Life expectancy for Indigenous people in Canada is at an all-time low, and it s only getting worse. How can we not see this as a crisis? And why is there no action being taken to fix it?
00:00:00.000So, the life expectancy for an Indigenous man in Alberta is now plummeted down to 60 years of age, and for Indigenous women it's down to 66.
00:00:09.000So, if you want to see the comparison of what that means, the national life expectancy for a non-Indigenous man in Canada is 80, and women 84.
00:00:17.260And the story across the country isn't any different with Indigenous populations, it's just a matter of give and take a couple of years.
00:00:23.400And this issue hasn't garnered the headlines it should have, because it forces people to face a reality they'd rather avoid.
00:00:30.100Canada's system and policies with Indigenous people, it's a complete catastrophe.
00:00:35.960And how bad does it have to get before people admit this?
00:00:40.340Think about that, Indigenous Canadians can expect to die 20 years before everybody else, and that number's getting worse.
00:00:47.160The population should be screaming for systematic reform from the rooftops in light of this kind of number, but the silence is deafening.
00:00:54.040Now, the opioid addiction epidemic is responsible for how fast it suddenly increased.
00:01:00.080It increased by a seven-year drop in life expectancy in the last few years.
00:01:04.920But again, those expectancies were already low, and they were already dropping.
00:01:09.100And again, it's indicative of some big, serious problems.
00:01:12.300Indigenous people have always had lower life expectancy than the rest of Canadians.
00:01:45.060How can somebody look at Canada's system of racial apartheid, and that's exactly what it is, and not see a socioeconomic disaster in the making?
00:01:53.340How could a person think that keeping a race of people separated from the rest of society, on what are usually isolated reserves, with little to no local means of generating income, and think that these people are going to fare well under these conditions?
00:02:05.480Does anybody really believe there's a sustainable future for people living on these enclaves of dependency and misery?
00:02:14.880Do they think citizens and residents on reserves will suddenly find and develop local resources and begin to live functional lives independent from government management and dependency?
00:02:23.980Some people really believe those things might happen.
00:02:26.300But all that tells me is they've never actually spent time on a reserve in Canada.
00:02:30.700I'm not talking about somebody who's gone and attended the odd powwow or done a corporate retreat that had a sweat lodge attached to a resort in a native reserve somewhere.
00:02:38.980I'm talking about getting off the main road and seeing how our First Nations populations are really living on those reserves.
00:02:46.100Have a look at the dilapidated houses, the wild dogs, the crime, the trash strewn about.
00:03:10.060A lifetime of economic dependency in a tight and often dysfunctional social environment handicaps indigenous people when they try to break free.
00:03:27.040It's going to take decades of policies modeled to transition people away from the reserve system and into society in general.
00:03:33.640People will need compensation, training, and adjustment for it.
00:03:37.180Individual property rights need to be applied for people on reserves to break them out of the collectivism that's destroying them today.
00:03:43.560And, of course, there will be legal challenges, too.
00:03:45.880Many people have misconceptions about what treaty obligations the country actually has to indigenous people.
00:03:50.480Now, most of those obligations, if you read a treaty, they just have to do with things like providing education, determining some land boundaries, and some minor payments.
00:03:58.680We could apply private property rights and come up with some final settlements and still abide by treaties.
00:04:05.180Most of the policies applied to indigenous people right now come from the outdated and terribly racist Indian Act.
00:04:10.660That gross piece of legislation needs to be repealed.
00:04:13.840And as a society, we need to move away from all race-based policies.
00:04:20.380There's a giant parasite class living on the backs of Canada's indigenous population.
00:04:25.060There's bureaucrats, civil servants, and many lawyers.
00:04:27.920They find the status quo very lucrative, and they'll defend it vigorously.
00:04:31.700People calling for changes to the system will always be called racist, among other things, by those other parasites invested in the current bloated and corrupted system.
00:05:35.580Racial policies and segregation needs to be phased out.
00:05:38.560And the best thing that could happen for indigenous Canadians suffering under the mess we have right now, this is the best thing we could do.
00:05:44.560If one really did actually hate indigenous people, I could think of a few things more terrible that can be done than to maintain the current system.
00:05:51.540We can't repair damage caused through race-based policy through applying even more race-based policies.
00:05:58.220Anyway, guys, it's time to start talking about it, frankly, okay?
00:06:07.940If you really do care for Canada's indigenous people, it's time for some courageous, frank discussion on changing the entire system, and significantly.
00:06:15.820And it's awful to watch it keep carrying on as it has been.