I've listened about certain issues from aboriginal classmates/friends as well through social media. Right now a big one is the state of tap water in many aboriginal communities and this has gotten me thinking about how money is carried out on reserves.
on one side I'd like to give aboriginal communties as much autonomy as possible on their reserves as it is the least us as canadian citizens should allow. As someone who is half Kurdish I can sympathize with a marginalized group seeking semi autonomy.
on the other hand I find the money allocated to these reserves has the capacity to be mismanaged if not stolen (going to the recent story on the man stealing what was it 600k in funds meant for the community?) by the chiefs or other leaders. From there I see the horrible living conditions this can or has caused. I see many persons put the blame on the provincial and federal Gov't but I'd like to look at the internal politics/economy for each tribe. For instance Ive gathered this source on chieftan income
http://www.discoveryfinance.com/annual-chief-salary-for-first-nations.html
So what say you guys on how to handle the poor tap water conditions of the first nation communities? should more oversight by the gov't be forced into these communties or should their internal politics be left to them? I find this is going to become a much larger issue soon as the Trudeau government I can see will be losing aboriginal support here in BC because of his support for the LNG pipeline