A little Clarification...

Hi Friends
Today lets explore the real facts behind the racist comments usually found at the end of any and all newspaper articles about, or dealing with, Aboriginal issues, shall we?
As an off reserve member living and working outside of the community, and sometimes the only Aboriginal person they have ever come in contact with, it is usually on me to explain the Aboriginal side of the story to the many uninformed that I come in contact with. I'll start with the taxation thing.
Even new Canadians are told about taxes not being collected from the First Nations. I usually start by clarifying this false notion.
I live and work off reserve and as such do indeed pay taxes,(income, as well as property and GST) just as they do. This is usually met with skepticism as the Canadian government handbook, for immigration, has it stated right in there that Indigenous peoples of this country, do not pay taxes. This seems to be the one and only thing about the First Nations that the government, tell new citizens...my question is...why?
Does this seem designed to set up a divide between the First Nations and the new Canadians, or am I being just too sensitive?
Do the immigration hand books also state that churches are tax exempt as well?
On the subject of religion lets look at what the prevailing school of thought on Indigenous spirituality is, shall we?
Your culture is primitive and wrong and needs to be abandoned for your own growth as a people.
I also see our own people embracing Christianity over First Nations spirituality, for whatever reason: most likely residential school hang-over. It is somehow thought to be primitive to espouse the connectedness of our world.

We are living the upside down life of the colonized. We no longer cheer the collective, as was our way, but praise the individual a la the dominant culture.
We are no longer interconnected with mother earth, as we once were, but each is out for him/herself.
These are not our ways, but the way of the colonizer, as taught to us through the colonization process.
Indigenous spirituality teaches us that we are the least of the Creators gifts. Mother Earth is first, then the water, and the plant life followed by the animals and then and only then man...nothing NEEDS us to survive, but we most definitely need the all other of the Creators gifts to sustain us.
Our way is not to be so pompous as to believe that we are the top, or made in the image of our God, but neither born of original sin, one step away from eternal damnation...and by default necessary for the survival of all other things in our universe! changing Mother Earth to suit us, with no thought to the destruction we leave in our wake. Yet that is the way of the Christian religion, and they think we have it wrong and are savage.

I also believe that the tax issue is the same flipped around thinking being proffered by the governments of the day. They can not reconcile themselves with the basic fact that we as the original peoples, are the true proprietors, and further more, as we have never ceded our lands to them, that these resources belong to the Indigenous peoples and it follows that they are here through our altruism. They can't see the preposterous idea this is; to be taxed by a foreign government in our own land.
The real tax issue debated, weather it be chief's salaries, or tax exemption for the First Nations is: this is a constitutionally protected right of the First Nations here in Canada and must be defended as such.
It is not favored treatment of the First Nations, as so many seem to think it is. You can hardly blame the uneducated masses inability to understand what the Canadian government clearly spins as Indigenous greed. It is a lie, we the First Nations know it, and now so should everyone else.

Can I get an "amen" right here that, the Canadian constitution was brought home by an intellectual, and a leader, that understood that to lead in a democratic society, means the "will of the people must prevail" no matter what your personal opinion may be.
A far cry from the "my way or the hi-way" thinking of the dictatorial current government.
Indigenous issues are not easy to decipher or explain, nor are there easy fixes for us, but for sure we must never give up. To see the true picture some times it is beneficial to do as I do and flip things around...just remember to celebrate our ways while doing it.

regards Debra