As opposed to the other 364 days
When the Natives do absolutely nothing except smoke, drink and fuck their daughters. This Friday will mark the Native Day of Action(tm) here in Canada. It’s their chance to whine and complain that us white guys who pay 45% in income tax to support their smoking, drinking and daughter-fucking are ripping them off. How they can justify that, we’re not entirely certain. But what we can be certain about is that it will cause a new committee or study group to be formed - also at our expense - and it will solve exactly nothing.
I have no sympathy for the plight of the Natives, any more than I do for the Palestinians. In both cases they have the choice to get the hell off the rez, become fully-functioning, voting members of democratic society, but instead they choose to live in concentration camps, hands out to the government, ever ready with a complaint on their lips for the shoddy treatment they chose for themselves. Shut up and get to work, losers. You can bang the drum (not a euphemism for daughters) on the weekends, the way some overgrown white boys still get together to rock out in a garage band. But Monday to Friday belongs to The Man, same as it does for the rest of us.
Which neatly segues into an article I read this morning, about the trouble with Native populations sniffing gasoline to get high.
Aboriginals in Labrador are hoping a new fuel that doesn’t intoxicate gas sniffers could help solve a persistent problem among young people in their communities.
But even though BP has offered the formula free to anyone who promises to produce it, it’s still not clear how Opal gas, developed in Australia, could be brought to the Canadian communities that want it.
“We’d love to have it available in Canada,” said BP spokeswoman Anita Perry. “The issue really is logistics.”
Opal gas was developed as a partial response to the problem of gas-sniffing in aboriginal communities in Australia.
Daniel Pottle, a member of the Nunatsiavut government created by the Labrador Inuit land claim, heard about the product last Christmas through contacts with a business development group at Newfoundland’s Memorial University. Intrigued, he travelled Down Under this spring with a delegation of Inuu, Inuit and government officials to see what Opal’s effect has been.
“Where the product is being used, gas sniffing is no longer an issue,” he said. “We came back with a very positive impression of this product.”
This is taking things a little bit too far. When we’re in the process of trying to stave off environmental damage, and reduce dependency on foreign oil, BP is wasting their time and energy creating a sniff-proof gasoline to deal with the huffing problem so common among native populations. And now Canadian natives from Newfoundland want in on it. Guess who pays?
Yup - that’s right. You and I, the whipped taxpayer. We’re not paying enough in gasoline taxes, now we’re expected to foot the bill so the notoriously substance-abusing natives will have one less thing to huff? Here’s a better idea: why not just remove petrol stations from reservations? Then when they complain that they can’t get around, can’t get out to bingo or whatever, can’t fill their snowmobiles, freeze to death in their Northern climes etc, we can remind them why. Bad enough most reservations have to lock innocuous substances like mouthwash and cough syrup behind the pharmacy counters. I, for one, do not wish to be buying these people snort-proof gas because they can’t take responsibility for their own lives.
Let’s not have just ONE day of Native Action. Let’s have 365 days of it. Maybe then they’d find they only have the same problems everybody else has, and not these bizarre problems that seem to proliferate while you sit collecting the dole and looking for something to complain about. You know what? Make it 364 days - they can have Christmas off like everybody else.
Wow. you definitely have natives nailed down pat. As a native person this is so ignorant, it’s actually quite funny. Do you actually know any native people? What next are you going to call us “Wagon burners”? I’m pretty sure now that I’ve read this post that you are mostly full of it. If you actually looked into the native lifestyles we have a lot of the same problems as some poorer non-native communities. I’m sure there are some non-native alcohol problems in non-native communities. I’m sure that there are tobacco problems in non-native communities. I’m sure that there are some non-native people who “fuck their daughters”. I work as a Paramedic on and off the “rez” and also I volunteer my time with several health awareness organizations. I donate towards Amnesty International and have a son and daughter with my beautiful native wife. I guess I break your small minded stereotype towards natives. Not that I am interested in your response (not that you would respond because stereotypically right-winged bloggers are usually not the type to respond to the truth) I just think it would be insulting and disrespectful not only to natives but to society in general.
Comment by Leonard — June 19, 2008 @ 9:54 pm
It is fascinating to me that you cite indigenous peoples of the Americas and Palestinians as having chosen the situations of marginality and structural violence that many now inhabit. My ancestors, Bengalis from “Bangladesh,” never invited the British to subjugate our people and extract the wealth of our natural and human resources. Similarly, the Americas and what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories, were seized and occupied involuntarily.
Native peoples did not choose to have their lands invaded by immoral, racist and violent settlers who somehow professed a faith in a martyr God who died for solidarity with the oppressed and forgotten, all the while conceiving of and treating other human beings like objects and animals with no further purpose than exploitation and wealth production as cogs of an emerging colonial-capitalist machine.
Reservations were not created by Native peoples. Your piddly taxes do not come close to rectifying the immense moral wrongs committed against Native peoples.
Comment by Shom Dasgupta — August 18, 2008 @ 11:07 am