Post 123—An Aboriginal's Solution to Aboriginal Problems

Once again, my apologies for the length of time between this and the last post. Once again, travel is the culprit. But hopefully, I'll be around for the next few weeks, at least. So, here goes:                                                  

I’ve--and you!-- have to meet this guy. He’s one hell of an Aboriginal. His name is Calvin Helin, a lawyer.  I don’t frequently speak highly of lawyers. I don’t know many of them. In fact, I know only one on a personal basis and have high respect for him. The few others that I’ve met, mostly for business reasons, seem to me little more than mere money mongers.  You can have them, the whole lot. Of course, I haven’t met them all! But this Calvin is something else. I hope to get to meet him some day. 

In addition to being a lawyer, Helin is also the author of the finest, most blunt and most honest book on Aboriginal affairs I’ve ever read. This post is about what others say of his book and a high recommendation. I will soon write another post reviewing some of its contents.   

Bibliographic info:   Dances with Dependency: Indigenous Success through Self-Reliance. Vancouver: Orca Spirit Publishing and Communications, 2006.

On the front sleeve, capitals and all:

The INCREDIBLE story of the rise and fall of indigenous nations… and potential rise again. Offering REAL SOLUTIONS to indigenous and developing nations’ poverty by “just doing it.”

But don’t take it just from me. Here are the recommendations on the back sleeve that should persuade you to read it from page 1 to page 265, not counting the 27 pages of end notes. Of course, you can dismiss these recommendations as mere advertising. True, but take it from me, they totally reflect this amazingly honest book by an Aboriginal lawyer about Aboriginals. I’ve read it with deep appreciation.  If you’re at all interested in Aboriginals, especially their welfare, this is the book for you.

The first item on the back sleeve is a brief description of the book’s artwork, again, capitals and all:

A RICHLY TEXTURED work featuring 25 full page artworks on the mystical culture and cosmology of the Northwest Coast Tsimshian peoples by internationally renowed artist, BILL HELIN.

And now the recommendations:

“Calvin Helin’s Dances with Dependency offers a compelling portrayal and analysis of polverty among Canada’s indigenous people. His message of self-reliance as a way forward rests on thoughtful and creative economic strategies and offers hope in cynical times.”            

-- Joy Kogawa, nationally renowned poet and novelist

“I am awestruck by Dances with Dependency. Calvin Helin has been guided by the Raven and has managed to speak honestly and respectfully about the problems faced by Aboriginal communities. The truth strikes at the heart, and is messaged in such a way that no one can be offended. I would like to thank him, “howa’a (Haida for “thank you”), for speaking out on behalf of our youth. The book is truly beautiful. I loved the analogy of the canoe journey, it is so poignant and appropriate.”

--Kelly A. Macdonald, B.A., LL.B., LL;.M., Aboriginal Lawyer, Member of the National Parole Board, and Senior Adjudicator, Indian Residential Schools Adjudications.

“Dances with Dependency paints the most complete and honest portrait of indigenous people that has existed to date. It goes far beyond cataloging the problems to showing a path to real solutions. This book may unquestionably be the most important single piece of literature and analysis for moving indigenous people forward. It is time now to heed the call to more focused strategic action and to start making a difference now—it is time to move beyond the dependency mindset to the self-reliance of our ancestors.”

Dave Tuccaro, President of Tuccaro Inc., Group of Companies.

“All parents need to read this book. Avoiding welfare starts in the home, and the book’s message of self-reliance applies to everyone, regardless of race or country of origin.”

--John Corbiere, former Batchewana Band Chief who won the landmark Supreme Court Corbiere decision, dramatically changing the Canadian Indian Act.

I hope you get it. I can’t add anything worthwhile to this, except to summarize content materials, and that’s not the goal of this post.

Post 111—Liberal FG and Transparency

Canada underwent an election in the 2015 fall. That first sentence contains a pun, something I, along with newspaper editors, always enjoy. It was fall, that is, autumn time, but it was also the fall of the Harper Conservative government, a double fall situation. The victorious Liberals promised this was going to be a change from dark opaque government to transparency and disclosure.

