Hi Friends
Today I'd like to speak about the health issues in the Aboriginal community. Though there are many,
one of the biggest ones is diabetes. This disease not only represents a huge problem for the Nations, but a substantial health expenditure for all Canadians, in the near future.
The best way to tackle this problem and to minimize the impact, would require attention being paid today, to other issues. Poverty being the most important one, needing redress.
Expensive transportation costs have many Northern communities struggling, with such high food costs, that they are eating very poor diets. Diets high in carbohydrates, and high in fats, as well as other refined over processed foods, these being what most families can afford. Fresh fruits and produce rot on the shelves due to their prohibitively high sticker prices. Yet without these nutritious fresh low fat unprocessed foods, health suffers.
We all know the problem with poor diets leading to obesity, and obesity leading to diabetes. This is not just in the Aboriginal community, but in the Canadian population as a whole. However the implications of this latest study has particularly dire consequences for the Aboriginal communities. New studies have pointed out a predisposition among young Aboriginal women to be at higher than is the normal risk for this disease.
With high murder and suicide rates already devastating the communities, it's not as if the Indigenous Nations can afford any more losses, of their people.
The urgency of this looming medical crisis should, at the very least be commanding the utmost attention from those in power. Not just for the Indigenous populations, but for all Canadians.
The sheer cost of managing diabetes in the population of the Canadian people is enough, you would think, to spur the Canadian government to take action.
What we don't need, are more studies, nor do we need any more research on the impacts of diabetes. What this looming epidemic does need, however is a commitment to action. Action on real poverty initiatives, designed to spare the people and the country the expense of managing this deadly disease.
Stop the waste of tax-payers dollars on prisons we don't need, and punitive mean spirited programs that will only widen the gap between the poor and rich, and get serious about leading this country into a brighter, future, with sustainable jobs, safe affordable food, and healthy homes for all!
This is a rich country. Rich enough to spend lavishly on political propaganda, and military machinery. Rich enough to spend on altruistic support for the third world, yet allowing a certain group to languish away in hidden, or out right ignored, third world living conditions. Where is the altruism towards them? When will the Canadian government see the need to address these problems?
regards Debra
Monday, February 28, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Family Feelings
Hi Friends
We here in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta are all celebrating the Family day weekend, along with our Manitoba neighbours who too are celebrating, Louis Riel day.
On this family day week-end I have been thinking of other families. The ones on isolated and marginalized reserves. Families who may very well be mourning their lost loved ones, lost to crime or suicide, or addiction.Families struggling with the ever present realities of poverty.
I have also been thinking of the chiefs of these communities, and asking myself what are their responsibilities to their community members. In any small town in the country there are many poor, eking out a living or subsisting on welfare, and the mayors and town councilors are not being hounded by the media or the tax-payers federation embarrassing them over their salaries. Unabashedly demanding they do better by their citizenry.
Now that sounds like I have taken a side here and have defended the chiefs for their lack of action...I assure you I have not!
The main difference between small town Canada and the reserves is this, most small towns may have a majority of their better off community members being related, and can also be painted as nepotists, as far as the doling out of the plum jobs and appointments, but on the reserves the relationships are always much closer, and the disparages, by definition more hurtful. Those on reserve are not merely friends and neighbours, but are also cousins, in-laws and closer family members, as well as friends and neighbours.
Most small town have a middle class, as well as working poor and then the richer class. On reserve there is only the extremely poor and the well off band administrators.
As it falls to the middle class to pay for social programs via taxation these are met in small town Canada, as well as in the rest of the country. Having no middle class on reserve leaves the reserves with out that safety net. It will, as in times gone by, then, be up to the chiefs and councilors to fill this gap between the haves and have nots.
To that end I have complied a list of relatively inexpensive ideas/solutions for the chiefs to employ at the reserve level, (kind of fill the middle class gap as it were) to invest in their citizens for the betterment of their communities as a whole.
Night after night we hear of kids falling into gang lifestyles, and addictive behaviors, with the main reason being cited, as little or no activities for entertainment of the youth.
Additionally, high unemployment on the reserves leave the adults beaten down and self medicating with alcohol or drugs. Vandalism and violence, are out of control in most of these communities, all studied and assessed as symptoms of extreme poverty.
With real caring for their own, and exercising real leadership skills, the chiefs could, and should take some of their own salaries and invest in their communities. Build a legacy as it were ala the great leaders from our past.
Why not buy a large screen T.V and a DVD/blu-ray player for the children and youth in these communities. This could be set up the school gym, or the community hall as a make shift theater. The good news is the price of large screen televisions have fallen as have the DVD/blu-ray players, and most movies are on DVD/blu-ray format making them easy to ship and store.
