Politics is a strange sport. I mean you have to promise the sky full with cheese and dip, and you try your hardest to make it seem the "god's honest truth," with sweet peppers in the mix. It is exactly how it sounds, ridiculous but yet, just maybe, your promise is sincere. I said it before, politicians in general are political prostitutes; sell their honor for a seat at the trough, I mean table.
It's weird because a lot of "good" people seem to lose the good version of themselves when they are shit-deep in the political sewage tub. It's a smelly mess with political animals. Myself, I did try to wade waste deep in the dung pile as well. I was not sewage ready and lost out. How naive I was. I actually thought I would be able to walk on the shit river without getting sunk in. Now seeing how deep the shit goes, I no longer pout about being shunned in the Reserve. You can't complain if you don't stick your finger in the crack, so I did my finger thing, and now I have free reign to call the pot black and dirty. And boy, don't you know I have mustered out, a few "Sooey, Sooey, Sooey," a time or three.
Today, I was driving home from the Rez and took a cell phone call from a friend. There was frustration from the friend; seems our Chief (and Council) are alienating the masses. It could be due to the blatant favoritism, secrecy, nepotism, wasteful spending, the general lack of respect for the community and each other. It is quite funny, there are pockets of people who actually think the Chief and Council are doing "good jobs." The sad thing about our community is the fact the Chief and Council are nice people. They are the people who will laugh with you, share stories, give you a hearty handshake and tell you what you want to hear. If the job of leadership was to just to be someone to share a good laugh with, these folks would be excellent for the job of leadership. This formula of being affable has its benefits; people look past the lack of transparency with financial decisions, capital purchase decisions and operational deficiencies.
I was speaking with a member of our local leadership the other day. It was okay, just your mundane daily chats about nothing. The local leader said something which make me look differently at the person. "I don't like Giveaways. People only give the good big things to their friends and give the little stuff to others. Only give to their friends, when I get stuff in a Giveaway I just leave it." In my head I was like, "holy nut bar." This is a leader, someone with such a negative view to see something as good as sharing to see it as a bad thing? It was not the only thing I noticed that day, as this person spoke at the podium of the meeting we were at. It was an Elders' Gathering held for a specific item for the community. The leader wasn't uplifting but rather just put down an entity in our community. An entity that does have a bad reputation, nationally wide. Thing is our community entity has made great strides in their operational delivery. Leadership would know this if they actually took interest, rather than just tear down.
I heard something disturbing the other day, not sure if it is true or not, rumors go around in a community like fish flies to a light bulb at night. Our community has a housing program, where there are houses provided to families and repairs to older dwellings as well. The leadership is quite know for providing this services to their immediate, extended families and friends. This is of course expected in any community, we get that. However there should a little fairness to other community members as well. The incident which got my attention was the sibling to one of the leaders is having a dwelling, a house totaled repaired so the sibling could move from the city to the Reserve. On the surface, "oh, that's cool, bring them home." The issue is this sibling had been provided help in the form of mortgage down-payment a number of years ago. The Band, the community, the Leadership provided this sibling with Band funds to able to finance a house in the City of Winnipeg. That is actually a good thing, if the Band could help people, that's great. The issue is, the sibling coming back to the Band trough again. I guess it's not so bad in the big scheme of the universe. The trouble is our community universe is small and resources in our universe are finite, our community has a limit. A limit in terms of Land, people, fresh water and cold stinking cash. How can the Band afford to provide a house, a new dwelling to someone who has a house already. The fact that this sibling made a living out of selling drugs to their own people for must have been most of their adult life, is absurd, crazy, disgusting actually. Sure people change and that's awesome, in some cases noble. Still. Not to be begrudge, but it is a scratch to the spin with a thorn from a plum tree, it stings.
For me, I like those leaders for their congeniality but that is it. I have yet to see any integrity. Integrity for the well being of the whole community. I do realize and know the leadership are bombarded with unending requests for this that and a house, but have some awareness leaders. The easy thing for any leader to do is to say "yes, meenagay," or "I'll look into it." To actually consider if their decision is benefitting the community as a whole. I can see they don't act in this manner. Wanting to be nice (and elected again) is not what leadership should be about. It's about having "walking around cash." Just kidding, a former Leader said that before to an administrator about wanting "walking around money," for when they are out and about. This was another institution and not our Reserve, although I have known our Band did have "hero money," for leadership to have when people came begging for hand outs; fifty-dollars here and there.
The election will be in five months and the community will decide who will they send to the trough, new leaders or the same ones. For me, I wouldn't vote for a single one of them. But sadly it won't matter, as the community has a culture of me, me and my dog. So whoever has given the most or is likely to give the most will be our leadership. Integrity indeed.
Integrity seeking for both leadership and the electorate.
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