Terry Glavin makes a not insignificant point about the potential harm Chief Spence’s hunger strike might have on First Nations communities:
Aboriginal teenagers in Canada are perhaps six times more likely to kill themselves than non-aboriginal youth. Among the Inuit, youth suicide is 11 times the national average. Between 2005 and 2010, Health Canada spent $65 million on a National Aboriginal Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy. The kids kept on killing themselves, and in 2011 the Ontario Chief Coroner’s Office released a 215-page report on aboriginal suicides in Northern Ontario. One of the report’s key recommendations: the creation of a national suicide prevention strategy.
Then along comes Theresa Spence, the elected chief of the forlorn and remote Northern Ontario community of Attawapiskat. Since Dec. 11, Spence has been camped in a teepee on an island in the Ottawa River, threatening to starve herself to death — to kill herself — unless the prime minister and the Governor General accede to her variously contradictory and ambiguous demands ..
Read the rest: Idle No More? Let’s get serious.
I agree, its not in anyone’s interest for aboriginal youth to follow in Chief Spence’ footsteps and stand-up for their people. Can you imagine all the bad publicity Canada would receive.
With this sort of logic, you can say Mahatma Gandhi was nominated 5 times for the Nobel Peace Prize for supporting Suicide among Indian youth.
Terry Glavin’ “not insignificant point” is laughable.
If you want to justify the air you breath David ask yourself how much of the 65 million was spent on beurocracy and how much was actuslly spent to help? Better yet ask why the problem exists at all and what is the reason?
But wait perhaps the first part of my reply is an answer!
Had Harper been in power during Gandhi hunger strike he probably would have held the same mindset. Harper kids or any of his cabinate minister’s kids will have to know these realities. However the comparison is a solid lens to view this event as prelude to something else. Gandhi non-violent response to colonization and as a means to focus the issue of what suffering has resulted from ethnocentric crown leadership. How can a ethnocentric Harper pretend to know he knows anything of equality when he himself or his parent or grandparents never lived under the Indian Act or its Indian Agents? Nor was the Indian Act ever meant to be anything that could be called accountable. It was meant to disempower, facilitate and enforce colonial logic while treaty lands were being registered to crown systems while at the same native children were being abducted into residential schools. The purpose of the crown and this act has never ceased it intent is to destroy native people. This is where the domestic meets the political reality. This is also the poverty photographed and televised to mainstream society. Indian people are’nt prepared to allowed Harper to wonder as the benevolent leader as to why there is so much childihood suffering that leads to adulthood impairments. However, aboriginal people do share a reality with the Canadian society’s poorest of the poor and so display many of the same troubles of this segment of society that Harper brand of government also does not want to talk about. To remove political distinctions without solid and articulated commitments to treaty recognitions is the real game being played here and Harper is attempting to land the finishing stroke to the aboriginal’s destruction. It takes two sides to agree to what is fair and reasonable. I can only hope that like most adults if children are believed to be in mortal danger and their future is at risk that as parents we would sacrifice are selves for them without a second thought. Much like the bus that we would all step in front if it meant saving them. Some may want to call Chief Spence tactic blackmail but how do you black mail a theft? The better question “if Harper is the theft” when does he stop being the theft. When he has made out the door with your TV. Or maybe it when he at home enjoying it or maybe it when he has finally ruined it and finally takes it to the dump. The point is you never stop being the theft. Harper will not be allowed to steal this land, you will not be allowed to enjoy well aboriginal suffer nor will you be allowed to ruin it and give it to the corporations.
Aboriginal people feel hopeless.. which is why this option is being exercised…Canada has let them down again and again. When soldiers went to war to stop Hitler from taking over would you also call that suicide? or would you rather honor these people on Remembrance Day
Maybe you should walk in another man’s moccasins before making such cruel remarks
This allows the righties to spew racist comments and half truths to provoke the weak minded.
I am an aboriginal woman and I believe Chief Spence is teaching aboriginal girls to stand up for themselves, their families, their ancestors,their futures. I have seen the faces of young girls and women at the Idle No More events and they are filled with pride for solidarity and anger at Harper.
I think you should worry more about what Harper is teaching your children about respect of others. Shame on you for clouding the issue.
you must be related to Harper, making a comment like that. It’s very sad in this day and age my people have to resort to hunger strikes to get media and government attention. There would be no Canada if we the Iroquois never sided with the British to fight against the Americans. But how conviently the Canadian gov. when it comes to upholding our treaty rights. Canada has no shame when it comes to Native people
Women all over the world are fighting for their freedom to go to school,to walk through their towns,cities safely,for clean drinking water, and food to feed their families, for justice and peace. It is about time the natives in this country had the same respect . They live in some of the most degrading circumstances in the world. For years we have treated our natives the way Americans thought of their Africian Americans.
When you have been treated with no respect ,are ridiculed for your life style,treated as if you no longer matter ,then you have to take a stand IDLE NO MORE.
I believe our treaty rights should be upheld. Harper has no right to take our treaty rights away. He has nothing to do with it. I do think that Chief Spence is making a point but not to kill herself.[The rest has been edited out – Akin]
As usual, David, you are twisting and turning the facts to fit your very narrow point of view. This woman is not planning to commit suicide. Her hope is that Harper and his government will sit down and listen to the concerns that she has.
Having said that, suicide has in fact, had a huge impact on recent world history. I remember when many in the world were hoping the war in VietNam would come to an end. Appeals and demonstrations were everywhere, but nothing changed until Buddhist monks started commiting suicide.
Muslim extremists have murdered and maimed thousands but they are no closer to success. The USA and NATO have retaliated with similar mayhem, and they are no closer to the end they want. It took the suicide of a young market vendor to start the spring of change across the Middle East.
Hopefully, Theresa Spence will not die. Instead Stephen Harper will agree to meet with her and other aboriginal leaders. But if she does die, young girls of all enthicity will learn that while life is precious, there are causes that do deserve the ultimate sacrifice.
Canadians do not owe aboriginal peoples a living. Aboriginal peoples are immigrants too. They just got here before Europeans. They do not own Canada and do not have any more rights than we do.They would still be living in the stone age and have short lives if it were not for the arrival of the Europeans. All funding should be cut off and all treaties nullified. They must learn to stand up on their own two feet. Dances with wolves was just a movie.
Well Mark 5 it is obvious to me that your history books were written just for you and you alone. If Christopher Columbus had not met the kindness of the aboriginal people he would have starved to death and likely frozen to death. He was ill prepared and very lucky. Further you wont mind if I went to your Grandparents home and sat on their couch and asked them to move over then again move over, then they should stand up…then invite my relatives over to use her bedrooms too then take over her kitchen then tell her to be happy I am going to LET her have the closet, and we will call it …hmmm a reserve. I might be able to throw a (small pox) blanket into your reserve later but for now… enjoy, be grateful and the deals we (treaties) made about your house We will get back to you. Maybe when your children have children in the closet, we’ll talk. You are uncomfortable now because we are standing on our own two feet and demand you pay up or get out of grandmas house!