In the latest issue of Cerebus (#291, which I bought last week), Dave Sim mentions his alternative to the Canadian government's problem of financially supporting Indian reservations. He says that "In a country whose annual military budget is $11 billion, we are spending $7 billion a year subsidizing life on Indian reserves. That works out to approximately $70,000 a year per reserve-resident household."
He goes on to quote a May 9th National Post editorial which states, "But because many Indian reserves are geographically isolated, bereft of significant economic activity, mismanaged and corrupt, this massive investment does little to improve the lives of ordinary Indians. Meanwhile, the only option that will lead to progress in the long term -- a policy that encourages Indians to leave reserves and integrate into urban Canadian society -- is rejected out of hand as culturally insensitive."
Sim proposes the following solution to the problem:
"I think the only sensible approach to the problem is to offer each individual of the native population a choice: a) he or she can join Canadian society, such as it is, and start working his or her butt off like the rest of us to make ends meet or b) he or she can move onto a vast tract of primordial wilderness (of which this country has no shortage whatsoever) which will be left in its pristine original form which it had hundreds and hundreds of years ago before Europeans came to this country and he or she can return to living just the way his or her ancestors did five hundred years ago. BY LAW no modern convenience of any kind will be allowed to sully the immaculate perfection of the eco-balance of that pristine wilderness. BY LAW no hunting rifle, ammunition, fishing rod and/or tackle, toilet paper, Coleman stove, cigarette, packaged or canned food, tampon, Kleenex, television set, electricity, toilet (chemical or standard), telephone, penicillin, shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrush, comb, knife, fork, spoon, plate, pan, bottle, thermos, knapsack, blanket (electric or standard), radio, walkman, VCR, DVD player, satellite dish, beer, wine, spirits nor any other modern convenience with which we Europeans have been steadily eroding the exalted standard of life on this continent for, lo, these many centuries will be permitted AT ANY TIME anywhere in, on or near Firstnationsland. The citizens of Firstnationsland would, of course, be entitled to hunt and fish and farm in whatever proportions they chose to do so and to make any and all of what they deem for themselves to be their basic human necessities out of birch bark, beaver guts and moose antlers. It is my considered opinion that, were such an offer to (be) made, it is very likely that each aboriginal individual electing to choose option b) could probably be given something in excess of five or ten thousand acres to call his or her own since I can't imagine more than ten or twenty people would actually go for it and not one of them would survive the first snowfall anyway."
Posted by rimes12
at 2:44 PM EDT
