FIXING RESERVES AN INSIDE JOB

Jeanette Peterson and Kirk Buffalo live more than 3,600 kilometres
apart, almost on opposite ends of the country. Yet the two are
connected by their desire to improve their respective First Nations
communities.

Ms. Peterson is the newly elected Chief of Nova Scotia's Annapolis
Valley reserve, while Mr. Buffalo is a new Councillor at the Samson
Cree band on central Alberta's Hobbema reserve. Chief Peterson wants
to bring financial accountability to her tiny community of 112
people, while Councillor Buffalo is attempting to clean up his
community of 3,000, which has been plagued by murders, drive-by
shootings, gang activity and drug dealing.

If Canada's First Nations citizens are ever to lift themselves out of
squalor, addiction, corruption and violence, the Petersons and
Buffalos in their midst have to succeed.

Non-aboriginals may engage in as many well-intentioned reform efforts
as they wish, they may offer advice until they are out of breath or
throw billions of tax dollars at aboriginal problems, but unless and
until First Nations members themselves are behind the drive for
transformation, there will be little meaningful, lasting change.

Over the past two years, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) has
taken up the cause of bringing greater transparency to on-reserve
spending of federal grants. Ottawa transfers nearly $8-billion a year
to the country's 630 First Nations. That's nearly $13-million apiece
for communities that average under 1,000 residents each. According to
Mark Milke, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, on a per capita
basis, Ottawa delivers about six or seven times the amount of cash to
aboriginal communities that comparably sized non-aboriginal towns
spend in their annual budgets. The problem on most reserves, then, is
not lack of money but rather how the money is spent.

One of the biggest splashes the CTF made in its accountability
campaign was publishing the salaries of chiefs and band councillors.
The federation revealed that nationwide more than 600 native
politicians earned more than $100,000 in 2009. Nearly 100 earned more
than their respective provincial premiers, while 50 hauled in more
than the prime minister, tax-free.

When Ms. Peterson learned what the three councillors making the
decisions in her tiny community were paying themselves, she was
shocked. One had hauled in $152,167, the equivalent of a taxable,
off-reserve salary of $261,000. Another pulled down $172,325, while
the third made $120,060 - all for managing the affairs of just 112 residents.

Appalled that councillors were making so much money, and doubly
appalled that no one knew until the CTF published the salaries, Ms.
Peterson decided to run for chief. Running on a platform of openness
in financial dealings - including a pledge to let band members set
her salary - Chief Peterson won election late last fall with 71% of
the vote. She is now looking for a way to live up to her promise to
let her voters determine what her annual compensation should be.

There should soon be a federal law requiring aboriginal politicians
to make public their pay and benefits, but for now, this information
is available only when courageous politicians such as Chief Peterson
voluntarily disclose or through the research efforts of organizations
such as the CTF.

Out West, Kirk Buffalo faced a different problem: rampant gang
violence on his birch-parkland reserve about 80 kilometres south of
Edmonton. Appalled by the September shooting death of Chelsea
Yellowbird, 23, at an on-reserve home known for gang activity, and
next door to the home where Ms. Yellowbird's five-year-old nephew,
Ethan Yellowbird, was slain in a drive-by shooting in July, Mr.
Buffalo decided to get community permission to evict troublemakers.

At a news conference in September, Mr. Buffalo vowed if those
responsible for a surge of crime on the reserve "can't respect
themselves [or] respect the community, we, in turn, will show them no respect."

On Wednesday, 56% of the band voted for a bylaw that would permit any
25 members of the band to petition for another resident's removal. If
the person is not a band member, the eviction decision would be made
by a residency tribunal. Band members could only be banished by a
two-thirds vote of the chief and council.

Although he has only been a councillor for nine months, Mr. Buffalo
is no wide-eyed idealist. "This residency bylaw is not a solution.
It's merely a tool," he told reporters after the vote. If residents
and Mounties don't expel troublemakers and keep them from returning,
the beatings, shootings and drug-peddling will persist. If residents
refuse to be accountable for their actions, Mr. Buffalo explained, if
they do not work to change the culture of addiction, family breakdown
and crime in their community, no banishment bylaw will be effective.

That's the element that connects Mr. Buffalo and Chief Peterson: the
recognition that the biggest problems faced by First Nations
communities in Canada must be, for the most part, solved from within.
Even if the poverty, despair, chronic unemployment, under-education,
substance abuse, poor governance and crime have some root causes
outside aboriginal communities, no permanent improvement is possible
until the impetus for change comes from within.

Ottawa can (and should) pass laws demanding more transparency in
First Nations' finances. It should not hesitate to insist on
meticulous accounting of taxpayers' dollars and resist charges of
racism aimed at deflecting scrutiny from incompetent aboriginal
managers. But no amount of imposed, outside accountability will ever
be an adequate substitute for demands from aboriginals themselves
that their own leaders solve the problems their communities face.