In reply to Andrew.

When I wrote my first post on your blog I was trying to be sarcastic in tone not angry. I’m sure that your heart is in the right place. I used the word racist for several reasons: one, because no one ever thinks they will be called one and no one likes it. If you were in fact saying that people that had questions about what happened in Attawapiskat were racist I wanted to show you how they felt reading your words. Second, if there are people that immediately look to blame locals of Attawap for every problem they face then what about people that who immediately away. Maybe the band council there are corrupt. There people just like every body else. Lastly, Attawapiskat receives a lot of government money and has a small population. The article you used had many inflated figures and purposeful omissions to help the “journalist” make her point. The most glaring was the claim that the community needed 84 million dollars to cover the housing needs of its 2000 inhabitants. Even at 250 thousand a home if you use an average of 5 people per house your basically buying a new home for every person in Attawap. Another fact not mentioned is that property taxes are not paid in Attawap. To Compare Bridgewater N.S. a town with 4 times the population has a yearly budge of 18 million dollars, 12 million of which is paid for by property taxes alone and most of the rest are paid for by community fees and service charges. In addition income tax is not paid for income earned on the reserve which adds to the total “given” to Attawap. Even Casino Rama is not taxed. I could go on but let me end by saying this. Maybe the reason people want to know why things go bad on the reserves is because there kind of set up for success.