Marginalization and dispossession of Native people

Is the accounting information provided by Orly proof of the none Marginalization and dispossession of Native people? How is accounting being further use in this situation to further marginalized indigenous people? or is it?

 

Before I waste time discussing it further, I want to know what her comparing government entity income and average individual income is supposed to represent .

 

Virtually all the money is spent locally for the benefit of reserve residents. You don't see the benefit of local Indian government spending more per capita than the average Canadian earns? From the grants provided reserve provides housing, education, welfare and municipal services plus large numbers of premium wages. The average citizen also pays income tax while reserve residents do not. Not only that, on top of reserve spending, they get free health care, dental, prescriptions, post secondary education, and so on plus all the benefits every other citizen gets. Taking a stone age culture into the 21st century in 100 years has a large degree of friction but I think trying to blame anyone in particular is not in any way helpful. Clearly the Canadian government is trying its damnedest to make the situation better using the tool at hand - cash. The challenge is for Indians to take advantage of opportunities provided.

 

Stan, I welcome your feedback, the topic is one of great important to me, more specifically using accounting to make a positive or negative point.

 

Average citizen also lives in a municipality that also compiles similar financial reports. That's not what you compare it to.
It's very possible that government spending on reserves is higher than outside. I expect it to have multiple reasons, including treaty obligations, geography, demographics, and, yes, corruption - and also, perhaps, low levels of individual incomes of members (hence higher needs). This does not really conflict with the notion people are marginalized.

It's nice to know refugees and newcomers are not the only ones struggling with similar characterization.

Yeeeahh... I didn't study colonist/aboriginal relations dynamics for the last 100 years in much, or any, length. Somehow I doubt that "taking a stone age culture into the 21st century in 100 years" is the most complete of summaries. For example, Ottawa apologised for residential schools just last year. And yet to make meaningful progress on major election promise, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

"First Nations", Orly. Indians are people of South Asian background.

 

(1) I like this. Stanislav always gets to the heart of the matter straight away.

(2) "Ottawa apologised for residential schools just last year." But the Pope couldn't bring himself to join in that apology, for the Church . . . even though Justin asked him nicely and prayed with him. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pope-no-apology-residential-school-1.4596439

(3) Phdtobe asks if accounting is being misused. This is NOT accounting. It's just throwing figures around. All Orly has proven by it is that he can use a calculator - or else has mastered third-grade long division. Figures lie and liars figure. Real accounting would be following the money. See what actually reached the people, how it got spent, was any stolen / diverted etc. I have taken precisely two courses in accounting. 101 and 201 - and even I know this is not accounting. Why is a professional here (Phdtobe) dignifying this misuse as "accounting?"

(4) I don't know how "random" Cote First Nation is. It is a stricken place. The latest plague is opiate drugs. Millions of dollars seem unaccounted for in its unaudited statements. Cote First Nation's problems are terrifying and I'm not a member of any of the several professions that would have any idea how to straighten out these dire problems. I would observe, however, that drugs seem to have taken a very high place in the problem list for First Nations. They are wreaking stunning damage; it seems they wreck an individual faster and far more efficiently than the old enemy of aboriginals - alcohol.

The following might lead to some some insight into Cote First Nation:

https://oursask.ca/2016/03/31/saskatchewans-cote-first-nation-what-in-the-actual-fck-is-going-on/
http://leaderpost.com/news/local-news/cote-first-nation-elder-is-concerned-about-her-community
http://aptnnews.ca/2016/09/06/cote-first-nation-votes-out-embattled-council/

 

There has been an inquiry into missing and murdered Indian women going on for the last couple years and it's due to release its report sometime in the next year. The conclusion will be a doubletalk political hash. There is no mystery. Indian women are killed at twice the rate of white women because Indian reserves are violent places with rampant substance abuse. Many women leave this situation and end up prostitutes in cities suffering the occupational hazard of violence. White people in roving gangs aren't killing Indian women. It's like black people in inner American cities. Violence from white people is pretty rare.

The Indians I know still call themselves Indians. I doubt that most residents of Bharat would know what an Indian was but you know better.

 

Reserves are all largely the same. Trump has a word for places like these. There are those that believe that the dependency created by providing free houses and generous welfare is at the root of the problem. Probably 2/3 of Indian reserve members have left the reserves and work at often good paying jobs. I know a few making over $100,000 per year in logging or oil.

 

Okay. Most of those I know call themselves Aboriginals or First Nations. Then again, most that I know are college/university grads or students. Where I am right now, we have quite a large Aboriginal student body, as you might expect from a school called Mohawk College. I pass the Two-row Wampum most days to get to a computer lab. It's beautiful. People over 50 might still refer to themselves as Indians. The Native artists I've met over the years (maybe a dozen or 15) almost invariably referred to themselves or their contemporaries as exactly that: "Native Artists." The only places I see the word Indian nowadays, referring to Native North Americans, are on items like so-called "Indian Tacos" sold on Reserves at pow-wows or Fall Fairs. Oh yes - there's the curiously-named Hamilton Regional Indian Centre - but all of the people who run the place (all First Nations, most with degrees) call themselves and other Native people Aboriginals, First Nations, Native... Maybe it's different in the US or other parts of Canada. I don't know.

