Indigenous Women - Foundation to Economy and Nationhood

I just attended the awareness march/rally for missing and murdered women (well over 600 now with no public inquiry, no police action, no arrests, mostly Indigenous women). The health of a nation, including its economy, depends on the health if its women.

Many of our Indigenous nations are suffering. The women in our nations are often the most impoverished... period. According to Statistics Canada data (contained in this fact sheet), nearly half of all Indigenous women live in poverty with the average ANNUAL incomes of a mere $13,300 – over $6,000 lower than non Indigenous women.

A sign that I saw one of the women holding said it all:

“Indigenous women are the heart of our families”

They are not only the heart of our families, but our very nations. Yet, how many women are recognized in leadership roles? How many are able to get into that old boys club that came as a “gift” from our colonial oppressors?

Why is it that our women are the ones being so systematically targeted? Not just by killers, but by poverty, and prison. Poverty and prison go hand in hand. Take for example Geraldine Beardy from Winnipeg. She was living in poverty and hungry. She was caught stealing a can of lunch meat by the store owner. The store owner beat her, after which, she fled for her life and later died in the hospital.

What justice was meted out for this beautiful Indigenous woman? NOTHING. All charges against the murderer were dropped (article here).

What if Geraldine had not been killed? She would have been punished by a justice system designed to discriminate against the poor. Indigenous women are increasingly being institutionalized. Between 1996 and 2002 the number of Indigenous women in Federal prisons increased by 36.7% (see this report http://www.laa.gov.nl.ca/laa/naws/pdf/nwac-legal.pdf). Since the Conservatives’ new crime, punishment and prison agenda, this rate is only expected to grow.

Injustice against our Indigenous women is not new. It has been a constant weapon against our nations for decades, if not longer. Many may remember the outrage of the story of Helen Betty Osborne and the utter failure of the justice system to help or protect Indigenous women in any way. This outrage sparked the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in the 1990’s, and yet very few of the recommendations were really implemented.

Now all of these examples and discussions are the “big” items: murders, crimes, and injustice. Yet our women face sexism, and racism and a constant barrage of put-downs that seek to kill their spirits.

A young Indigenous woman made this video to illustrate what our beautiful Indigenous women are put through on a daily basis.

The danger in all of this is that we lose the heart of our nations and our families – our Indigenous women. They are critical to our cultures, our next generations, and our national well-being (which includes our Indigenous economies). A growing body of research worldwide (one report here and here) has recognized that investing in women is the best ROI (if you excuse me using an annoying capitalist term).

Indigenous women are the hearts of our nations.

So what can we do? I will speak for a moment to Indigenous men.

You want to be a warrior? Then you better respect women. Defend them against racists and ignorant buffoons. Discourage men from making sexist or lewd jokes. See the true beauty of Indigenous women. They are not objects. They are women with dreams, aspirations, wisdom, love, a past and a future.

Be a listener and hear them out. Do your share of work around the home and with kids. Participate in rallies, educate people, and spread the word to raise awareness.

The greatest and most powerful action a modern warrior can take is to raise up our Indigenous women.

When our women rise up, our families will be strong, our nations will rise up, and our economic well-being will follow. This is the foundation and starting point for our Indigenous nations and our Indigenous economies.

Indigenous Thinkers

Over the past few months I have been inspired, honoured with learning from so many great Indigenous thinkers.

For starters, there has been so many great discussions in my LinkedIn Group, Indigenous Economic Development. Generally speaking, everyone is in agreement that economic development is important. However, there are many different approaches to this.

For starters, the word "development" itself carries colonial baggage - often used to mean resource development or development of mechanisms by which a financial profit can be gained from the Earth. Terminology and baggage aside, there is also a tension between colonial (aka mainstream or Western) approaches and culture/tradional ways of life.

In fact, many people often believe that culture and economy are disjoint. The fact is that they are not. Even colonial nations have culture embedded within their economies. The first problem is that economy takes the driver seat and priority over culture. The second problem is that colonial culture intentionally places a greater importance on profit and financial gain than culture, environment, people.

