Book Authors contend hired lawyers, consultants out for own financial gain
 
Bruce Ward, The Ottawa Citizen, Saturday, November 15, 2008

[COMMENT: Note the numerous points in common with our Irish child abuse industry!!]

A multitude of non-native lawyers and consultants are subverting aboriginal causes for their own financial gain, two Calgary academics claim in a compelling and controversial new book.

In Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry, Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard argue that these advisers profit hugely from the legal and bureaucratic processes they have created while aboriginal communities remain mired in poverty.

The billions of tax dollars funnelled to reserves and Canada's North by governments have attracted opportunists -- mostly non-native hustlers in pinstripe suits -- who serve as intermediaries between governments and natives. The book claims that these aboriginal industry consultants are using "unprincipled native leadership" and their families to pursue endless land claim grievances and to pressure politicians for more funding with few strings attached.

"Native people are manipulated to believe that they will receive huge lump-sum payments when land claims are settled, only to become resentful of 'white people' when the money is siphoned off by powerful families and the Industry."

Ms. Widdowson and Mr. Howard also say that anyone who challenges the status quo is dismissed as racist, a tactic which smothers honest discussion of aboriginal issues.

The book challenges the rigid dogma that underpins the aboriginal industry, such as the perception that natives have a special relationship with the land, that "the traditional way of life" is enlightened, and that "spiritual healing" is as valid as modern medicine in aboriginal health policy.

Such "romantic mythology" all but guarantees that isolated, marginalized aboriginal groups will remain that way without hope for improvement in the future. It justifies never doing anything to truly come to grips with the problems of substance abuse, poverty and unemployment that are endemic on reserves.

The aboriginal industry is also to blame for creating "a false sense of entitlement" among natives as well giving rise to "a grievance mentality," the authors assert.

"Aboriginal peoples are constantly told that they are 'owed' for the abuses suffered at the hands of the colonizers.

"The leadership created by the Aboriginal Industry has bought the loyalty of native people with promises of wealth without working for it. Government is seen merely in terms of the amount of money it can provide."

The book even dares to suggest that the reviled residential schools were not all bad.

"Leaving aside the tragedy of incidental sexual abuse, what would have been the result if aboriginal people had not been taught to read and write, to adopt a wider human consciousness, or to develop some degree of contemporary knowledge and disciplines? Hunting and gathering economies are unviable in an era of industrialization, and so were it not for the educational and socialization efforts provided by the residential schools, aboriginal peoples would be even more marginalized and dysfunctional than they are today."

It benefits aboriginal industry hucksters to camouflage the development gap between aboriginal culture and the modern world, the authors say. The consultants prefer to spread the mythology that holds aboriginal culture had developed its own sophisticated science, medicine and oral history at the time of contact with white Europeans.

In fact, the authors say, "the Europeans were making the transition from feudalism to capitalism" at the time of contact while aboriginal peoples, in archaeological terms, were in a neolithic stage and had not developed metallurgy.

"Never has the cultural gap between two sets of peoples at the contact been wider."

This does not mean that the aboriginal people were inferior, the authors say. They cite the work of American evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond who showed that geography, climate, small populations and many other factors contributed to the differences in development between European and North American cultures.

But the authors insist that solving today's aboriginal problems begins with acknowledging the cultural gap.

"It is this gap, not the Aboriginal Industry's lamentations about 'cultural loss' that is at the root of aboriginal dependence and related social problems in Canada ... However, the Aboriginal Industry's tactics prevent an understanding of this circumstance, so no programs are developed to address it. This of course, benefits the lawyers, consultants and aboriginal leaders who profit from keeping native people in a state of segregated dependency."

 The Ottawa Citizen 2008
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=10c29dea-fa1e-4d1e-b28a-8fc0cc544346