Forward Motion

Canada has had its fair share of grand plans to improve the lives of aboriginal peoples. In 1969, Pierre Trudeau gave us the now controversial white paper. In 1996 the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was released, mostly being ignored by politicians. In 2005 Paul Martin’s ambitious Kelowna Accord fell apart. These were the headline grabbers. But along the way there have been various other official reports and formal recommendations. If only because none have come even close to fulfilling their lofty goals, it is easy to understand those who are skeptical that we need more of them.

In his 2012 book, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, Thomas King writes, “for an individual, one of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again in the same way and expecting different results. For a government, such behaviour is called … policy.” Yet here we are, about to do it all over again. Last year...