stabbing and killing his buddy in a drunkin fight over a girlfriend. This man happened to be a band counsellor!!!
Did the shit ever hit the fan and I had to get Wpg. provincial justice dept. head office assistance to get that one through. And they wouldn’t let me back on the reserve cause I was a woman, white, and racist!. (Well, what about the guy who was killed and his family!!!! Doesn’t he deserve justice????) Well, in the End the offended and band counsellor went to federal jail and my name was mud!
Here is another local joke……lots of the summer forest fires are started by the locals and referred to as “make work projects”. All the guys in the community Get recruited by provincial natural resources depts. to fight the fires and get supplied appropriate clothing, boots, hard hats, gloves etc. and get paid huge dollars (much more than on welfare or seasonal EI. The old folks, women and kids get evacuated to the “city” to be put up for free, they eat out, go shopping, Use recreation facilities to entertain their kids, take cabs all over the city and make a huge mess of the hotel or rec. complex where they are billeted. They even have the gall to complain about the food because their food vouchers aren’t enough to eat out at restaurants where they want to. The first week or two go along smoothly and all the natives are enjoying themselves, but into the third or fourth week, the novelty is wearing off and they now want to go home. The fire situation hasn’t changed and their community is still enveloped in smoke but the same people who made such a uproar about needing to be evacuated for health reasons, now want to return to the community cause they need to go fishing or something. They have had their summer vacation, bought everything they wanted to and now want to go home. The airplanes they took them to the city for evacuation now have to be doubled because of all the returning “luggage” like cases of Chips and pop,, TV’s, new clothes and everything else they cared to buy.
Do you know that the Air Canada Stewardesses and flight crews refused to use a downtown Wpg. hotel anymore because of the conduct and state left behind every summer by native evacuees. And they were called racist!!!
The Thompson Rec. center and Norplex pool incurred literally thousands of dollars in damages by the evacuees that they refused to billet them any more unless the federal Government paid the bill for clean-up and damages. Fire or any other evacuations are seen as vacations. Hell when I send kids to southern correctional Facilities, the kids see it as a holiday. They get all their medical issues taken care of, teeth, eyes, etc and schooling, and the parents don’t send any clothes with them, they are given to other family members as they expect the justice dept. will outfit the kid going to kiddie jail in a whole new wardrobe to take home with them…And they don’t want any Wal-Mart stuff. No, they want fancy label clothes!
Most of these kids are illiterate because they don’t go to the big fancy schools that have been built for them on the reserve. The band administrators have the kids attend for the first week of school so the school qualifies for their per diem Student allowances and then don’t care about what the kids do after that. By Thanksgiving, of the 30 odd kids that started in a classroom, less than a dozen are still attending. So the poor native teacher who complained of being so overworked at the start of the year and needed a teacher aid, now has 10-12 kids and a teacher aid…that is a ratio of 5/6-1. And she is never there in the classroom because she is always traveling out of the community to the city shopping, visiting or whatever because she earns such a good wage, leaving the unqualified teacher aid to teach the remaining students. No wonder they have a dismal high school graduating record. Hell, the students don’t even get to grade 8. And the kids don’t walk to school, they are all bussed. They buy huge numbers of busses, drivers, fuel, maint. people at the start of the school year because all the kids “show up” (at the insistence of chief and council) and then by October less than half are still attending so you have all those big expensive busses driving around the community almost empty. And that doesn’t even begin to look at the waste at the nursing station where people plan their illnesses and ailments to coincide with out of town/city amusement fairs, calendar holidays or out of town family reunions. They never follow through with taking medications as directed as expensive as they are, they don’t look after themselves, diabetes is in epidemic proportions, alcoholism and drug abuse is rampant, It is not uncommon to see the garbage can outside the nursing station containing freshly filled prescriptions of pills or ointments, bandages but the pain killers are usually resold. A lot of northern community members make their own “home brew” even though it is a dry reserve.
I had a school in one community where a full 60% of the kids from grades K-8 were FAS/FAE! If they flew in as much fresh fruit and vegetables as they did pop and chips and Kentucky chicken, there would be a real difference. In one northern community the nurses reported that they could always tell when the caribou herds were near the community for the men to hunt cause they saw such an improvement in the overall health of the band members from eating fresh wild meat and less junk food. I am babbling on….I have NO…repeat NO sympathy for those poor northern reserves and YES, the responsibility rests at the Band office and don’t let anyone tell you different. None of them have any training in band administration, finance or even a high school education.
For chrissakes! Substance abuse treatment center workers all went on an aboriginal healing cruise” in the Carribean from funds that were supposed to pay for treatment patients. Another bunch flew to Arizona for an Aboriginal awareness conference (2 weeks) in the desert (happened to be Close to Las Vegas). They all came back saying they had one Hell of a good time sporting all the turquoise jewellery they bought (also with band funds) As part of their expense accounts. And it goes on and on….and if a white person questions any of that…Yup..You are Racist!!!! Hell, I was racist for recommending sending a man to jail for stabbing and killing his buddy in a drunkin fight over a girlfriend. This man happened to be a band counsellor!!!