What has set Indigenous peoples apart is that their approach ensures that economy is NOT the driver. Rather each sphere of life plays an interconnected role. Culture, Social, Recreation, Economy, Health, etc., all play a role, holistically, to ensure balanced prosperity of person, spirit, nature.

When you really think about it, what price are we willing to pay for "successful" economic development? Are we willing to adopt colonial practices at the cost of our cultures, our ways of life?

What if we didn't have to adopt colonial practices to be thriving, people, fully meeting our potential? What if we didnt have to sacrifice our culture, our ways of life, our spirits to be "successful?"

Here is what I'm thinking. First we need to define what success means to us. Then we need to articulate how we can meet our needs (core meaning of economy) in a way that honours our ways of life, our cultures, our languages even.

In a future post, I would like to begin diving into this in greater detail. Through your comments/feedback, and through learning from the many great thinkers and leaders I am blessed to be contact with.

Brave new world... without the Indian Act

One of the most significant factors affecting Indigenous economic development in Canada has been the Indian Act. The Indian Act has often been described as the most racist, draconian piece of legislation in the modern world.

The Indian Act took away the economic rights and freedoms of entire peoples. It took away their identities and, to this day, retains the power of identification in the hands of the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Under the Indian Act, Indigenous people were banned from conducting business, unless all revenues and profits ran through the Indian agent first. Indigenous people were banned from employment, from university and higher education, from stores unless they had specialized written permission from the Indian agents.

The effect to this day has been that the establishment of a business on reserve (land that should be held by First Nations, but is instead held 'in trust' by Canada) takes 6-10 years. The same type of business off reserve can be established in 1-3 years.

The Indian Act equated Indigenous people with persons of insanity and without mental capacities to decide for themselves. It declared Indigenous people as less than human. This same Act was used as the model and basis for South African Apartheid. The treatment of Indigenous peoples as prescribed by the Indian Act formed part of the inspiration of Hitler for his program of genocide against the Jewish people.

For many years, at hundreds of conferences, talks, forums, and gatherings; in hundreds of articles, research papers, studies, reports and reviews, the message has been clear: the racist Indian Act must be repealed.

This month, First Nation chiefs from across Canada met with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, after many years of requesting such a meeting, but being blown off. At this gathering, Harper stated "To be sure, our government has no grand scheme to repeal or to unilaterally re-write the Indian Act: After 136 years, that tree has deep roots."

First, let us consider the logic behind this.

Indian Act is racist.
Racist legislation is written by racist people.
Indian Act is also legislation.
--------------------------------------------
Therefore, the people who wrote the Indian Act were racist.

The Indian Act was written a long time ago.
Since the people who wrote it were racist, Canada has been historically racist.
--------------------------------------------
Harper states that since Canada has always been racist, we should continue that tradition because it "has deep roots."

Think of the inconsistency here. The Conservatives decry certain practices around the world like genital mutilation of girls, and rightfully so. However, if we apply the same logic Harper uses, we would conclude: "Since certain countries have always practiced genital mutilation, we should continue this historically wrong practice because it has deep traditional roots."

Putting Harper's promise to continue using racist legislation aside, for sake of argument I will assume he is fearful, politically, of how to go about repealing the Indian Act and what that will mean - fear of the unknown. Discussions about removing the Indian Act are not new and there have been some politicians who attempted to venture down this road in the past (Nault, Chretien). All prior efforts failed and met intense political fallout.

People, Canadians and Indigenous people alike, hold some fear of a world unknown - a world without the Indian Act prescribing the delicate relationship between First Nations and Canada.

I believe that this fear is unfounded and held in check by a misplaced focus. I will explain this with an analogy. Suppose a person purchases a sizable lot with a house and moves into it. At some point, he realises that this house is of such bad quality that it is a wonder it still stands. What is the sensible thing to do? He begins to make plans for a new home. He designs the new home to accommodate all of his needs and begins construction of the new. Once it is ready, he moves into it and tears down the old house.

