I have been following the blogs that feature welfare dependiency, poverty, and other related issues and responses with great interest. I'm a little disappointed that rarely has dominant governing systems and their impact on certain minority groups have ever been made an issue. What I am about the write has a lot to do with race and I speak from a Canadian perspective, and from the imposed-upon race. Mind you, these issues can be applied to every other Aboriginal/Aborigine/Apartheid group that have faced interaction from a colonizing entity. Georgraphical differences are present; the aftereffects are not.

Unless some major changes are made, the state of welfare dependency among Aboriginal peoples will continue. According to a 1986 census (which can probably still be found on the Canadian government website) nearly 60% of on-reserve Natives depend solely on welfare to exist/survive. Granted, this data was provided 8 years ago, but the only difference that might stand today is the the numbers have increased with the population growth over this period of time, not decreased. At that time there was an estimated 500,000 Aboriginals in Canada. That number has nearly doubled since then.

Why are Aboriginal people so dependent on welfare? Because the imposition of the reserve system was designed to remove undesired people from their valuable homelands to smaller tracts of land that were generally useless. They were removed from their previous homes to make way for more non-Native people, housing, corporate development and enterprise. Many bands live in areas that are geographically situated away from white/non-Native communities. Their reserve becomes home only to a few jobs, and the ecosystem that they now reside in are limited in providing adequate sustainablility either through growth in population, pollution, limited hunting grounds, and over-farming of limited resources. The land base that once provided a great population, has been decreased to these users so that there is just no way of going back to life of living off the land.

What are the options? Remaning on welfare and living within the community, or relocating to a larger urban areas and becoming assimilated into non-Native way of life... an equally accepted outcome of segregationist and cultural/racial genocide initiatives. The more that move to the cities, the less of a chance of maintaining cultural ways and relations. Schooling programs fail to work. The only difference is now, instead of having uneducated people on reserve, we have many with degrees with little way to put them to use. Training with the specific geographical area in mind is an answer, but few are making this decision, and even fewer offer the opportunity to learn.

And what of other corporations? Will they instead relocate to higher poverty areas in order to employ more people that exist on welfare? Of course not. Citing a lack of relative work skills and training is not acceptable, anyone can be trained with the intent and encouragement of an employer. They don't even have to front the money for training, allocations of monies for job training is already a component within the welfare/Aboriginal training system.

Feel free to add to this citeless and ongoing comment on a different perspective of welfare dependence. I could add more citations and will if requested, but I can assure you, that these are not made up statistics and postulations. This is the reality of Aboriginal poverty, the causes, and projected future without change. This concerns on-reserve welfare dependency issues, but there are just as many reasons for its continued use off-reserve. In your city. In your neighborhood.

Finally, please note that while I am writing this with 'aboriginal' being the ethnic group in point, many others are affected similarily. For those who were relocated to 'better urban housing' that mostly caters to the same ethnicity, there are surrounding areas that will not employ due to racial discrimination. There is a reason why the majority of the rich and prosperous is of a Caucasian background. While racism is being fought against in today's society, the past continues to hold up barriers for success in the future.