Did the shit ever hit the fan and I had to get Wpg. provincial justice dept. head office assistance to get that one through. And they wouldn’t let me back on the reserve cause I was a woman, white, and racist!. (Well, what about the guy who was killed and his family!!!! Doesn’t he deserve justice????) Well, in the End the offended and band counsellor went to federal jail and my name was mud!
Here is another local joke……lots of the summer forest fires are started by the locals and referred to as “make work projects”. All the guys in the community Get recruited by provincial natural resources depts. to fight the fires and get supplied appropriate clothing, boots, hard hats, gloves etc. and get paid huge dollars (much more than on welfare or seasonal EI. The old folks, women and kids get evacuated to the “city” to be put up for free, they eat out, go shopping, Use recreation facilities to entertain their kids, take cabs all over the city and make a huge mess of the hotel or rec. complex where they are billeted. They even have the gall to complain about the food because their food vouchers aren’t enough to eat out at restaurants where they want to. The first week or two go along smoothly and all the natives are enjoying themselves, but into the third or fourth week, the novelty is wearing off and they now want to go home. The fire situation hasn’t changed and their community is still enveloped in smoke but the same people who made such a uproar about needing to be evacuated for health reasons, now want to return to the community cause they need to go fishing or something. They have had their summer vacation, bought everything they wanted to and now want to go home. The airplanes they took them to the city for evacuation now have to be doubled because of all the returning “luggage” like cases of Chips and pop,, TV’s, new clothes and everything else they cared to buy.
Do you know that the Air Canada Stewardesses and flight crews refused to use a downtown Wpg. hotel anymore because of the conduct and state left behind every summer by native evacuees. And they were called racist!!!
The Thompson Rec. center and Norplex pool incurred literally thousands of dollars in damages by the evacuees that they refused to billet them any more unless the federal Government paid the bill for clean-up and damages. Fire or any other evacuations are seen as vacations. Hell when I send kids to southern correctional Facilities, the kids see it as a holiday. They get all their medical issues taken care of, teeth, eyes, etc and schooling, and the parents don’t send any clothes with them, they are given to other family members as they expect the justice dept. will outfit the kid going to kiddie jail in a whole new wardrobe to take home with them…And they don’t want any Wal-Mart stuff. No, they want fancy label clothes!
Most of these kids are illiterate because they don’t go to the big fancy schools that have been built for them on the reserve. The band administrators have the kids attend for the first week of school so the school qualifies for their per diem Student allowances and then don’t care about what the kids do after that. By Thanksgiving, of the 30 odd kids that started in a classroom, less than a dozen are still attending. So the poor native teacher who complained of being so overworked at the start of the year and needed a teacher aid, now has 10-12 kids and a teacher aid…that is a ratio of 5/6-1. And she is never there in the classroom because she is always traveling out of the community to the city shopping, visiting or whatever because she earns such a good wage, leaving the unqualified teacher aid to teach the remaining students. No wonder they have a dismal high school graduating record. Hell, the students don’t even get to grade 8. And the kids don’t walk to school, they are all bussed. They buy huge numbers of busses, drivers, fuel, maint. people at the start of the school year because all the kids “show up” (at the insistence of chief and council) and then by October less than half are still attending so you have all those big expensive busses driving around the community almost empty. And that doesn’t even begin to look at the waste at the nursing station where people plan their illnesses and ailments to coincide with out of town/city amusement fairs, calendar holidays or out of town family reunions. They never follow through with taking medications as directed as expensive as they are, they don’t look after themselves, diabetes is in epidemic proportions, alcoholism and drug abuse is rampant, It is not uncommon to see the garbage can outside the nursing station containing freshly filled prescriptions of pills or ointments, bandages but the pain killers are usually resold. A lot of northern community members make their own “home brew” even though it is a dry reserve.
I had a school in one community where a full 60% of the kids from grades K-8 were FAS/FAE! If they flew in as much fresh fruit and vegetables as they did pop and chips and Kentucky chicken, there would be a real difference. In one northern community the nurses reported that they could always tell when the caribou herds were near the community for the men to hunt cause they saw such an improvement in the overall health of the band members from eating fresh wild meat and less junk food. I am babbling on….I have NO…repeat NO sympathy for those poor northern reserves and YES, the responsibility rests at the Band office and don’t let anyone tell you different. None of them have any training in band administration, finance or even a high school education.
I’ve been there/done that! Funny that the news didn’t show where the Attawapiskat chiefs (3) and (14) counsellors live!!! Bet it wasn’t in a dilapidated falling down shack!
An enlightening explanation from your probation officer Wendy!
Why $34 Million a year of your tax money & for what?
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