As I was going through the news tonight, I came upon a story about a man who lost his two little girls to hypothermia this week and had to be brought to their funeral in an ambulance as he recovers. The man is a member of the Yellow Quill First Nation and lives on their reserve in the province of Saskatchewan. It’s a tragic story.
The tragedy is compounded by the fact that the media is approaching this incident in a really disgusting way. When I actually clicked on the link for the first article I read, all I could gather was that the incident was caused by “first nations guy who had been drinking.” How awful. He is a member of a First Nation, and he may have been drinking. But he also took his little girls out because he thought one of them was sick, and he wanted to get help. He got lost in a field on the way, and he almost froze to death with his daughters.
This guy maybe didn’t think too clearly, but he wasn’t trying to be a jerk. He was a young, 25 year old trying to do what he could. And now, instead of letting him come to terms with his sense of responsibility and loss, the media and the politicians are turning this into a forum for debate about whether “the natives” should be allowed to have alcohol.
Hey media and politicians: you worry about giving them their land back or at least some kind of fair trade for it, and then you can worry about running their fucking lives, okay? In the meantime, have some respect for what this father is going through, especially as he and his wife are expecting another little baby in April. We need him to be a healthy strong parent for his little girls, not a man broken by a misstep and the press’s need for blood.
If you must ask questions about who is at fault, start by asking questions about the living conditions and access to resources on reserves.
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from Eugene: “If you must ask questions about who is at fault, start by asking questions about the living conditions and access to resources on reserves.”
This is the most important sentence in your post, and thanks for this post, Chanda.
Folks don’t really give a shit about Indians, and when they do, they do so in the context of being our parent figure…like the “great white father.”
As far as Canada and the U.S., the condistions on the reserves are IMPOSED by the FORCES that OCCUPY native land. Why? Because both the U.S. and Canada are not only ILLEGAL occupiers of indigenous land, but have committed the most horrible crime of GENOCIDE and still do in order to aquire, and maintain, their illegal occupation.
Thus, conditions of poverty have always lead to substance abuse throughout history. Anything to numb the pain of barely being able to survive. I would argue that it is not so genetic as poverty induced. And Indians have a history of getting screwed by everybody, even their own.
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