The numbers are shocking..The life expectancy for an indigenous man in Alberta has plummeted to 60 years of age while indigenous women are, on average, dead at 66. By comparison, the national life expectancy for a non-indigenous man in Canada is 80 and women 84 years of age..The story across Canada isn’t any different with indigenous populations, give or take a couple years..The issue hasn’t garnered the headlines it should have because it forces people to face a reality they rather would avoid; Canada’s system and policies with indigenous people are a complete catastrophe..How bad does it have to get before people admit this?.Indigenous Canadians can expect to die 20 years before everybody else and that figure is getting worse. The population should be screaming for systematic reform from the rooftops in light of this but the silence is deafening..The opioid addiction epidemic is responsible for the speed of the plummet in life expectancies for indigenous people in the last few years..Indigenous people have always had lower life expectancies than the rest of Canadians though. Indigenous people are dying younger than other citizens from an assortment of causes ranging from diabetes to prostate cancer to murder..In fact, with every single aspect of standard of living, Canada’s indigenous people fall short. In income, health, addictions, crime, education levels, mental health issues, housing and domestic stability, indigenous people are lagging by every measure. And it isn’t getting better..What did people expect though?.How can somebody look at Canada’s system of racial apartheid and not see a socioeconomic disaster in the making?.How can a person think that keeping a race of people separated from the rest of society on what are usually isolated reserves with little to no local means of generating income, and think these people will fare well under these conditions?.Does anybody really believe there is a sustainable future for people living on these enclaves of dependency and misery?.What do they envision?.Do they think residents on reserves will suddenly find and develop local resources and begin to live functional lives independent from government management?.Some people may indeed believe all those things and it tells me they have never actually spent time on an Indian reserve in Canada..I am not talking about attending the odd powwow or doing a corporate retreat with a sweat lodge on a resort tied to a reserve..I am talking about getting off the main road and seeing how the population is really living. The dilapidated houses, the wild dogs, the crime, the trash strewn about. That is the reality on most of Canada’s reserves and it isn’t improving..For most indigenous people on reserves to make a living, they must leave the reserve. Unfortunately, many of the residents of those reserves are ill-equipped to adapt to town or city living and they often fall off the rails..A lifetime of economic dependency in a tight and often dysfunctional social environment handicaps indigenous people when they try to break free..We must face the reality that the reserve system is an inhumane, policy failure that must come to an end..That can’t happen overnight of course. It will take decades of policies modeled to transition people away from reserves and into society..People will need compensation, training and adjustment. Individual property rights need to be applied for people on reserves to break them out of the collectivism destroying them there today..There will be legal challenges too..Many people have misconceptions of what treaty obligations the country has to indigenous people. Most of the treaty obligations have to do with providing education and determining land boundaries for reserves..Private property rights and final settlements can come about while still abiding by the treaties..Most of the policies applied to indigenous people come from the outdated, and terribly racist Indian Act. That gross piece of legislation needs to be repealed and as a society we need to move away from all race-based policies. It fails the people every time..There is a giant parasite class living on the backs of Canada’s indigenous population. Bureaucrats, civil servants, and many lawyers find the status-quo very lucrative and they will defend it vigorously..People calling for changes to the system will always be called racist among other things by those invested in the current, bloated and corrupted system..Nobody is calling out a race. What needs to be called out though is a system failing an entire race..Nobody is calling for assimilation either. Cultures can be preserved without being locked in an isolated reserve away from the rest of society..Spending more money won’t solve the issue..Federal spending alone on indigenous programs was $24.5 billion in 2021. That is above and beyond what is spent on every other Canadian and doesn’t include the spending on indigenous programs by provincial and municipal governments..It is not the spending I am begrudging. If it was actually making the lives of indigenous Canadians better, I would accept it..It is the lack of results where I take issue. We could triple spending on indigenous programs tomorrow and things wouldn’t noticeably improve..Unless the system is replaced, we are just tossing money into a black hole..Canada’s system of racial policies and segregation needs to be phased out. That is the best thing that could happen for indigenous Canadians suffering under the mess we have right now..If one really did hate indigenous people, I can think of few things more terrible that could be done to them than to maintain the current system..We can’t repair damage caused through race-based policy through applying even more race based policies.
