Over the last month, this pattern has been unfolding in the remote James Bay community of Kashechewan...

It's all part of the perverse tragedy of Canada's natives: Every time we're confronted with a scandal that demonstrates just how inhumane it is to encourage aboriginals to remain encamped in destitute, disease-ridden Bantustans, the nation's activists and politicians conspire to stand the lesson on its head -- to argue that what we really need is more subsidies for this obsolete way of life. Meanwhile, the more obvious solution -- encouraging natives to migrate to urban schools and job centres -- is denounced as a form of cultural genocide...

The lesson here is that the water problems in Kashechewan have little to do with "abuse and neglect." All the money in the world won't help if you don't have a functioning society with a real economy (not a make-believe one fuelled by government handouts) and an educated work force.

Even those politicians who understand all this will typically defend our inhumane aboriginal policy on the basis that grinding poverty is the price of sustaining "authentic" aboriginal culture. As horrible as life in Kashechewan may be, the theory goes, the reserve puts a needed glass bubble over the ancient hunter-gatherer civilization contained within...