These are all nice ideas and reports but one conversation that is often overlooked when it comes to indigenous people being incarcerated … (and to a large degree how anyone of any race is incarcerated) … is how we as a society should do our very best to figure out how to better take care of everyone in every way.
Better housing, better education, cheaper food, cheaper fuel, more small scale economic opportunities and businesses, supporting people rather that coddling big business or big corporations … taxing big corporations and sending that money to help people instead, indigenous and everyone else.
Invest in people now rather than wait until their lives are so fallen apart and spend money on imprisoning them.
Many studies have shown that it is far cheaper to invest in people while they are healthy … rather than in trying to rehabilitate them after they have failed in life.
The conversation should not be centered on the poor and disenfranchised … we should focus on how we should hold the wealthiest and most powerful in our country to account and ask why they selfishly tie up our economy and wealth at the expense of everyone else
100% agree. You still have to address issues with the prison system, but by the time someone appears in court, things have already gone wrong, presumably a crime and a victim.
I think that the affordability crisis and the opioid epidemic present a grim synchronicity of problems, and marginal populations are going to be the first to be pushed over the edge.
So many of the problems you highlight affect everyone, but I would highlight that there a many issues that are specific to indigenous communities in Canada.
I don’t have the answers, but my personal concern has been indigenous languages. Here in BC there is a wealth of indigenous languages (over 30, in 7 different language families IIRC). Their near extinction is a direct result of government policies over Canada’s history. Supporting learning of indigenous languages in schools and supporting revival of indigenous cultural practices is an important piece of allowing kids to grow up proud and accepting of who they are.
Will this fix everything? No. The alternative justice system described in the article has been used for quit some time now, and it’s continued use makes sense. I guess we have to deal with the problems we have now, but a little investment in the next generation now can save a whole lot of trouble later.
Every dollar we spend making sure kids in poverty and their families have food and shelter and security is going to pay off hundreds of times over in adulthood. It’s still a hard sell, politicians tend to operate in the timeframe of “next election”.