What he does NOT do, is tear the old house down without any plans for a new house.

THIS is the problem we face today. In all of the discussions that I have ever heard regarding the Indian Act, it is about tearing the old house down without any thought or discussion on what the new house should look like.

I believe that the discussions today should focus on the development of what is needed if there is no Indian Act. Once this is done, the fear of the unknown is removed since we will have begun to map out the future, making it known. If it is designed first, in partnership between the Federal government and First Nations, there will be no gap when the Indian Act is actually abolished. It would mean that people can get to the point where repealing the Indian Act is not only possible, but rather simple.

Motivation

When I think back to Indigenous nations and tribes before contact, there is ample evidence of communities of people who were thriving, busy, hard working. When I think back on the rise of other communities and towns here in Manitoba (Winnipeg, Steinbach, Brandon, etc.), I again see people who were thriving, busy and hard working. They did not have all of the modern conveniences we have today and life was definitely more challenging, but they did it. They succeeded in developing communities and many elders still alive can recount many fond memories, despite the "challenges" of not having our modern conveniences.

What did they have in common? What can we learn from our ancestors?

First, one thing that they did have in common is the fact that there was no vast government across the whole of northern Turtle Island (what is now referred to as Canada). This meant that the people did not have some large structure with a pool of funds and resources to draw upon for assistance in a project. If a project was to be undertaken, the community of people had to employ strategies that they, themselves could implement.

On an individual level, leaders of the time were spokespeople, not slaves, not maintenance workers, not resident handy-man. So, if someone needed something done (food hunted or gathered for supper, clothing for the family, proper lodging, etc.), they had to do it themselves. They might have asked for help, or they may have sought out a mentor to help them learn a particular skill or they may have bartered with others for the expertise they needed.

Another common element among these communities, whether they were settlers or Indigenous communities, is that they understood the importance of supporting one another within the community. Success was clearly defined as being broader than individual success. They also understood that people had inherent value. A community is formed of people, not of money, resources, or material assets. With each person having a gift to share and skills to benefit the community, the concept of "unemployment" as we experience today did not exist. Equally so, the concept of vindictively withholding support for a fellow community member's skill was virtually unheard of.

It wasn't so much that the people of the past were necessarily perfect or entirely altruistic. The circumstances of the time demanded that they work together, support one another, and ensure success for each other as a group. Today, circumstances are such that we have a false sense of security. We believe that the success of our neighbour, or lack thereof, has little to do with our own potential for success. The result is a society made of disconnected individuals, loosely bound by politic structures (ie. Canada is a political creation).

In this society it is easy to pursue selfishly individualistic definitions of success. It is easy to withdraw support for a neighbour's skill or business over a petty disagreement or an equally petty sense of jealousy. It is easy to avoid our neighbours, or to ignore the plight of others in our society. It is easy to turn a blind eye to economic exclusion of others in the belief that their misfortune has no effect on our own destiny.

Comparing the past to the present, the key variance that comes to mind summarized in one word - motivation. There are a few angles on this to explore. First, having motivation itself is critical to economic engagement. If I have no motivation to work to seek food, I won't. Worse still if I live in a system that provides my needs without pushing me with any incentive to engage in any form of economic activity at all. As any successful entrepreneur or business person will tell you, the difference between success and failure is heavily influenced by the level of motivation.

Motivation is what drives people to do things. We have a need to fill, which motivates us to seek ways to meet that need. The level to which we are motivated will determine the level of effort, engagement or commitment we offer. This is where our society today differs from the experience of our ancestors. For our ancestors, if you did not engage in economic activity (ie. Hunting or farming),   then you starved. Therefore, you had a very real motivation to work.

Today, we take away motivation from people in two very serious ways. First, we provide social assistance in a way that does not develop capacity or skill and offers no motivation to work for what they are receiving for free. Second, our society often breaks the spirits of many by denying them opportunities to work (systemic racism, hiring bias, training mismatch, etc.) or by punishing efforts to acquire skill (ie. Social assistance gets cut off if a person takes training or courses. It is also cut off if a teenager of a parent on social assistance gets an after school job).

