As long as native bands are given unfettered authority on their land with no responsibility, reserves will remain dysfunctional, poverty-ridden racial enclaves of misery. The massive, unregulated garbage dump on the Cowichan Tribe reserve next to a river is the most recent example of this.A Cowichan member has accumulated nearly 300,000 cubic metres of garbage on an illegal dumping spot. The mess is leaching into the river and putting salmon stock and drinking water at risk. Let’s not pretend the band was unaware this was happening over the years. Let’s also not pretend that people from off-reserve were sneaking onto that spot to dump in the night. Those are the sort of claims made by people who refuse to attribute responsibility to native bands, and they are the problem. Band members and people off the reserve were complicit. Nobody dared to intervene though as they didn’t dare question the authority of the band to deal with things itself.I can lay out how this will unfold, as we have seen this sort of thing before. Despite demands from the provincial government, the band won’t clean up the site. With the environmental damage being so extensive and immediate, the government will step in and clean up the site. They will then offer the bill to the band, which will ignore it. The funds will never be collected and taxpayers will eat the bill. In fact, some will justify this by saying it’s the fault of non-natives because they didn’t stop it. A similar incident unfolded in the 1990s on the Enoch reserve in Alberta where they had been using dugouts as a dump.The Cowichan Tribe is currently calling on the federal government to clean the mess up.In Northern Alberta near the community of Conklin, the dump was so poorly maintained that a large bear population had moved in and dozens were shot over the years in the early 2000s. Activists blamed the provincial government rather than the nearby First Nation which should have been responsible for the dump..One of the most basic services provided by local governments is garbage collection and disposal. Every small town manages to do it and people like me who live on acreages take their own trash to a proper municipal dump. On many reserves however, garbage is rarely dealt with properly, whether at the household or local government level and it is commonly strewn all over. That was part of what upset the Siksika Band with me when I shot a video from a public highway on their reserve. The garbage was appalling and I exposed it.The band could fine people who fail to dispose of trash properly as municipalities do but that would involve taking responsibility and expecting it of the members.Animal control is also a municipal responsibility. On reserves across Canada, feral dogs are often out of control. In fact, several children have been mauled to death by them.When feral dogs were coming into Calgary from the neighbouring Tsuutʼina reserve a few years back, Calgary’s bylaw chief implied the feral dog issue was due to city people dumping them on the reserve. It was utterly absurd. Feral dogs are a problem on almost every reserve in Canada due to people refusing to spay and neuter their animals and letting them run loose. It’s bad enough that the bands refuse to enforce basic animal control, but for city officials in off-reserve communities to try and claim it isn’t a responsibility of the reserve is beyond the pale. It fits in with the usual approach of refusing to apply personal responsibility to reserves and the citizens on them though which of course perpetuates the problem..Animal rescue societies are swamped with reserve dogs and many charities offer free spaying and neutering on reserves. They can’t keep up and they won’t until the reserves start taking responsibility.Drinking water is also a municipal responsibility. Thousands of municipalities across Canada manage to get clean water to their citizens every day. Meanwhile we hear news of dozens of reserves under boil water advisories. The reserves are well funded to provide water to their citizens but they mismanage the funds and don’t properly maintain the systems. Whose fault is this?Over $32 billion federal tax dollars go to reserves every year. The failure to provide basic services isn’t due to lack of funding. Perhaps if reserves taxed citizens to provide services as municipalities do, there would be more incentive to actually provide those services..Activists and indigenous leaders like to pretend that reserves are little, sovereign states within Canada but they are anything but. They are dependencies that won’t even take care of the most basic of local needs.The reserve system itself likely will never succeed. It’s based on racial apartheid and segregation. If there is ever to be a hope that reserves are to become socioeconomically functional though, it must begin by embracing a sense of personal responsibility for their affairs. If there is authority without responsibility, they will fail. I will finish by stating that yes, some reserves don’t have all these problems. They are the exception rather than the rule however and things on most reserves are only getting worse.
