4 - Sunday, February 12, 1989 - North Shore News

THE HORROR stories coming out of the inquiry into how
the justice system affects Indians and Metis in Manitoba are
enough to make any decent Canadian cringe with shame.

Despite the fact that Ottawa is
pouring some $3 billion a year into
Indian affairs, the mortality rate
of Indian babies is 60 per cent
higher than the national average,
only one out of every five Indian
children gets a high school educa-
tion, and 40 per cent of the prison
inmates on the Prairies and in the
Northwest Territories are natives.

People in isolated communities
have no running water or indoor
toilets. Alcoholism figures match
unemployment, often running at
80 per cent.

In Manitoba, the inquiry has
been told, RCMP and locai police
treat natives very differently than
they do whites. And I have seen
this with my own eyes often
enough to know that Indian com-
plaints of discrimination and rac-
ism are no exaggeration.

Whether it is on Winnipeg's
North Main Street or Vancouver's
Skid Road, police are quick to go
after Indians they suspect of caus-
ing trouble and very slow indeed tc
go to 2 native’s rescue.

The attitude isn't to be found
just at the street level, either. Try
selling stories about natives to
big-city Canadian magazines! Try
getting a television network, even
the CBC, interested! Try getting a
movie made!

The answer that comes back is a
classic piece of Canadian hypocri-
sy: ‘*Well, yes, indeed, we certain-
ly see the social merit of revealing
these appalling conditions which
are such a blight on our rosy pic-

ture of our great egalitarian
democracy, and we sympathize
totally with the Indians, of course,
but, you see, the public doesn’t
care, and so there's no audience."’
Producers won't put money into
anything that tells the truth about
Canada's disgraceful relationship
to its native population. Editors

quiry closely.

Among the litany of woes, one
story jumped out that really made
me cringe — because it so happens
I was part, in my own small way,
of the actual rip-off.

Today, something like 90 per
cent of the 600 Indians who live on
the reserve of Moose Lake, some
800 miles north of Winnipeg, are
alcoholics or drug users.

The situation is so bad residents
have to barricade themselves into

Whether it is on Winnipeg’s North
Main Street or Vancouver’s Skid
Road, police are quick to go after
Indians they suspect of causing
trouble and very slow indeed to go to
a native’s rescue.”’

ET
don’t want to know because it
won't help circulation. Instead,
let's do another glitzy piece about
some mush-headed celebrity.

For most of us, the fate of the
Indians and Metis is something
that was sealed in the past, for
which we can hold ourselves not
responsibiec, and what is happening
to them in the present is something
we just want to ignore.

As a former Manitoban who
happens to be writing a book
about Canada’s system of what |
call soft apartheid, I have been fol-
lowing the Manitoba judicial in-

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their small wooden houses at night
to avoid being Geaten up by gangs
that roam the community, break-
ing into houses looking for liquor.
The gangs are armed with bats,
chains, knives and guns.

Yet when | visited Moose Lake
in 1963, it was a healthy, happy
community. Located in the midst
of possibly the best hunting and
trapping ground in the province,
its people not only made a good
living off the land, they also ran
muskrat ranches, raised cattle,
grew gardens.

Bur all this was about to end.
Manitoba Hydro was putting the

afoot “an Toe gh 8
: 7.

finishing touches on its giant
Grand Rapids dam, which would
flcod two-thirds of the Moose
Lake reserve, including a delta
which was one of North America’s
great breeding grounds for ducks
and geese.

The reason | was up there was to
cover the story of the Moose Lake
Indians being given new land and a
bunch of prefabricated houses.
What no one mentioned was that
once the dam was operating, there
wouldn’t be any game left to hunt
or trap.

And that a quarter of a century
later, the reserve would be reduced
to poverty-stricken anarchy.

My part in it all? Wined and
dined by the PR man from
Manitoba Hydro, I wrote glib puff
pieces about what an engineering
marvel the dam was. I compared it
to the Great Sphinx.

Jn my youthful idiocy I never
thought to challenge the PR man’s
cheerful projections about how the
wildlife wouldn't be affected and
how the Indians were getting a
good deal. (‘Look at those new
houses!’’)

It wouldn’t have done any good
— the dam was nearly finished —
but I would feel a helluva lot better
now if [ hadn't gone along with
the scam so uncritically back then.

Moose Lake is a symbo! of what
has been done to the native people
of Canada. As a reporter who
went blithely along with a gov-
ernment program that totally
destroyed their way of life, lama
symbol too. Of white Canadian
complicity in what amounts to
near-genocide ©

Pov ge OPE VP

th & 14th/89

David Gow!non. CLU.
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