lave owners removed the fathers and older males from the traditional African family structures to break the rebelliousness of the slaves who worked the plantations on the island. Younger males formed into gangs and even up to the present day, a gang culture still forms part of Jamaican society. During America’s slave era, many slave owners allowed their slaves to live as families.
As American slaves gained their freedom during the latter half of the 19th century, they continued to live in family groups. Booker T. Washington was a former slave who taught himself how to read and write. He founded the Tuskegee school near New Orleans that provided freed slaves and their children with a basic education. Black community leaders such as Booker T. Washington encouraged the freed slaves to pursue an education and become productive and responsible citizens. Many former slaves entered the world of commerce and ran businesses.
The social destruction of black America began after the onset of social welfare programs initiated during the mid-1960s by President Lyndon Johnson as part of his “Great War on Poverty.” Prior to the welfare era, black American women had a lower rate of illegitimate births than white women. During the pre-civil rights era, the crime rate for black American males (along with rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, related addiction and gang membership) was lower than for white males. The Ku Klux Klan was a large and exclusive gang that excluded and persecuted black people.
Idle No More
The proponents of the Idle No More movement may wish to achieve objectives akin to Johnson’s “Great War on Poverty,” but government programs have a long history of achieving the opposite of the original intentions over the long term. Johnson and his officials may not have intended to create ghettoes in black American communities, but that is what happened. Crime, drug trafficking, drug addiction, alcoholism, gangs, single-mother families, high unemployment and a general sense of apathy are manifest in many inner city ghettoes.
Many of Canada’s First Nations reservations share much in common with those ghettoes, including crime, drug addiction, drug trafficking, gang activity and general violence. Earlier government social policies broke the traditional extended family relationships that formed the social and cultural basis of traditional native communities. Before the national and provincial governments intruded into native affairs, their communities were self-sufficient and self-reliant. Native communities traded amongst each other, many using river transport as the means by which to move goods and food.
A small percentage of black ghetto residents were able to move out of the ghettoes and pursue an education that went beyond the inferior education offered at inner city ghetto schools. Some of them may have sought help from privately-funded self-help support groups that helped them rebuild their lives. They chose to strive to achieve something worthwhile in their lives. Likewise, a percentage of First Nations citizens were able to make a similiar transition away from life on a reservation, sometimes with the assistance of a self-help group.
Some First Nations people have achieved college and university educations and pursued job opportunities in the larger cities and served as role models and mentors for younger siblings and cousins to make a positive transition from the reservation to a productive life in a large city. The transition often includes active participation in a support group or in a spiritual healing program along with the pursuit of an education.
Despite the apathy and squalor that prevails on many reservations, there are bright spots where private entrepreneurial activity has opened doors of possible opportunity. There is the example of the world’s cleanest fish farm off Canada’s Pacific Coast, where First Nations entrepreneurs raise abalone for Vancouver’s fish markets and restaurant trade. The cigarette factories located on a reservation to the southeast of Ottawa have opened doors of entrepreneurial activity that in