The Harper Record

First of all, was the Harper government all that disastrous?  Den Tandt, whose writings I increasingly appreciate along with those of Andrew Coyne as I proceed with this blog, acknowledges that it is fashionable “to belittle and insult the outgoing PM. What good he did is forgotten amid the rush to assign blame for the loss.”  At the same time, he strongly argues that Harper’s was a government marked by “responsible fiscal management” that handed over balanced books and a growing economy.  Harper may have had his nasty dictatorial and centralizing side—and I fully agree with that—but Den Tandt’s list of five positive points for the defeated Conservative government was not balanced by a charge of lack of fiscal transparency, something he would surely have included in his article of November 2, 2015. Nasty personality? Yes, that was Harper’s downfall. But fiscal opaqueness? Lack of fiscal transparency? None of that surfaced—except of course from the victorious Liberal side. But that’s to be expected in the Canadian political culture of nastiness, blackball and blame; it has nothing to do with truth or fact.

The Transparency Tumble

      Den Tandt

Half a year after the above Den Tandt article, he wrote a column with the title “Liberals hiding budget plans.” Now that does not sound like transparency to me. So, let’s see how he unpacks this charge. There is this institution called Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) that apparently keeps an eye on the Federal budget. According to Den Tandt, this office had been given data by the Finance Department “that would have allowed for a five-year breakdown of the government’s taxing and spending plans.” However, Finance prevented PBO from releasing this data because it allegedly is “confidential.”  The problem here is that it was not deemed confidential under the Harper or even the Liberal Paul Martin regime. Den Tandt lashes out:

The fair questions, then, which only a cretin (Boer: from a Webster-- stupid, vulgar, mentally retarded) would not think to ask: Why is this information confidential now, when it was not before?  And how can this Liberal party, whose leader lashed himself to the mast of transparency long before he became PM, justify a move that appears to limit the PBO’s power to publicly dissect government projections, and thus, this independent office of parliament’s freedom of action?

The article contains more of the same. There is the talk of openness, but not the walk. There is the claim of transparency, but it is not an honest claim. Den Tandt did not expect a reasonable answer from the PM himself, for, he charges, “The PM himself responds to fair questions with the most outrageous nonsense” (VS, April 8, 2016).

      Coyne

Coyne chimed in on a similar strong, not so pleasant, note.  “The face on TV may bespeak a commitment to idealism and honesty, transparency and fairness, but the government behind it has already amassed a record od cynicism, deception, secrecy and cronyism that for most governments would take years.”  He hands us a long list of things promised on which they have reneged. I won’t go into the gory details, but, as I noted above, nothing pretty about it. Words and phrases used in his article include “political chicanery,” “carelessness,” “recklessness.” “the scent of money and expediency” that surround this government. He concludes his piece with this statement, “The Liberals are building up a deficit of trust and ethics to match the fiscal deficit. It has been just six months since they were elected” (VS, April 21, 2016).

Den Tandt and Coyne are two writers for whom I have the highest regard. They don’t play politics; they are straight shooters, the kind I go for.  All I can say is,  “Phew! Wow! Was there something substantial after all about the Conservative election claim that Trudeau was “not ready” for the PM office?” 

Aboriginal Transparency  

But to take it one step further, there’s the case with Canada’s Aboriginals. Everything one reads about them leaves the impression they wallow in poverty. That is a terrible shame, especially since the Feds pump so much money into them year after year without any apparent success in raising them up out of the poverty level. I have written earlier posts to which I refer you in which I discuss how the Harper government began insisting on disclosure on the part of the chiefs who were/are the beneficiaries of that government largess.  The reports I have read indicate that this was a good move supported by most Aboriginals, especially the commoners among them. During an RV trip to Canada’s far north some years ago, we stopped in various Aboriginal communities and spoke with some of their inhabitants. We were surprised how open they were with respect to the corruption, especially amongst their own chiefs. I could not believe how they freely volunteered such info to an unknown white couple. Things were obviously bad.

But now comes the clincher: The Trudeau government is intending to unwind that disclosure standard! Now that leaves me totally floored. Disclosure is part of the gold standard of modern progressive nations. Joe Oliver, the former Conservative Minister of Finance, writes, "The Transparency Act was designed to protect Aboriginal people" (VS, May 3, 2016). On what basis would one lower a demand for disclosure when, as has been revealed abundantly, that many Aboriginal chiefs receive millions while their people live in absolute misery. The documentation is there all over the place for people to see.

