Aboriginal families also need to step up to the plate

I'm not in the habit of defending Conservative ministers, but it seems like my gut reaction to Minister of Aboriginal Affairs Bernard Valcourt's rather rash recent claims were in fact justified. Back on March 20th, he made the assertion that 70 per cent of murdered aboriginal women were actually killed by indigenous men, and, despite a predictable outcry from native leaders, it turns out that the RCMP have now confirmed that figure.

My gut reaction when I first heard it was, "that sounds about right", although I was surprised that a top-level politician would put himself in the position of having to defend such a statement. RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson also seemed surprised that M. Valcourt would publicly air this previously-unreleased statistic, but he nevertheless confirmed that 70 per cent of the offenders were indeed of aboriginal origin, 25 per cent were non-aboriginal, and five per cent were of "unknown ethnicity". Of course, native leaders still do not believe any of this, and were, are still are, in high dudgeon.

It is just an unfortunate fact of life that the vast majority of murders of women, whether native or non-native, are perpetrated by spouses, family members or some other intimate relative, which is how the RCMP happens to know the racial profile of these murderers. The equivalent percentage for other (non-native) Canadian women who were murdered is actually even higher, around 74%. The Minister's comments are therefore not necessarily of a racial character, just stating facts.

M. Valcourt's other related comment at the time, though, that the deaths and disappearances of native women come down to a lack of respect among aboriginal men on reserves for aboriginal women, and that chiefs and councils need to take action to address this, is perhaps a little harder to justify, especially given the above-mentioned statistics for deaths of non-native women, although I actually think he probably has a point to some extent.

When I read these murder reports, I often wonder why so many young native women are walking the streets of Saskatoon and Winnipeg in the wee hours of the morning. But then it often comes out that the young woman's father has been M.I.A. or in jail or otherwise avoiding parental responsibility for most of her life, and that her alcoholic or drug-addled mother lets her do pretty much whatever she wants, whenever and wherever she wants, with next to no supervision or moral education. It's an all too common tale, and it needs to change.

Also today, a separate study in B.C. suggests that young aboriginal women are more likely to be victims of violence if they were sexually abused as children, or had a parent who attended a residential school. Probably no big surprise there, although I think we should be wary of using residential schools as an excuse for everything bad that happens on a native reserve. I don't mean to make light of the experience and plight of natives in Canada, despite the cash being thrown at them by various governments, but the buck can not be passed indefinitely, and some kind of responsibility needs to be claimed by someone, just as we would expect from any other segment of society.

Yet another article reports how the Misipawistik First Nation and Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation in northern Manitoba have adopted a novel policy whereby they remove the parents, not the children, from dangerous home settings, or where the parents were demonstrably not taking proper care of their children. Usually, the child goes to stay elsewhere on the reserve for a few months, typically with friends or family, and the removed parents spend a period of time receiving counselling or treatment (most often for alcohol dependency). In the vast majority of cases, the parents eventually return at some point to assume their parenting duties. It is not a perfect solution, but it seems to work better than the more common alternative, and helps to instil some sense of responsibility in the parents.

One only has to read the books of Joseph Boyden to know that peace and gentleness and family values are not necessarily mainstays of aboriginal culture, despite the romantic image of the noble native living in harmony with nature that we are brought up with. Yes, we stole their country many years ago, just like Europeans stole Australia, and the Romans, Vikings, Saxons and French stole Britain at various periods in its history, and one indigenous culture ousts another in a never-ending cycle of change. But, given the situation in which we all find ourselves, excessive political correctness may not always be the best way forward, and sometimes we do have to tell it like it is, even if the truth is sometimes less than palatable.