Appo wrote:Ibrahim wrote:This screed is comical for three reasons.
1. Appo still thinks he's a credible source on First Nations issues, despite exposing his tragic ignorance of the subject in post after post, not to mention his admitted personal biases. He also refers to some hearsay version of the "blood quantum" system used in the US, but didn't bother to Google it.
We once had a discussion about this. The situation is complicated. You won't find out much by looking at Wikipedia. I was even a bit surprised to find the facts that I posted from that source regarding this issue. If you look on the websites for individual bands you will sometimes get some additional information, although almost all bands are extremely secretive about everything connected with their operation, most especially anything related to finances and numbers and status of band members.
This claim is false. 1. most bands or organization provide information for membership application, which includes criteria for membership as they are required to do by law, and 2. is subject to review by the relevant Provincial government. Furthermore, the membership rolls and records and supporting documentation for each member are subject to audit at any time.
Financial information is another matter.
2. He believes he can determine who is a "real Indian" based on some kind of blood test, and that people would fake this because of... all the BENEFITS of being First Nations in Canada today.
So you don't think there are any benefits to being a Status Indian?
Some. So you don't think there is any downside to being a Status Indian?
The Canadian government begs to differ. So do most First Nations peoples. It's a remarkable demonstration of your ignorant and racist attitudes that you don't think anyone would want to claim Aboriginal heritage.
A false mischaracterization of my statements, and furthermore you provided no evidence of widespread membership fraud, and you falsely stated the ability of bands to conceal their membership criteria.
If you are a Canadian of First Nations heritage, the world is your oyster.
Comical racist fantasy, as anybody who has spent even the most trivial amount of time on a reservation or working with First Nations organizations can tell you. Its a common trope in anti-First Nations racism that they are simultaneously degraded as inferior but also somehow possessing a series of unfair advantages and entitlements, which they of course squander due to their inferiority.
It's "in" to be Native. I couldn't expect you to know that. You've never met a Native Canadian. It can be an enormous advantage to be able to claim Aboriginal decent, even if you have to use a little creativity in your genealogy. Businesses and government are on the look-out for anyone with Aboriginal connections who they can add to their team. Look at Harper's government: he's got a disproportionate number of the most incompetent amongst them working for him. If you're not a real go-getter but you can play along with the chief and his clique, at least well enough to show up and applaud him at a Pow Wow, you'll get by.
In all honestly, this is one of the dumbest non-monster_gardener screeds I've ever read on this forum. It sounds like something from a white supremacist website, and is truly beneath contempt. I'd break down all the factual errors but you don't really present any facts here, just a bunch of weird claims that I could have heard at a truck stop. The way you juxtapose your pseudo-intellectualism and cut-pasting of various last-generation anthropologists with this kind of low-brow skinhead talk is jarring.
I've got another bus story for you, Ibrahim. I overheard two Natives in their mid-twenties in conversation at the bus stop. The one had become a welder and was trying to convince the other to take a six months course (which is paid for by band from federal funds) and then start work on projects that give preferential hiring opportunities to First Nations applicants. The pay is 90 dollars an hour, and you don't even have to move anywhere exotic and expensive. It's in the ship-building industry.
So your objection here is what?
1. the rate of pay for certified welders
2. First Nations people becoming welders
3. First Nations people having post-secondary education subsidized by the government as part of the Indian Act
Ibrahim wrote:So what did we learn from Appo for far: "Most injuns aren't real injuns because they don't have enough injun blood, but even the real injuns got no complaint against the gubbermint because we conquered 'em and they wouldda froze anyhow so the gubbermint can kill as many as they want, and I saw a drunk one on the bus and he didn't even call me SIR and... oops, gotta go. My bus is here!"
Apart from my own experiences, which are wide and deep, my dearest friends have decades of experience working with Native education in this province in diverse settings, both rural and urban.
As someone who has had close contacts with Native peoples for decades, I can tell you is that the level of corruption in these bands is extremely high. Most Indian reserves in Canada are run as little fiefs by a select group, usually one or two families.
If any of this is true, why do you not know basic facts about how the government and bands assess membership? And why would you only bring up the subject to argue that these people who are lagging behind in every development metric that exists are getting such a sweet ride? All your claims are contrary to basic fact, except for the general statement that there is "a lot of corruption on reservations," which is a claim that is axiomatic in Canada and just kind of comes as a package deal with all the other ones you hurl around.
The delineation of various segments of Native bands in B.C. (and elsewhere) does give one pause. I'm wondering if we are seeing a re-establishment of the kinds of distinctions seen in Aboriginal societies in pre-contact time, where, for example, the Tsimshian noted smkiket 'real people' and liqakiket 'other people', and lower down on the totem pole, wah'a'ayin 'unhealed people' or 'people without origin' (which reminds me of the current phrase for people who are members of the band but of "non-Aboriginal identity") while at the bottom were xa - slaves. Ibrahim appears to be very offended by the term "blood". Substitute the word "identity".
I wasn't offended by the term "blood," just pointing out that you were previously describing an American system of determining native status that isn't used here. That was before you made a different set of false claims about how status is determined in Canada. If you were smart enough to Google it I expect you would have gotten it right in the second try, but we'll wait for attempt number three.
As for tribes historically possessing slaves and having rigid social castes and wars with neighbors, I can only wonder at the mind that thinks this is a condemnation of First Nations civilization and history while extolling
European history as somehow different or superior. Somehow it is natural for European society to have, then not have, slavery. But this is alien and wrong for First Nations, and de-legitimizes their entire existence. An argument so illogical and arbitrary that you typically only see it from the boots and braces crowd. Where are you getting this stuff?
If this were merely an exercise in who had the right to a clan crest or inheritance of family property, no one would much care who was adopted into a Native band beyond the kind of rules that are applicable for family inheritance for Canadians at large. However, since First Nations peoples receive special grants, exemptions, and privileges over and above what someone who is *merely* Canadian gets, one wonders whether there should be some qualification and oversight of the process.
This paragraph is non-sequitur. You are referencing your false claims about determining status, and your false claims about the desirability of being First Nations (love that lower life expectancy, really dig those suicide and addiction rates), as though they were somehow related to this precis of the social castes of Northwestern Coastal tribes. Please explain how these unrelated concepts fit together in your understanding. If they do.
I've mentioned how Native bands are exempt from environmental regulations, taxes, zoning laws, and even the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Recently it came to my attention that people renting a home or apartment on a reserve, you are not protected by provincial rent controls which cap increases at a relatively small rate of increase each year.
Actually that cap only applies to buildings built before 2002, but otherwise you are technically correct about jurisdiction. This is the essential point of their "nationhood" as outlined in the Constitution, upheld by the Supreme Court, and recognized by British and then Canadian authorities dated back to the 18th century.
If you're gay or a pretty young girl or just don't get along with the right people, and living on a reserve in Canada, you are more likely to be abused than you ever were at a Residential School.
You love Residential Schools so much! You threw a tantrum when I posted a story about the thousands they killed, and argued that it didn't matter because those dead children would have frozen to death anyhow. Now you mention - without statistics - that rates of sexual abuse on reservations (something typically linked to poverty and substance abuse) are greater than those in Residential Schools as some kind of... I'm not sure what exactly. I guess you feel like its a defense of those institutions that crimes also exist outside of them.
This is a strange and ugly obsession you have. Truly malicious, and based on a large number of objectively false claims.
wind from the south blows over your BBQ.........