I am simply dumbfounded! 

I need to change to another subject, for I don’t want to be seen as a negative politician who loves to berate the current government.  I surely don’t. I am basically a positive citizen who appreciates good government, but what we’re facing now seems to be something else!

Post 88—Den Tandt’s Ecumenical Remedy (continued)

This is a continuation of yesterday's discussion of Michael Den Tandt's remedy for religious fundamentalism.

Den Tandt’s remedy, you may recall, is to recognize and act upon “the commonality of the religious experience,” something that is acknowledged by a wide range of scholars. He regards this “remarkable.” I similarly recognize certain commonalities all religions share in some way.  Den Tandt attributes this commonality or ecumenicity to “something in the human condition that gravitates to spiritual experience.” I agree with that assertion. We Christians attribute this to creation: We were created with a wired-in predisposition towards religious experience, in fact, towards God Himself. That, in fact, is the very reason for our creation or existence. In spite of my love for philosophical speculation, I am not much of a philosopher. Nevertheless, I kind of like Den Tandt’s reference to Dean Hamer, an American geneticist, who theorizes that this human gravitation towards the spiritual has a “biological source” residing in our DNA that he calls the “God gene.” I have not read Hamer’s writings and so do not know the details of his theory. If I had read his stuff and knew the details, I might reject his all of his assertions. However, without knowing those details, I am favourably inclined towards this alleged “God gene.”  Why not? 

Now to many people, giving spirituality a biological or physical base may seem unorthodox and even highly heretical. Spirituality with a physical base?  Most of us Westerners especially walk around with a dualism between spirituality and the physical. We place a distance between them and never the twain shall meet. That is of the essence of Secularism. It is part of our Western world view that we simply assume without ever examining it. But if God has created us for the specific purpose of serving and worshiping Him, if that’s what we were made to do, then why dismiss a physical side to our spirituality deep down in our psyche or our mind?  Spirituality and the physical are simply two sides of the one coin of reality. They always go together. North American Aboriginals, Traditional Africans and all other Animists reject this Western secular bifurcation or separation. So does the Bible. The Bible is more on the side of Aboriginals, Traditionalists and Animists in this regard than on the side of Secularists and the majority of Christians who are influenced by Secularism. So, yes, there may well be such a thing as a physical “God gene.”  The notion of creation seems to allow it not only but may even demand it. However, I stand to be corrected, especially by Christian thinkers who have not bought into this Western secular bifurcation.

So, we affirm with Den Tandt a level of commonality among the various religions and world views. Many of them, including “explicitly non-religious traditions,” hold to a “cluster of beliefs that insists on exclusivity.”  They will argue that Jesus or Muhammad or Buddah is the only way to salvation.  Even the (in)famous atheist biologist Richard Dawkins insists that “every way of understanding reality but his own is wrong.” In other words, such exclusivity is, in Den Tandt’s own words, part of that commonality, is embedded in it. On what basis then does Den Tandt separate them, accept the positive but reject the negative that is just as much part of the equation?  Why grudgingly “respect cultural differences but celebrate commonality” when they both together constitute that commonality?  This stance seems similar to many African governments that, in their quest for national unity, want to excise tribal consciousness by pretending that tribes do not exist. You try to create unity by disregarding or even denying one of the most important components in the equation. Den Tandt seems to want to create an ecumenical culture of commonality by simply excising, denying or negating the part of it he dislikes, without giving a reason.

He clinches his argument by proposing we “accept that religious systems exist and evolve,” but without claiming to “owning exclusive rights to the truth, which is to say none.”  But how does this apply to Den Tandt’s own position? If no one has “exclusive rights,” on what basis does he?  I am reminded of one of his colleagues at the Vancouver Sun who some years ago declared pompously that there is no absolute truth. I sent her a quick note challenging the inconsistency of this statement. Denial of absolute truth is itself an absolute declaration! She responded with a mere “Oops,” as if she merely had made a logical slip. I responded to her that hers was no mere logical slip; it was a  total inconsistency inherent in her world view. Since she did not continue the discussion, it stopped right there. Well, it seems to me that Den Tandt is doing something similar. By denying everyone the exclusive right to the truth, he is denying his own as well!

