Aboriginals must help themselves
Re: Escape Threatens Healing Lodge, editorial, Aug. 23. It certainly is a staggering statistic that Canadian aboriginals “make up about four per cent of the population, but more than 23 per cent of federal inmates.” However, it is unfair to all Canadians, including aboriginals, to claim that such “dysfunction results largely from generations of failed, often racist, Canadian government policies.” The policy may have failed, but, for the most part, it was implemented with good intentions and in no way with racist intent.
Canadian aboriginals and policy- makers have one major choice to make — to embrace Canadian society and modernity at large or to retreat back to a time before the Europeans arrived. Canadian society has many benefits to embrace while maintaining a unique native identity in our national character.
But just throwing billions of dollars ($8.4 billion as the Liberals pledge) at more unproven methods of making others feel good about themselves will just make us all poorer. Gordon Akum, Toronto.
The editorial points out the disgrace that aboriginals are six times as likely to be jailed at non- aboriginals. The obvious cause is that aboriginals per capita are six times as likely to commit offences resulting in incarceration as non-aboriginals, despite the preferential sentencing rules they enjoy. You point out causes, including substance abuse, broken families and low education, and go on to put the blame for all these deficiencies on the federal government rather than where they should reside — on the aboriginal communities.
Until Canadians stop agreeing with the aboriginal excuses that they didn’t cause the problems — the government did — the First Nations are never going to take responsibility for their own problems, as they must. Barry F. H. Graham, Mississauga, Ont.