Favorite TV shows, cartoon, and dramas as well as many educational programs are also available on disc formate as well.
Take some of your earnings and plow up a community garden plot, with certain rows designated to the seniors home or the school for lunch programs.
Hire the language speakers to run a craft and learning center for the young, and employ the youth for community clean-up projects. The elders have little need of big salaries, nor do the youth really, but these people do need the rewards of salary, as any one would.
These are activities that would foster family and community spirit as well as a notion of self sufficiency in all.
" A leader is a dealer in hope..."
Napoleon Bonaparte
Please enjoy the family day holiday, these people, our children, parents and relatives, are who we all profess to be doing it all for any way!
Regards Debra
We here in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta are all celebrating the Family day weekend, along with our Manitoba neighbours who too are celebrating, Louis Riel day.
On this family day week-end I have been thinking of other families. The ones on isolated and marginalized reserves. Families who may very well be mourning their lost loved ones, lost to crime or suicide, or addiction.Families struggling with the ever present realities of poverty.
I have also been thinking of the chiefs of these communities, and asking myself what are their responsibilities to their community members. In any small town in the country there are many poor, eking out a living or subsisting on welfare, and the mayors and town councilors are not being hounded by the media or the tax-payers federation embarrassing them over their salaries. Unabashedly demanding they do better by their citizenry.
Now that sounds like I have taken a side here and have defended the chiefs for their lack of action...I assure you I have not!
The main difference between small town Canada and the reserves is this, most small towns may have a majority of their better off community members being related, and can also be painted as nepotists, as far as the doling out of the plum jobs and appointments, but on the reserves the relationships are always much closer, and the disparages, by definition more hurtful. Those on reserve are not merely friends and neighbours, but are also cousins, in-laws and closer family members, as well as friends and neighbours.
Most small town have a middle class, as well as working poor and then the richer class. On reserve there is only the extremely poor and the well off band administrators.
As it falls to the middle class to pay for social programs via taxation these are met in small town Canada, as well as in the rest of the country. Having no middle class on reserve leaves the reserves with out that safety net. It will, as in times gone by, then, be up to the chiefs and councilors to fill this gap between the haves and have nots.
To that end I have complied a list of relatively inexpensive ideas/solutions for the chiefs to employ at the reserve level, (kind of fill the middle class gap as it were) to invest in their citizens for the betterment of their communities as a whole.
Night after night we hear of kids falling into gang lifestyles, and addictive behaviors, with the main reason being cited, as little or no activities for entertainment of the youth.
Additionally, high unemployment on the reserves leave the adults beaten down and self medicating with alcohol or drugs. Vandalism and violence, are out of control in most of these communities, all studied and assessed as symptoms of extreme poverty.
With real caring for their own, and exercising real leadership skills, the chiefs could, and should take some of their own salaries and invest in their communities. Build a legacy as it were ala the great leaders from our past.
Why not buy a large screen T.V and a DVD/blu-ray player for the children and youth in these communities. This could be set up the school gym, or the community hall as a make shift theater. The good news is the price of large screen televisions have fallen as have the DVD/blu-ray players, and most movies are on DVD/blu-ray format making them easy to ship and store.
Favorite TV shows, cartoon, and dramas as well as many educational programs are also available on disc formate as well.
Take some of your earnings and plow up a community garden plot, with certain rows designated to the seniors home or the school for lunch programs.
Hire the language speakers to run a craft and learning center for the young, and employ the youth for community clean-up projects. The elders have little need of big salaries, nor do the youth really, but these people do need the rewards of salary, as any one would.
These are activities that would foster family and community spirit as well as a notion of self sufficiency in all.
" A leader is a dealer in hope..."
Napoleon Bonaparte
Please enjoy the family day holiday, these people, our children, parents and relatives, are who we all profess to be doing it all for any way!
Regards Debra
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Those who belong...
Hi Friends
Well well well, is Ottawa up to their old tricks, once again?
It would look like it to me at least, but you decide. It seems "Poppa John" Duncan, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Federal Interlocutor for Metis and Non Status Indians, and no doubt soon, "butt-in-ski" for Unknown and Unstated Paternity (brothers and sisters left off the latest Indian Act amendment) has decided to take a closer look at what constitutes a Metis person.
read about it here!!
They (Ottawa) say no, but I have a funny feeling about this one. Like the first Minster of Indian affairs, ( Duncan Campbell Scott) this Duncan has, it would seem, the same old agenda.
"I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone.
Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this bill."
Duncan Campbell Scott (assimilationist) and coincidently head of the Department of Indian Affairs:1913-1932
So now are we to never trust any one with the name of Duncan, weather it be a first name or last? It's looking like that to me.