Michael, I appreciate the courage you display in proposing a remedy for religious fundamentalism. We need it badly and any attempt at it should be taken seriously and with appreciation--but also weighed seriously.  You need to rethink your commonality. Thanks for trying and for challenging me. You readers, this is an important issue. I invite, nay urge, you to weigh in with your comments.

Post 57--"Precious Resource" Revisited

The California drought gets plenty of media attention, not only in CA itself but also in other jurisdictions, certainly in BC. Our BC interest in the subject is due to the sharp increase in the price of  CA-grown fruit and vegetables that we consume in our province. We are confronted by the CA situation every day as we look for bargains in the local vegetable market just around the corner from us. It’s not a pretty scene for us seniors who are on fixed incomes nor, I’m sure, for working parents with growing children.

But as we speak, we have our own drought in BC to cope with as well. We depend for our water on two sources, snow on the mountains and plenty of rain forest precipitation. This year, we are short on both. Snow was so sparse that ski resorts had to occasionally shut down, a most unusual situation for us here.  And while we could somehow afford to truck in snow from more than a 150 kilometres away for the winter Olympics back in 2010…. Yes, truck in snow!  Ever heard of that?  Usually if there’s snow trucking to be done, it’s to get rid of it. Not in 2010. We had to truck it in! Imagine! And all that expense just so a few—probably less than 200?—die-hard winter sports activists can have their moment of fame after spending most of their lives on a few snow-oriented acrobatic exercises. Was that worth all that expense? That’s for another post someday.

Sorry, got so carried away about that snow trucking—pun intended—that I  didn’t even complete that sentence. Left you in the snow, so to speak. While we managed to pay for trucking snow for the Olympics, we couldn’t this past winter. What does that tell you? Could we draw the conclusion that the Olympics and its economy are more important than the daily lives of ordinary citizens under routine circumstances?  At any rate, the point is we got a lot less snow last winter with the result that there is less snow to melt and fill up our reservoirs.  For winter sport enthusiasts as well as for the tourist industry, it was kind of a disaster, while the rest of us enjoyed a very mild winter, milder even than we are accustomed to in the south-west of the province.  Alas, now we are paying for it, literally.  We are short of the precious stuff. 

Added to that fiasco—not sure “added” is the right word here—is the greatly reduced rain fall in spring and summer. We’ve just had gorgeous weather and lots of sunshine, but, again, no rain, no water. The only thing we have more of is drought. What we also have more of this summer is fires, forest fires over the top, throughout much of Western Canada. We always have forest fires in the summer, but this year all budgets have been far overspent and an unusual number of communities evacuated.

One of the worst features of the current fire scene is that, according to reports, many of them are caused by humans. Some by careless smokers who stupidly—and I use that word advisedly, for my daughter has forbidden her children to use the word—throw their butts (note the double “t’s”!) out of their car windows. Should these people be hanged, as a display along the Princeton Highway some decades ago used to “advocate”?

Others are lit intentionally! Not just one or two, but a large number of them! Can you imagine anything more fiendish than that? I am reminded of our RV trip to the far Canadian north, when we had a long and amicable chat with a couple of Aboriginals. They told us that their summer employment mostly consisted of fighting forest fires. What about summers with only a few fires? we asked. No problem. They would just light them!  Not having walked in their moccasins, I would not apply the term “fiendish” to them. I have no idea whether any of our 2015 fires are from Aboriginal arson or not. Of course, political correctness being alive and well in the country’s media, they would not likely report such if it were. 

All of the above was to lead me into the subject of water preservation. Stream of consciousness led me to and around the subject but not into it. With my apologies. Call it a human interest post, if you like. But I really should get into the preservation thing before all our water gets used up! So, that will be next. Or should I say “That should be next?  See you there, but don’t wait for my instructions re. water preservation. I’m sure you can think of some ways yourself. Do it! Now! We’re in a precarious situation.  Think of ten small ways in which you, yes, you, can reduce your use of water and then do it.