Creating any situation that fosters dependence is never an ideal solution. Except for colonists, that is. Dependence is natural for small children and we help them outgrow much of it. Absolute dependence = absolutely bad. And once you've gone down that slope - it's very difficult to backtrack. It's much easier to take away the means of independence than to restore it.

 

I live about 15 miles from a Reserve. People don't generally get free houses, there. Sure, I grant that there are people on the Reserve who rent houses - and that some of them pay from their welfare cheques. But to buy a house - a Reserve resident gets a mortgage from the Band Council. I'm told it's customary to pay these down - and pay them off - as fast as possible, so there will be money available for others to get mortgages from the Band Council. I'm sure this doesn't happen as frequently on Reserves all over Canada - I hope it does some day. The sooner the better.

 

Shhhhh, you're ruining the simplistic "welfare queen" narrative.

 

Bharat is a name, taken from Sanskrit, for the present Republic of India. India has the highest number of English speakers of any nation in the world - over 800,000,000. It appears the Republic of India has two principal short names in both official and popular English usage: India and Bharat. So why would Indian residents not know what an Indian was, even if they preferred to use the other term, Bharata? Doesn't make any sense to me, Orly.

General Alert: Will one of our Indian / Bharata members please help Orly out, here?

 

Disclosure: I will like to use the information from this thread to populate a research paper. So I am my knees begging for you to say something, anything. I am a now a Canadian CPA, but I am not indigenous.
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Johann, There is some research to show that accounting and its techniques are used an apparatus of the state, (governmentality).
Financial statements are tool and techniques of accounting. Gibson (2000) accounting and its technologies as weapons of disempowerment and dispossession of Australia aborigines. Neu (2000) accounting and it calculations and techniques as tools of genocide /culturecide of Canadian first nations. Leishman and Tyson (2004), Accounting culpable in the Service to Racism, dehumanizing, and monetizing of slaves in the Americas. Buhr, 2012), accounting and accountability played a role dispossession and devastation of indigenous people.

 

Reserves in Western Canada have no such thing as home ownership or indeed the concept or legality of title. Houses are owned by the reserve and funded by the federal government. Some reserves in southern Ontario are a different animal. The idea that there is institutional racism keeping Indians down is preposterous. The government is vocally against racism and provides a ridiculously large amount of cash in an attempt to solve the problem. Canada has an Indian Justice Minister, a Somali Immigration Minister, 4 Bharati Sikh Cabinet Ministers and an Afghani Cabinet Minister. Are you saying they hate brown people? Unfortunately only one thing can develop reserves into modern healthy societies. That would be the people themselves. There are something like 1.7 million people in Canada identifying themselves as one form of Indian or another. About 1.3 million of these live in the general society without significant economic handicap and they are typically not ghettoized. Employer in industries in Indian country typically hire lots of them because they are available locally and they can brag on environmental reports of their positive impact on the human population.

Apartheid didn't work in South Africa and it doesn't work in Canada. Reserves were originally located spread out so small populations could hunt/trap/fish. Subsistence living went out of style and populations ballooned. Today we have hundreds of 1,000 plus population reserves spread throughout the north with zero economic viability. The only jobs are working for the reserve itself. The positive thing is they can leave anytime they want and a lot of them do. An aside - I am probably one of the few people on this board who has been on reserves, has known dozens of Indians, and is related to a few of them.

 

Whew, that's a relief! No roving gangs = no racism. Gotcha.

How low are your standards? Also, "First Nations".

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yukon-development-corporations-reporting-1.4629727

Here is a classic case of governmentality in the news using accounting as an apparatus of State control.

'Idiotic' amount of paperwork for grants, say Yukon First Nation development corps.

Indigenous-owned development corporations in Yukon say they're swamped by reporting requirements. "It's like a make-work project," Hogan said. Why is it so fragmented?. You have 100 contribution agreements and 40 are from one government but several different departments. - Blair Hogan, Gunta Business Consulting

 

As per your excellent citations, I agree wholeheartedly. But the meaningless exercise in long division that was presented here - is not "accounting" by any stretch of the imagination.
Nor do I consider as "accounting" most of the number-slinging re: the pre-election promises of the three individuals, Horwath, Ford and Wynne, currently vying for the Premiership of Ontario.

As you know well, accounting is a responsible occupation. Sleight-of-hand with numbers, to sway minds or put people in a desired light, favourable or otherwise - that's manipulation, not accounting. And yes, real accounting is used as a state apparatus. For sure. So again are artifice and showmanship, but there's a difference. I don't think Donald Trump is aware of that difference. Reality is whatever he thinks it is today.

 

Actually, that assertion appears to be false.

https://nij.gov/journals/277/Pages/violence-against-american-indians-alaska-natives.aspx

 

This research is also suprising to me.