Post 23--Transparency Follow-Up

You see I kept my promise. This is a short follow-up on the aboriginal transparency or lack of it without promising to do so.  Never kept a promise so faithfully!

The story was released at a strategic time in the life of the band: just before elections for chief were held.  And you know what happened? He was turfed together with the manager. Whereas the chiefly gauging of the people was explained in terms of the short window of opportunity for the chief, this one actually did not even have that excuse, for, apart from a brief interruption, he served for 34 years! That was more than enough time to rake it in, while his people were unattended to. This time he was voted out.  I hope he will share his takings over the years with the impoverished Prime Minister, the poor man who rules over some 34 million subjects but makes less than the chief with a  constituency about the size of an extended family.

The interesting thing is that the three councilors who were voted in are left with the responsibility of  choosing a new chief. However, according to the re-elected incumbent, Barbara Cote, the Council will most likely ask an outsider to come in and help make the transition. “I really think we need someone…to sort us out,” she said, “perhaps someone from the federal government (FG).”

That, to me, is an extremely surprising development.  Ask the FG to help the band to sort itself out? That FG that has been blamed for so much of the Aboriginal crisis by its mismanagement?  There are both provincial and national Aboriginal umbrella organizations with their officials. Why not invite them in?  Or am I surprised because I’ve been deceived by the media and the literature that feed the public with a barrage of government failures?  I cannot avoid the question: Are the officials of these umbrella organizations less competent and more inept, more corrupt and oppressive than the FG?  Somebody please help me understand.

I do not write about such negative Aboriginal developments because I want to berate them or because I wish to picture them as incapable of handling their own affairs. For one thing, these are not exclusively “their own affairs:” These are public affairs involving public funding. That public is getting impatient with the shroud of intransparency with which billions of tax dollars keep being handed out to a people who claim they wish to live according to their own cultural norms. The situation is feeding into the growing public contempt for a people who are seen to be dishonest, incapable and under the thumb of an elitist bunch who seem never to have heard of accountability. 

I hereby challenge the Aboriginal community to clean up their act and demonstrate to us the positive side of their culture, not merely by putting on occasional Aboriginal cultural shows but by using those public funds to liberate their people from a long history of enslavement to inept FG officials and establish clean regimes that benefit the entire band.

Aboriginals, you people have suffered enough from all angles. No one will put an end to that suffering but you yourself, while us Aboriphiles—a neologism I just coined—can support and cheer you on from the sideline.  I long for you to rise and shine. 

I cannot suppress a vague kind of promise: I will occasionally return to the “Aborigin file.” Keep an eye on it. 

(Major source: Bethany Lindsay, "Highly-paid Shuswap chief, councillor swept from office." VS, November 8, 2014, p. A8.)