Maybe the Honorable John Duncan could make a new class of Indigenous citizen. The "apples" and the first so named members could be Shelly Glover, and Senator Patrick Brazeau...just a suggestion.
Being so engaged, then maybe, just maybe, he and the rest of the government bureaucrats would stop the meddling into the Indigenous peoples rights to name their own citizens.
Regards Debra
Well well well, is Ottawa up to their old tricks, once again?
It would look like it to me at least, but you decide. It seems "Poppa John" Duncan, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Federal Interlocutor for Metis and Non Status Indians, and no doubt soon, "butt-in-ski" for Unknown and Unstated Paternity (brothers and sisters left off the latest Indian Act amendment) has decided to take a closer look at what constitutes a Metis person.
read about it here!!
They (Ottawa) say no, but I have a funny feeling about this one. Like the first Minster of Indian affairs, ( Duncan Campbell Scott) this Duncan has, it would seem, the same old agenda.
"I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone.
Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this bill."
Duncan Campbell Scott (assimilationist) and coincidently head of the Department of Indian Affairs:1913-1932
So now are we to never trust any one with the name of Duncan, weather it be a first name or last? It's looking like that to me.
Maybe the Honorable John Duncan could make a new class of Indigenous citizen. The "apples" and the first so named members could be Shelly Glover, and Senator Patrick Brazeau...just a suggestion.
Being so engaged, then maybe, just maybe, he and the rest of the government bureaucrats would stop the meddling into the Indigenous peoples rights to name their own citizens.
Regards Debra
Friday, February 4, 2011
Gazing upon Eden
Hi Friends
With the discovery of an undiscovered tribe in the Amazon forests we have a unique opportunity here to observe an entirely different culture. Different, yet our own, same culture. In the beginning, we were all of this culture. That some have held on to it, to this time, in our collective history, is amazing, and we must, I believe make every effort to preserve it.
That is if we can stop the greed of governments, in their never ending thirst for natural resources. In this case: clear cutting the forest for expansion and ultimately these peoples land.
I am very excited to know that we are sharing the planet with these intriguing people...as I am sure many others are as well. If we manage to keep our distance, we have an unprecedented opportunity here to learn not just about them but ultimately ourselves as well.
Their lifestyle can't be an easy one. Hunter gather societies are subsistence by nature, and by necessity co-operative. As in any society there is a need for rules of some sort, so as to allow for community. How are disputes mediated? What type of governing is practiced? These questions will have to wait until they reach out for contact with us, if they ever do.
They obviously know about us and have so far kept their distance. Should a time come when they do reach out to us, it must be on their terms, not ours.
Tonight as I eat my micro-wave popcorn and drink my coffee, while I watch my satellite t.v. or communicate with my fb friends around the world, I will be for sure thinking of these people and marveling at the thought of our own beginnings.
No doubt there will be other times when they will be on my mind as well. I will be forever wondering who has got the better lifestyle, but I am content to let this be my own mystery to mull over.
Let us, let them teach us, to be ever mindful of where we came from while allowing them the dignity of their existence, among yet separate from us, as they have chosen to date!
Please sign the petition to save them from us, as they have wanted, so far, at least!
Regards Debra
With the discovery of an undiscovered tribe in the Amazon forests we have a unique opportunity here to observe an entirely different culture. Different, yet our own, same culture. In the beginning, we were all of this culture. That some have held on to it, to this time, in our collective history, is amazing, and we must, I believe make every effort to preserve it.
That is if we can stop the greed of governments, in their never ending thirst for natural resources. In this case: clear cutting the forest for expansion and ultimately these peoples land.
I am very excited to know that we are sharing the planet with these intriguing people...as I am sure many others are as well. If we manage to keep our distance, we have an unprecedented opportunity here to learn not just about them but ultimately ourselves as well.
Their lifestyle can't be an easy one. Hunter gather societies are subsistence by nature, and by necessity co-operative. As in any society there is a need for rules of some sort, so as to allow for community. How are disputes mediated? What type of governing is practiced? These questions will have to wait until they reach out for contact with us, if they ever do.
They obviously know about us and have so far kept their distance. Should a time come when they do reach out to us, it must be on their terms, not ours.
Tonight as I eat my micro-wave popcorn and drink my coffee, while I watch my satellite t.v. or communicate with my fb friends around the world, I will be for sure thinking of these people and marveling at the thought of our own beginnings.
No doubt there will be other times when they will be on my mind as well. I will be forever wondering who has got the better lifestyle, but I am content to let this be my own mystery to mull over.
Let us, let them teach us, to be ever mindful of where we came from while allowing them the dignity of their existence, among yet separate from us, as they have chosen to date!
Please sign the petition to save them from us, as they have wanted, so far, at least!
Regards Debra
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