Dealing with the challenge of motivation is complex and critical to the success of a community. One famous quote that summarizes, both the challenge and the solution was spoken by Theadore Roosevelt: "Do what you can with what you have, where you are." This requires an entire communal mindset change, but it is the first place to start.

Having motivation is certainly important, but the second angle is to question what kind of motivation. If the motivation is purely individualistic, there will be pockets of success, but that still may not result in a successful or healthy community. For example, if my motivation is purely based on personal profit, then I might outsource manufacturing of a product to a country that knowingly uses either cheap labour or child labour. However, if my motivation is personal AND community success, then I will hire locally, produce locally, train up fellow community members, even if it means a smaller profit margin.

The rewards of one approach is purely individual and financial, while the rewards of the other is a mix of financial, social development, community development, and the broader definition of success that leads to greater sustainability. In a study on entrepreneurship and motivation, it was discovered that entrepreneurs were not interested in money for its own sake. They were motivated to create, to take action, to provide for their needs, personal achievement, and the adventure of being part of something bigger than themselves. Interestingly enough, one cited success factor was the practice of sharing profits with employees.

For our Indigenous communities, then, we need to reclaim the motivations we once had (and that some of us retained) and ensure that it is the right kind of motivations we develop and reclaim. We have the power to do what we can with what we have no matter where we are. This is something that nobody can take from us, but it is something that we can lose or give away.

If you are in a remote community far removed from economic markets, or a large community with urban reserves and main transportation corridors, be encouraged. You have gifts and passions that the Creator gave you. You can use those no matter where you are. Once that begins to happen, the motivation and drive is contagious and we will be able to rebuild economically successful communities once again.

Hope for Indigenous people?

Our peoples face unprecedented challenges and have for a long time. When the Vikings first set foot in North America, their first act was to attack our people for blood. Our peoples drove them off. Then came christopher columbus (and yes I wrote his name in small letters, because his does not deserve capitalized names), whose first act was wholesale slaughter of every Indigenous person he could find, approximately 250,000 by conservative estimates.  But by then, we could not drive them off fast enough as other “explorers” came in droves.

Those who came after columbus came less violently and gained friendships with our peoples. Our first mistake. After contact, we were subjected to purposeful biological warfare, “ethnic cleansing”, genocide, unending war, land infringements, residential schools (aka death camps where nearly half of all children sent to these schools died of torture, starvation, beatings, freezing, etc. with those that survived being subjected to degradation, sexual, physical, emotional and psychological abuse), sixties scoop (where mothers were lied to that their babies were still births, and then the babies, very much alive, were adopted out to white families), the Indian Act legislating reserves to become concentration camps where people were arrested and beaten if they were caught leaving the camps and many were intentionally starved to death, outlawing of our languages, outlawing of our cultures, etc.

The list can go on and even today our struggles are no less:

·         Our children are denied equitable access to education – often funded and 50% less per pupil that white children

·         We are denied equitable access to health care – often forced off our own communities for treatment

·         Our babies suffer the highest infant mortality rates in Canada

·         Many of our communities have no running water and many that do are chronically underfunded by the Federal government so that they are under “boil water” advisories

·         We have some of the highest rates of TB in the world – primarily due to Federal underfunding of adequate housing causing multiple families to live in houses that are often no more than shacks

·         Some of the highest rates of suicide in the world

·         High rates of chronic diseases due to lack of access to healthy foods

·         Shorter life expectancies

·         A  rate of incarceration that is 5-6 times the national average; filling up to 50% of Prairie prisons even though we make up less than 15% of the population.

·         Our peoples are often judged harsher and given stiffer sentences

·         We suffer police brutality unparalleled by another group in Canada

·         Our lands are raped by transnational corporations for mining and oil, leaving us with NO benefits, NO equitable royalty payments, and devastating pollution causing disease and illness

·         We face continuous racism and prejudice by the public and media

·         We have higher rates of unemployment and economic exclusion

Reading all of that is depressing. However, there is one important fact to remember.

