Post 129 –Calvin Helin’s Aboriginal Critique and Solution

Back in Post 123 on August 30, I wrote about Calvin Helin, to whom I referred as one hell of an Aboriginal whom I really want to meet some day.  I sort of half promised that I would one day give you a few summaries from the book he wrote, Dances with Dependency. It is the most honest and most brutal book about Aboriginals I have ever read—and Helin is an Aboriginal. His stuff is from the inside, from the cradle of his own people. 

So, here’s the very first paragraph of text from the Preface, the opening salvo, if you like:

The purpose of this book is to look at practical ways to move indigenous populations forward. Money has been liberally thrown at Indian problems with nominal impact. Neither mainstream nor indigenous politics has had lasting widespread impact on improving the lives of ordinary indigenous folk, no matter how many hyped political announcements and other solutions have been touted. It is time to look at the problems and issues at the broadest level in order to seek general solutions that might be tailored to the different circumstances of Tribes now.

I expect every person of goodwill will shout an affirmative “Amen!” to this opening salvo. “Money liberally thrown” with little impact—that sounds like the sad case of Vancouver’s Down Town East Side, where a million is being spent every day with little or no impact over the years.

Moving on to p. 25, after he gives a short vivid description of the traditional and comparatively sophisticated economics and politics of his people along the coast of British Columbia, he writes:

My father was a commercial fisherman and a fine one. Though he had made a good life for our family, I was well aware that life in an Aboriginal Indian reserve had a very sinister side to it. Such a bad environment has persisted so long in most Aboriginal communities that many Aboriginal  people have, over generations, been socialized into thinking that this widespread dysfunction is normal. Imagine a situation where tragically high youth suicide rates, gross unemployment figures, frequent banana republic-style corruption, and persistent abuse—both substance and physical—prevail, and you might begin to understand what life is like on many Aboriginal reserves.

Towards the end of Chapter 1, Helin presents us with a general journey that Aboriginals must embark upon with the concrete details worked out in the rest of his book. Here are some of his phrases and statements from pp. 36 and 39: 

“Aboriginal citizens must…squarely face the Industry of Non-Aboriginal Hucksters, and ‘consultants,’ and those Aboriginal politicians who are openly profiting from this sea of despair and poverty. In spite of what they say, this ‘Indian Industry’ has no real interest in changing a system from which they are profiting.”

“the unkind hands of the welfare trap.”

Families are falling “as casualties of a fatal ‘welfare syndrome’—one that is literally stealing the lives and hopes of our future generation….”

“We must shake off the apathy of what has become an all too comfortable ‘cloak of welfare’….”

With reference to the economic opportunities available to his people, he writes, “To exploit these opportunities will require a fundamental change in the dependency mindset of Aboriginal people. For lasting solutions, decisions have to come from Aboriginal people themselves. Aboriginals have to consciously choose a more beneficial path than the dependency course they are currently on—and have the conviction to live with the consequences.”

The pursuit of economic opportunities before them, “could lead to the Holy Grail of rediscovered independence and self-reliance. It is time to re-take control of our lives from government departments, bureaucrats and the Indian Industry.”

Well, if you think the above sentiments and observations are racist, coming as they do at this point from a Caucasian writer, you’ll have to take it up with Helin himself, a man with all of his roots deeply entangled with Aboriginal history and culture—and, I should emphasize, full of passionate love for his  people. I suppose you could push this a bit farther by saying that my choosing to quote all this and bring it to a wider public is racist. Well, go ahead, if that makes you feel better.

I have long been concerned with the state of the Aboriginal people in Canada. In fact, when I first returned to Canada as a “retired” person after 43 years, I actually hoped to do a serious study on the subject and publish its result. Because of my life’s work, I ended up focusing on Islam and wrote a series of eight books along with quite a number of articles on that subject, all of which are available to you free of charge on the Islamica page of my website < SocialTheology.com.> So, I never got around to Aboriginal issues, but I have a large archive of Aboriginal articles collected for that purpose. If any reader is interested in that archival material, contact me. I am prepared to donate them it of charge to any party who is seriously involved in Aboriginal affairs, especially Aboriginals themselves, even more especially to Helin, who has become a hero of mine. If any reader knows him, please draw his attention to my offer and to these posts in this blog.  

