The 47-year-old chief of B.C.'s Osoyoos Indian Band believes the way the federal government has treated natives is dead-wrong.Good grief.
"Our people have to get away from that mentality of spending money and start making money," Louie said. "I love creating jobs and I love making money."
"Hard work, not handouts, is the way to solving the criminally high rate of native unemployment, poverty and incarceration," he argues.
Taxpayers of all races (including aboriginals) shell out $10 billion annually to help an estimated 1 million natives.
(via dmb)
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RELATED: Welfare for life sure isn't the answer
Roughly half of aboriginal Canadians subsist on an annual income of less than $10,000, according to the most recent data; unemployment among aboriginals is 26%, three times the national rate; Statistics Canada calculates that more than half of native kids are living in poverty; ¾ drop out of school before completing Grade 12; the incarceration rate of aboriginal men is 11 times that of non-native men; of women, it is 250 times the rate for non-native women.**********
LAST WORD: What about Caledonia?
"In recent months, especially, I have been impressed by how ordinary citizens have taken it upon themselves to report the story that the media at-large has ignored."*