WE ARE STILL HERE!

That is a powerful fact. Despite 300 years of genocide, we are still here. Despite all the challenges levelled against us, we are still here. In the face of everything that the colonial government seeks to do to us, we are not only still here, but we are gathering strength.

The colonial governments are teetering on the verge of economic collapse:

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-11-05/news/30363948_1_barack-obama-debt-crisis-financial-crisis

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1083622

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204224604577027560761445968.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

http://seekingalpha.com/article/305746-an-economic-recovery-that-s-moving-sideways

The Occupy movement gathering around the world is an example of the failure of the colonial system. The global recession, started by greedy colonial men in Wall Street, is an example of the failure of the system.

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/world/archives/2011/11/20111106-095133.html

Yet, there are more and more examples of our Indigenous peoples beginning to rise up in strength. Some examples include:

·         Westbank First Nation

·         Oosoyos Indian Band

·         Tsawwassen First Nation

·         Membertou First Nation

·         Buffalo Point First Nation

·         Opaskwayak Cree Nation

·         And many more

Our path to victory and to strength will come from DOING the right things and not waiting for permission or approval or funds from the Federal government. Yes we will fight for those things, but we must not wait for them to be concluded before doing anything. Our destinies lie in our own hands. If we have survived 300 years of oppression, then really, nothing can stop us.

This is the irrational fear that has Canada ordering spies and military monitoring of our peoples.

http://www.socialist.ca/socialistworker/SW2011/issue533/NAT-Spying.html

http://www.stopracism.ca/content/spying-first-nations-harper-prepares-unrest

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/515.php

http://indigenousnationhood.blogspot.com/2011/06/secret-agent-harper-conservative-spy.html

Harper, the conservatives, the elite, the colonials all see that we are beginning to rise to our feet and they fear it. They are afraid that they will no longer be able to sit upon the top of the teetering ladder. They are afraid of losing their privileged, exclusive position. They are likely afraid of the tables turning and becoming oppressed themselves.

It is an irrational fear because we are not seeking to oppress them, despite all that they have done to us. We are not seeking to impoverish them or take anything away from them. We simply seek our rights, fairness, and control of our own destinies. We seek respect for our peoples, our land, our rights, our cultures, our sovereignty.

We are not asking to make them our enemy, even though they see us as theirs. We have a higher vision of the spirit of cooperation, friendship and human harmony.

Is there hope for us? Yes. We must support one another and support our young generation rising up. We must mentor them, encourage them, and stand with them as we lift the yoke of oppression from our backs.

We are still here.

Miigwech

Globalization Versus Localization

There are many elements of Globalization whose discussion and debates could fill a book. I thought I would focus on a couple key elements.

There is a false notion that Globalization will mean fair economic opportunity for all, greater efficiencies in product development and distribution and higher standards of living world-wide.

1. Fair economic opportunity for all

Global trade is one thing, but what acolytes of the globalization movement are pushing is not global trade. What they are pushing for is a global open market for the largest companies of the world to operate in. This means that well established companies that have been started decades ago by people from privileged classes and races (typically upper class white businessmen) during times where diversity was not an important social issue, nor was social justice or fair trade.

Now, when many people and nations are starting to rise out from under oppression, colonial rule, and decades of intentional economic exclusion by the privileged classes, the same people who created the unfair advantages are pressing for the opportunity for them to unfairly compete globally.

Consider it like a race. The starting pistol fires and the privileged class runs off down the track. Meanwhile, the remaining runners try to start running only to realize that someone chained their ankles to large stakes in the ground. The privileged class runners, miles ahead finally hear the concerned voices of spectators calling out that it is not fair. So they order their henchmen to go unlock the chains.

As they are running along, the privileged class, now miles and miles ahead, feeling good about themselves, think, “I am so glad I levelled the playing field for those poor people.”