Post 109—Transparency Revisited

Happy and Unhappy

Transparency is once again an “in” topic.  On the one hand that makes me happy, for it seems governments and their agencies at all levels constantly need to be pushed towards transparency.  So I’m happy that people keep pushing it. On the other hand, it makes me unhappy, for why should governments and their agencies need constant pushing?  Why don’t they just be up front with how they spend the people’s money without being pushed, without needing laws to force them—and then still try to squeak by with all kinds of tricks, legal or otherwise? This makes me not only unhappy, but actually raving mad, angry, and every synonym along this line you can think of. Any official elected or appointed who resists transparency in my book does not deserve to continue in his/her post, let alone be re-elected or re-appointed. It should be the natural thing to do and done automatically without discussion. 

The Vancouver Situation

The latest local development took place in Vancouver’s City Hall last week. Opposition Councilor George Affleck put a motion to the Council asking that the Mayor disclose all of his expenses, including so-called discretionary funds, on a quarterly basis.  He wants the same for the councilors.

It’s a simple matter of yes or no, Affleck argues. Are you going to disclose or not? Why not? he asks. “Be transparent about it. If you think it’s what you need to operate your office, then what’s there to hide? Just let us know and justify it to us.”  Indeed, seems simple doesn’t it?  It should be, of course. On what basis can anyone refuse and still be trusted?  It should not take a motion  or a freedom of information request. It should be out there for anyone to access without any hindrances put in the way.  Alas.

It’s not that the Vancouver City Council does not practice any disclosure.  Most expenses by the councillors are disclosed quarterly, but not those of the Mayor’s office. Nevertheless, however the information was gained, the article discloses some of the Mayor’s spending. Mike Magee, the Mayor’s outgoing chief of staff, indicated that he had approved some of these expenditures and that “they all meet auditing scrutiny.”  I am more than happy to recognize that things are on the up and up. But still, why this hesitancy concerning full, regular and automatic disclosure?  It only arouses suspicion on the part of the tax payer—and the electorate is sure to remember at the crucial time.  (See Matt Robinson, “Councillor pushing mayor to disclose all office expenses,” Vancouver Sun [VS] of April 29, 2016.) 

Fortunately, it turns out that the Mayor is backing Affleck’s motion. He claims pretty well every expenditure is already reported and publicly available. Affleck’s motion will bring “an added layer of transparency to City Hall,” he said.  In spite of this mayoral explanation, “It took a protracted effort by a local journalist to obtain those records under Freedom of Information rules.”  (Anonymous Brief in VS, April 30, 2016, p. A10). I would expect that with this kind of mayoral support, such information will from now on be readily available to anyone. That would be an unusual situation. Maybe the Vancouver City Council will one of these days be featured in Guinness’ Book of World Records? In view of the Mayor’s almost childish eagerness to have Vancouver recognized as a “world-class” city and his strenuous efforts in that direction, one could argue he deserves it.

Now the above issue is mostly, it seems, one of principle. Disclosure is just the right thing to do. There is no indication of massive corruption in Vancouver. I for one, deeply appreciate that. Although I do wonder sometimes about corruption in the relationship between the City Council and Councilors on the one hand and developers on the other hand, but that's another, though related, issue.

The Quebec Situation

But there are other and larger issues of disclosure in other structures in the country where it is more serious, where it is not merely a matter of principle but of resistance to disclosure because of massive fraud. Of course, this has long been a serious problem in the province of Quebec, but I have not followed that very closely. It’s so far removed geographically from where I live here on the West Coast, even though I know that indirectly that affects me also by way of Federal transfers to the provinces of huge sums of money. But in spite of Quebec’s massive fraud, the average citizen there still lives a fairly comfortable life. Brian Lee Crowley, author of the Canadian game changing book Fearful Symmetry, asserts that “If Canada were removed from the equation, in 1953 Quebec’s income per person would have made it the second-richest society in the world after the United States” (p. 69)!  Now who would have ever thought that of our poor abused and mistreated Quebec. 

I suggested above that people will remember such issues at election time. But now I ask, “Will they really?  Michael Den Tandt is much more on top of these things than I am. Speaking of federal budgets, he writes bluntly, “Nobody cares.” He writes that “the most notable about…critical post-mortems of the Trudeau…first budget” is precisely that: “No one cares” (“Liberals hiding budget plans,” VS, April 8, 2016). 

Let’s sleep on that one and take it up from here in Post 110. 

