 Peachland, B.C. January 1, 2008
"Recent court decisions in British Columbia show the necessity of First Nations in Canada to re-develop their own government processes", said J. R. Linkevic, CEO of Two Trails Consulting.
The real problem is that Canadian law does not recognize the ability of First Nations, which governed themselves long before European colonists arrived, to actually govern their own communities. "This has created a multitude of problems for First Nations, because they then are totally dependent upon a system of governance that is frail and meaningless towards the real needs of Indigenous communities." he went on to say.
"Only when a community decides to re-create its own internal system of governance can things be changed. This is because quite simply, the power to make change exists only within the community itself."
To do this is exceedingly easier than it was a decade ago. There is beginning to be a recognition that in order to solve some of the massive problems most Indigenous communities face the solution is to pull together the community and deal with them by terms the community understands and wants to use. This means the community must strive to make the changes from within because expecting the external world to make the changes for them simply does not work. It cannot work because of the way the system is designed.
Nobody else is going to be able to make the necessary changes and it is apparent the hundred plus years of oppressive actions by the non-Indian government only continue to harm the community. The huge lack of sufficient resources to enable healing and real re-construction of their communities to take place is not only evident it is obvious.
For example, most Indigenous communites have unemployment as high as 74%. Of course, Indigenous communities do not have a real method of portraying their unemployment rate, but the governments' numbers are exceedingly low. Only Indian Reserves close to "civilization" and which have valuable land that can be utilized to deliberately create employment for their own members have lower unemployment rates.
The greatest difficulty is the challenge of finding out how to re-create the governance in contemporary terms. The system is bogged down in the old bureaucratic system developed to respond to Indian Affairs as a government branch. The imposition of a "democratic" system of governance is challenging when it comes to how a community actually has historically operated. Yet, this age-old imposition is forced by law and the history of the non-Indian legal system prevents expression of the community that needs to govern themselves in the way they may choose to for contemporary uses.
The Supreme Court of Canada deems Aboriginal Rights as being essentially frozen in time. Aboriginal Rights continue to exist as they did in 1876, but try to prove this is current thinking or governance that is not confused by imposition of non-Indian systems upon Indigenous communities is very difficult to a society that still deems it necessary to make decisons for an entire racial group. This entire group of peoples have been legally, socially and economically disenfranchised from the main populace for over a century now.
Find someone in the non-Indian world who can tell us of how the government structures of each of the communites existed in 1876 and this framework is brought into contemporary terms that has significance or meaning so that there can be comparison between those timelines and the 21st Century world. Yet this is the task expected of First Nations to enable a system of governance to be developed from historical records and which are not recognized by the non-Indian legal system. The "Federal Indian Law" of the United States and "Native Law" of Canada are really both misnomers. In reality each of these systems of analysis of legally entrenched racial discrimination are what First Nations can fondly refer to as "Pilgrim Law".
There is a great amount each community can do, but they have to be willing to take the bull by the horns and actively pursue options to re-develop their governance structures. Without this effort taking place, unfortunately, a community's health is at the whim and mercy of the non-Indian government and their bureaucratic structures.
There are a multitude of contemporary "tools" a First Nation can utilize to assist in the development of their own internal systems - "tools" which are available for mainstream society. These "tools" are tools that exist for a multifude of purposes within the "system", but can be uniquely framed for use by Indigenous communities. Proper use of these "tools" would enable a community to further itself and benefit from many different forms of economic benefit.
The biggest difficulty is making sure these aspects of development are interpreted right for the community as the fact that the "tools" get utilized in the fashion that is best possible fashion in order to maximize the potential in terms of possible development.
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