Aboriginals to be "weaned from government teat"

Times will be changing for all First Nations

By Tom SewidIn 2006 I wrote an article in a Campbell River Newspaper called, "THE INDUSTRY OF MEETINGS MUST END". I chastised my fellow Aboriginals about how they were using meetings as a personal financial revenue generator, while creating nothing. I also warned them of the future.

The article alluded to how one day a Conservative majority government was inevitable. May 2, 2011 we finally saw this come about, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper is sure to skin Indian and Northern Affairs Canada to the bone. Indians dependent upon the social structure of this agency, or spoiled by the funds they accumulate being an aboriginal privy to funds via I.N.A.C., are over very soon.

I for one am so relieved knowing that those spoiled Indian's who drive around in their Escalade's going to meeting after meeting compiling mass amounts of honorarium while doing nothing, are soon to be a thing of the past. It's the educated with degrees, and aboriginal entrepreneurs that are now going to set the path for our aboriginal community's to prosper by. The time to create, prove, and use what one has readily at hand is now coming about once again. Kind of like the old days where we prospered by hard work, and used what was close at hand, instead of relying upon hand outs.

I look at it as the majority of Aboriginals of this country finally being weaned from the government teat. Many shall now have to create, prove their worth in order to stay in council, keep their seats on boards, or organizations in order to generate a pay cheque. The day of a fat cheque just because you showed up for a meeting are over, and I know it's only going to make the strong, stronger, and the weak fade away. This is good, for the weak honorarium monger have been nothing but anchors hanging off the bows of the Aboriginals that want to prosper via their toil. These people are the modern day suppressors of their own people, for in their sloth, they hold back the people they represent, and keep them in poverty.Comment:  I don't know much about the "industry of meetings" Sewid refers to. But this op-ed seems offensive if not downright racist. Even if the writer is Native himself.

Look how he goes from a few Indians amassing honorariums at meetings to "the majority of Aboriginals of this country finally being weaned from the government teat." Those are two different and almost unrelated subjects. And does Sewid really want to claim that most Indians are weak, lazy, welfare "queens" who don't want to work? Unless he has the facts to back that up, how is that not a racist assertion about an entire ethnic group? (Hint: Poverty alone doesn't prove that the poor are weak and lazy. Only ignorant conservatives think that.)

Sewid might've had a case if he'd said that some Aboriginal politicians enrich themselves by going to meetings without doing anything. And that some Aboriginal people rely on welfare rather than getting jobs.

Of course, he'd need to provide some context. Some non-Aboriginal politicians enrich themselves by going to meetings without doing anything. And some non-Aboriginal people rely on welfare rather than getting jobs. In short, there's nothing particularly unusual about the behavior of some Aboriginals. There are good and bad people in every group.

But that's not what Sewid said. He indicted only Indians--as if they're the only problem he can see in his narrow sights. By discriminating against one racial group in his criticism, Sewid's op-ed is arguably racist.

Of course, this kind of language is hysterical in the context of American and Canadian politics. The US tax burden is lower than it's been since 1958. Politicians pass tax cuts for the rich while cutting services for the poor. Billion-dollar corporations are paying $0 in taxes. But Sewid is whining about lazy, good-for-nothing Indians? How about lazy, good-for-nothing whites who sit around the pool sipping martinis while "earning" money from trust funds, stock appreciation, and tax loopholes?

For more on the stereotype of welfare Indians, see Commissioner:  Indians Should Get Off the Rez and Fox Special on Indian "Freeloaders."