This is the position many of our Indigenous nations are put under. To make matters worse, we are criticized for not winning even after the playing field was “levelled.” This is same position that all “developing” nations are placed under.

These nations, only now starting to form businesses and economies after a long time of oppression, colonialism and exclusion, now must compete against transnational corporations that have had decades to build their vast empires and resources. These same transnational corporations have received corporate welfare for decades in the forms of grants, tax breaks, incentive packages, waived fees, waived regulatory requirements, etc. The moment government or philanthropists consider offering some meagre support to young businesses from the non-privileged classes, the privileged ones rise up and cry foul.

“That’s not fair to give them welfare” they say. “They should stand or fall in a free market economy!”

Is it a noble goal? Yes. Is it fair economic opportunity for all? No.

2. Greater efficiencies in product development and distribution

The basic concept of globalization is that the processes used in producing a product and subsequently distributing will be more efficient. This, in term, will reduce overall consumer prices.

The problem with this thinking is that somebody is going to have to pay. Either front line workers will endure poor conditions with poor pay, or businesses in the middle of the supply chain will have to suffer cuts into their financial sustainability, or taxpayers will need to be put on the hook for corporate welfare. Somewhere, somebody is going to have to pay for the grossly undervalued products we buy at discount rates.

Another problem with this basic concept is that, in theory, it is supposed to make it easier to acquire the products we cannot produce domestically. In practice, we end up paying others for the right to use our own products!

An example will suffice. We have trees in Canada. We cut them and load them on trucks and trains, ship them to the U.S. where American businesses then do “value-added” work to the lumber. This lumber is then shipped back to Canada, and we buy it for a highly inflated price. Why are we not doing the work ourselves?

This phenomenon is not limited to forestry. It happens with fruits and vegetables, resources and products of all types. For many products, we export as much as we import. It is utter ridiculousness when we could be producing and prepping our own products for our own consumption. Only the excess of what we require should be exported.

Think for the moment. How can apples still be low priced, if we grow them, then transport them to another country (typically the US), transport them back and then sell them to our own people? Taxpayer funded subsidies given over to private companies as corporate welfare. This is part of the anger among the Occupy movement around North America right now.

In this day, when we are concerned with CO2 emissions, we are actually creating a worse problem through the traffic that comes from globalization.

3. Higher standards of living world-wide

The premise behind this claim is that globalization brings about increased living standards. Does it really? There are a number of key questions that need to be asked.

-          Who defines what the living standard should be?

-          How do you measure living standard?

-          How is living standards monitored?

-          Are living standards truly “one size fits all”?

Often, living standards are defined as the white, English-speaking, North American lifestyle. This lifestyle is essentially based on material wealth, consumption, individualism, and artificially high value on intangible (ie. Low practical value) knowledge economy careers. In this system, a CEO doing only a fraction of the work that the cashier working at the front end of his business empire does. In practical terms, the CEO’s job is of so little value that he should hardly be paid more than the front line employees. Yet, CEO’s often make anywhere from 10-1000 times what their front line employees make.

A computer technician is often valued in school, while teachers frown upon farmers or hunters or fishermen. Yet, in practical terms, the latter are infinitely more valuable in terms of what they produce than the former.

This is not to say there is no place for CEO’s and leaders and technicians, but it is to say that they are artificially valued above the more practical occupations.

Western lifestyle is also characterized by consumption and waste. Why should we impose such a backward value upon other peoples? Why should a developing nation be measured by how much they consume and waste? Yet, this is precisely what our current economic measurements do.

Living standards cannot be defined by the elite, nor one specific culture. They must be defined at local levels.

Globalization will not lead us to economic fairness. Localization is what is required. This is the process of making local economies strong and sustainable. It is not against global trade, but does insist that we engage global trade in a balanced manner. We trade the excess of what we produce. Why on Earth would one trade away that which one needs and then live in lack?

Global trade, without strong local economies, is an illusion built upon the backs of communities exploited for the benefit of the elite.

Ideas for change and how you can resist an unjust Global economy are here:

http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/generate-alternatives-take-back-the-economy