Aboriginal Bill Needs More Work

In a very currant article in the Times Colonist, it seems as if the provincial government has finally come to an agreement with the Aboriginal peoples. Premier Gordon Campbell has introduced a new legislation that will hopefully take care of a few resounding issues, such as treaty claims that go belly up due to boundaries between bands. The government has decided to deal with this problem by completely withdrawing from treaty discussions, and leaving the issues to a new Indigenous Nations Commission. This gives the INC the ability to mediate between bands, as if to say to the Aboriginal leaders, "It's your problem, you fix it."
Since each territory is so large, occupied by many bands, a new political structure is being placed, called Indigenous Nation, which will not deal with individual bands, but entire territories. The "band system", currently operating, is being shunted aside, and in it's place will go new Tribal Governments, representing the original First Nations. This is a huge accomplishment, because not only may this work, it has the support of Aboriginal Leaders.

The proposition does hold two problems through, one; land use and planning, and two; the sharing of natural resource revenues. Community businesses are alarmed by these problems, and to counter this the government is going to wait until May to put the INC into place, just to get the communities in order and solve outstanding problems.

In the past, native band systems of government have often been at two ends of the poverty spectrum, with some bands having great administrations, and others being barely functional. This causes problems with poverty and housing, because Aboriginals are not free to reconstruct and deal with housing issues; the houses belong to the community. Systemic issues like these have played a part in the impoverishment of Canada's native peoples. At last, there may be a chance to deal with some of them. This is a great start to finally taking responsibility for the Aboriginal issues that for so long, we have evaded.

Article released April 1st, 2009.