News & Events
Prison systems manufacture human misery
May 3, 2010
Canada has failed horribly at managing the lives of Indigenous peoples, but it still keeps trying and trying, regardless of whether we are talking about schools, or child-care systems, or jails.
The prison system is the last station on an assembly line in the factory that manufactures human misery. It is a factory that has been built, managed and operated by Canada. It has been re-designed and re-tooled many times over the generations, but the terrible results continue.
The federal and provincial governments of Canada must quit trying to manage our lives. If we had full responsibility for managing ourselves, we would do much better than Canada has done.
The situation I want to address today is the justice system, which is a nice way to say "apparatus to persecute Indians."
In a healthy country there should be very little need for rehabilitation. In Canada this need exists because of all the damage done to people and families through generations of discrimination, persecution and oppression. Indigenous economic and social structure has been - and continues to be - to be under attack. Many of our people have been damaged. Families and individuals need to recover.
In this column, I would like to address the issue of having Indian Nations provide an alternative to the current system for people sent to jail for moderate offences.
Often these people - usually young and male - wind up in the provincial jail system. Among other problems, this system is horribly overcrowded. It is a recruiting ground for gang activity and eventually many young men wind up in more serious crime after release. Then they go to the crowded federal prison system.
We could co-operate to create structures for treatment of people who would go to jail. We would be the best people to operate and develop treatment for people whose lives have gotten onto an unfortunate course.
A person cannot be treated in isolation. Rehabilitation and personal development must occur among other people who have an understanding of a person's individual, family and social situation. This is very difficult to achieve unless there is some type of shared history.
Among our people, we have the shared history of reserve life and of life growing up in an urban environment among other Indigenous people. Our people understand the issues faced by the people whose lives are in crisis.
It doesn't matter how much anyone learns in a school or a university, he or she will never be equipped to deal with people whose personal background is very different.
The mainstream justice system recognizes this to a degree and employs some of our people, making use of their spirituality and personal journeys. Also, progress has been made also with sentencing circles and court diversion initiatives. Now we must go to the next step, which is to control the entire system.
As it stands, authority and decision-making power rests with the government - I call it a foreign government system.
We should control the system, not be treated as children who must take direction from Daddy, which is the government. I have made this argument a number of times with child and family services. CFS should be designed and managed by our people. The same applies to the system of justice - or more accurately, injustice.
I could go on more about the problems of the non-Indigenous systems, but the solution rests with us. The most important thing is our attitude. Our attitude must be one of "we can do it." Governments have tried to hoodwink us into believing that we can't do it ourselves; that we can only trust ourselves so far; that daddy must be able to reach in and grab the reigns.
At SCO we have been talking with Onashowewin, a restorative justice program that we sponsored, looking at developing alternatives to jail. People who would go to jail, or circulate in and out of the court system, could develop work skills and living skills.
It would be a holistic approach where they would become part of a rewarding and meaningful environment. Among our Indian Nations, there is land that would be very well suited to this type of initiative. The people sent there could also provide labor for projects that would benefit participating Indian nations.
The Canadian public should also welcome this type of initiative. It costs $137,000 to keep one prisoner in a federal penitentiary for a year. In addition, the federal government is expected to increase its prison construction budget this year by 40%, to $330 million this fiscal year. And what does Canada get in return? Walls and watch towers.
As the Indigenous peoples, we continue to be the human contributors to this industry while the economic benefits of this spending stimulus goes to a lot of foreigners and Canadians.
Grand Chief Morris J. Swan Shannacappo of the Southern Chiefs' Organization