Post 68--A Change of Scenery--From Vancouver to Lagos

I believe most of you know this blog originates in Vancouver, Canada. Well, I am currently in Lagos, the former political capital of Nigeria and now the commercial capital.  The political capital has been shifted to Abuja,  a city built from scratch in the  middle of the country, said to be the biggest construction project in all human history!  Well, that’s Nigeria. Like the USA, the bigger the better. I’m here together with my wife, visiting our youngest son and his family—for a whole month! 

I’m not sure when I can actually post this post, what with less than a stellar quality computer and a fickle electrical supply. Every time the main electrical net decides to take a break, and that happens several times a day, we get switched to a huge generator within twenty seconds. However, every switch one way or the other, turns off the computer.  It being a decrepit machine, it sometimes takes close to an hour for it to recover from the shock-- pun intended. In addition, so far, we have not been able to access the internet, which is a sine qua non for getting this post to your screen. So, while I hope to keep writing while here, I’m not sure when you’ll get to read it. Perhaps not till we return to Vancouver in mid-October.  Hopefully, before then.  At least, when you do finally read it, you’ll realize we did not forget about you, our readers.

I regret I did not warn you of this trip. I simply did not foresee these problems. I had been assured we would have access to a working computer. Well, we do, but the two factors described in the last paragraph have thrown a rod into our plans to keep in touch with you. Hopefully, it won’t be as bad or as long as I now fear could become the case.  I just have to trust that you’ll have the patience to sit it out and stick with me.

I had a different topic in mind for this installment, but having started with Nigeria, I have just decided to stick with it. After all, Nigeria is a fascinating country, in spite of its reputation for corruption. Perhaps you have at one time or another been the beneficiary of Nigeria’s famous scam letters. Well, yes, more than one of its Presidents has declared corruption one of the country’s two major problems, the other being religious conflict. Those are the two topics for which the country is the most “famous.” However, my son works at the highest echelon of the Lagos business world and insists that today’s Nigeria has started a new trajectory, a new story of vigorous business that, he is sure, will invigorate the country’s business culture to heights it has never before experienced. In fact, he is playing a major role in making this happen. I write this with great pride in him, especially because he has frequently told me that his ministry is really a natural extension of my 30-year ministry in the country.

Yes, I use the word “ministry” in describing his work of invigorating business.  For one thing, his is a not-for-profit enterprise in the context of a large Nigerian foundation. But even if it were a for-profit outfit, that in itself would not disqualify it from being a ministry. Secondly, his personal motivation comes from his Christian faith.  During my missionary career, I was getting paid by the church; he, by this big foundation.  However, our motivations are similar.  As both a professional missionary and an academic missiologist, I warmly consider him a colleague of mine in the service of the Kingdom of God. 

Of course, if you remember some of my past posts, you may recollect that I insist that religion is part of and underlies all of life, including business. That’s the reason I often and easily switch from religious topics to “other” topics.  In fact, every post of mine has this religious base, mentioned or not. I may b e writing about water topics, but underneath it you will always find Christian concepts of conservation, responsibility, stewardship, justice, etc.  Same with topics like business or, for that matter, even  politics.  So, yes, my son is engaged in a ministry.

Oh, yes, Nigeria. Well, not much space left for this particular post. So, just a few interesting facts, some of them for your trivial pursuit games. Nigeria is the only country where you have around 80 million Christians and 80 million Muslims—two large equal sized blocks. In no other country is there such a constellation of these two religions. In most cases it is a matter of a large majority and a small minority of either. China may have more Christians and perhaps even more Muslims—I have not seen Chinese Muslim statistics—but they would both be overshadowed by the influence of Confucianism and the power of Chinese Communism.  Nigeria is the country where it will be decided whether these two religions can co-exist as equals.  That, by the way, is the major issue in my eight volumes Studies in Christian-Muslim Relations. See the Islamica page on my website  <www.SocialTheology.com>.

If the above is not exactly a trivial pursuit issue, the next one is. What is the largest country that has English as its official  language? From the context you will guess it is Nigeria. Correct.  But can you explain this trivial fact?  Another: What country sees the most Anglicans in church on any given Sunday?  Yes, ….!

This does it for the day. See you when I can get this into cyberland. Hope you're still with me. I will try to make up for this extended delay by churning out new posts more frequently, at least for a while. Hey, am I back in the promise mode? Not intended, really.