PSYCHOLOGY BUSKING a la wordswords: THE INDIGENOUS INDUSTRY: DIKTATS OF THE PAST, COLONIAL CONSTRUCTS OF THE PRESENT

MY BUSKING BUDDY AND GIG-MATE, ALBERT STRANGEMAN

GIG BUDDY, ALBERT, WAS BUSKING AT THE SAME MARKET WHERE I WAS DRAWING PORTRAITS

An (unnamed) Indigenous leader just yesterday stated on our local news station that job protection is the main reason for the high numbers of Indigenous children in corrections and social services. “We (Indigenous peoples) are an industry,” he said.

Hmmm. Is this agitprop helpful to his/our cause?

INDUSTRY can be defined as economic activity concerned with the process of raw materials and the manufacture of goods.

MANUFACTURING can be defined as the making of articles and products on a large scale using machinery and industrial production.

By definition, an industry needs a manufactured product. In this case it is explicit that the product mentioned is a human commodity, and an Indigenous one at that. And to manufacture such product prompts certain questions: Is this particular product of Indigenous youth manufactured in custody or social services or corrections? Or is this product sexually manufactured to satisfy the universe with evolutionary procreation? Or is this product a socially manufactured construct being the remnant of racism? Or is this product simply the systemic product of colonization? Or is this product all of the above?

Factoid: 4.9% of the entire Canadian population and 7.7% of the population under the age of 14 years is of Aboriginal descent.

Factoid: Indigenous people account for only 4.9% of the Canadian population and yet make up 27% of the prison population. Indigenous youth (7.7% of the total population) account for 46% of those incarcerated and including the 43% of Indigenous women incarcerated.

Factoid: The cost to incarcerate one woman for one year is $343,810. The cost to incarcerate on man for one year is $223, 687.

Factoid: The cost of a community placement option is $85,653 per person per year. The parole cost per person per year is $39,084.

These factoids, based upon the belief of most Canadians, are the effects of the forced Residential Schools and the 60’s scoop.

The 60’s Scoop had taken its toll shortly after the event. By 1977 Aboriginal children accounted for 44% of the children in care in Alberta, Canada, accounted for 51% of the children in care in Saskatchewan, Canada, and accounted for 60% of the children in care in Manitoba, Canada. (I am referring to these provinces mainly because they make up what is geographically known as the Canadian Prairies and because this is where I reside.)

On the stained surface, the 60’s scoop seems not much different than the millennium scoop. In 2016, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit youth made up 52% of the foster children under the age of 14 in Canada, despite representing only 8% of youth in that entire age group. In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, nearly 90% of children in foster care are Indigenous. (This is an accounting of for those children assigned to private homes; this is not an accounting of those assigned to group homes and other shelters.) Mathematically in Manitoba, according to Indigenous Services Minister, Jane Philpott, of the 11,000 children in care, 10,000 are Indigenous.

In a line, historically it has seemed quicker and simpler to put these children into care rather than confront the social and economic problems that have plagued Indigenous families since the residential school years.

I shall now indulge in some more authoritative name dropping.

According to Doug Cuthand, of the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, the colonial industrial schools morphed into the residential boarding schools, then morphed into the 60’s scoop, and now all current First Nation Canadian denizens are collateral victims of the British colonialism.

Factoid: I quit reading Doug Cuthand’s column years ago. I did so because he always seemed to be blaming baby-boomer, white, and middle-class me for the plight of the First Nations people.

From the Indigenous and now Federal Government view, the solution seems to be a simple one - loosening the colonial (devil’s) grip being the necessary signature handshake toward reconciliation betwixt First Nations and the rest of Canada.

Perry Bellegarde, National Chief in the Assembly of First Nations, has long sought control of First Nations education for those on reserve. On April 1^st of this year he helped make it happen. This is now signed into agreement. This action is promising.

Factoid: Long ago I served on a Saskatchewan Sports service for youth committee with Perry Bellegarde. He is a very good guy.

Clive Weighill, President of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, has stated that “People are products of their environment. You don’t just want to get tough on crime, you have to get tough on the issues of poverty, poor housing, disadvantage.” Not many of my colleagues would debate against this notion.

Factoid: Clive Weighill used to be a member of the Regina City Police. Clive used to organize the Regina Police Service Valestuk Run, of which I was a frequent participant. Clive is a very good guy.

American Housing Secretary, Ben Carson, stated that “Poverty is a state of mind.” Go figure.

Factoid: Ben Carson, a former presidential candidate for the Republican Party, is now the Housing Secretary in the Donald Trump administration. In Ben Caron’s autobiography he stated that his life was spared because a knife thrust at his belly was deflected by his belt buckle. Being the public eye now for a couple years now, I know Ben Carson is an idiot, as well as a liar.

As previously stated, schools on reserves now have monetary autonomy as of April 1^st of this year. Perhaps not to offer similar controls to other systems such as social services, police, and corrections, would be harshly politically criticized. Pragmatically, I think it would be fitting to offer monetary and other power incentives to anyone (and especially to those who are Indigenous) to study and become the best-practice professionals in these particular systems.

I say this because in spite of the efforts or non-efforts to date, save for the latest in on-reserve educational practices and finance, and in spite of even Perry Bellegarde and his ilk, the high school graduation rates for Indigenous students are rising in all provinces throughout Canada. And, therefore as a direct result of these rising high school graduation rates, the university graduation rates for Indigenous, too, across Canada, are rising.

Currently there are millions and millions of dollars being spent in searching solutions for these Indigenous issues. Legal firms are making millions of dollars masterminding residential school settlements. Millions of dollars are directed into Anthropology grants to determine and distribute the traditional knowledge necessary for all of us to cope with one another.

Saying all of this (again) offers examples of those supposedly involved in the solving of these issues, having little incentive to actually find solutions. Some of these persons and agencies supposedly involved actually seem to thrive on Indigenous dependency and social dysfunction.

Even in my own agency of employ, good-intervention workshops on the First Nations Circle of Courage philosophies are mandatory. (Note that I write “good-intervention” rather than “well-intention” – well-intention connotes failure, whereas good-intervention suggests good intentions with success.) Such mandatory workshops are just one song on the cultural concert playlist being sung continuously by my employer.

Seriously, I strongly doubt that many of us believe that modern problems can be solved solely by reverting to the customs and ways of the past; though I am not expressing that we should ever be prevented from pursuing and appreciating any cultural past accomplishments and significance.

However, preserving a culture for the sake of present problem solving poses the question: Though the Aboriginal hunting-and-fishing-and-trapping-and-gathering-berries culture continues purportedly to preserve that spiritual relationship to the living humans and beasts to the land, does this hunting-and-gathering preservation help in the bigger scheme of racial diversity and global economics, never mind the scheme of getting along with all the other Canadian citizens, whose cultural diversity is continuing growing to represent more and other global cultures?

I am certainly not abdicating the efforts to date; I am abdicating some of the methods and some of the content. (My Indigenous buddy and colleague, Keenan, who will for sure be reading this, will for sure not agree.)

I do agree that preserving language is significant. On March 24^th, 2019 the very first National Hockey Game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Carolina Hurricanes was broadcast in Cree through Rogers Hometown Hockey on APTN. Clarence Iron, of Pinehouse, Saskatchewan, did the play-by-play. Clarence works at CFNK 89.9 FM radio as a program host. Clarence is fluent in both English and Plains Cree. WOOT!

The diktats of the past have no place in the present. No product means no industry. An industry needs a marketable product, and if the social and police and correctional industry have no product, there will be no need for such an industry, job protection or not.

Those posing in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week: