Lingit Latseen

Calling the Native Youth Movement and American Indian Movement! The National Post reports that The Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a think tank, predicts a possibly grim future for the Canadian Nation State due to unrest among Natives. The reason is a recipe of factors that are trigger points for unrest and insurrection: a high percentage of disadvantaged youths coupled with vulnerable infrastructure. We’ve seen this same recipe recently in the Arab Spring uprising as explained by William Lind in his article The Gangs of Aleppo. All of this points to the possibility of 4th Generation Warfare coming to the North American continent.

From the National Post:

A more pessimistic report, by Douglas Bland, suggests that Canada has all the necessary “feasibility” conditions for a violent native uprising — social fault lines; a large “warrior cohort”; an economy vulnerable to sabotage; a reluctance on the part of governments and security forces to confront aboriginal protests; and a sparsely populated country reliant on poorly defended key infrastructure like rail and electricity lines.

The Oxford research suggests that “feasibility,” rather than root causes, is the foundation for challenging civil authority. In Canada, it seems, unrest is very feasibile. “Social fractionalization” along native and non-native fault lines is obvious. There is a growing warrior cohort — by 2017, 42% of First Nations population on the Prairies will be under 30 — many disadvantaged, poorly educated, unemployed and angry. The economy is dependent on moving resources over long, hard-to-defend transportation routes. Finally, the security forces are limited by capacity and the will of their leaders to confront aboriginal protesters who break the law.

While the Oxford hypothesis suggests feasibility is the determinant and predictor of insurgency, it does not dismiss that grievances do provide motive. And Mr. Bland’s paper reels off some particularly damning statistics: a homicide rate of 8.8/100,000 compared with 1.3/100,000 in the non-aboriginal population; a stratospheric incarceration rate that means 80% of prisoners in Alberta are aboriginal (out of 11% of the population); a high school graduation rate of 24% of 15 to 24-year-olds, compared with 84% in the non-native population; a 40% youth unemployment rate and on and on.

Mr. Bland argues that, in some respects, an uprising has and is occurring, “as a quick head count of the Warrior Cohort inside our penal colonies will demonstrate.”

In the event of an insurgency, the Canadian economy could be shut down in weeks. The 2012 CP Rail strike cost an estimated $540-million a week, as it hit industries including coal, grain, potash, nickel, lumber and autos. Some First Nations leaders like Terry Nelson in Manitoba have already concluded that a covert operation involving burning cars on every railway line would be impossible to stop.

Mr. Bland cites Manitoba, with its vulnerable transportation hub, as a province with a large native population and a relatively small police presence that would be unable to guarantee security in the event of even a modest protest. “The reality is that the security of Manitoba now and in the future is whatever the First Nations allow it to be,” he quotes one security specialist as saying. “[And] as the security guarantee drifts lower, the feasibility of confrontation climbs higher.”

The report goes on to suggest a solution: higher payoffs to First Nations and enhancement and growth of the police state to curb potential unrest. This is the classic carrot and stick approach which has been used for decades to curb unrest among rebellious minority populations, but as Nation States are in decline across the world the question is: how long can they keep this up before their hold over the North American continent blows up in their face?

More from The National Post:

He suggested resource revenue-sharing; a Marshall Plan style reconstruction package that acknowledges some sort of native sovereignty; programs aimed at dealing with aboriginal incarceration; comprehensive resettlement of remote communities; and a well-funded First Nations leadership institution as ways to address some of the frustrations felt by natives on reserves.

But the logic of the feasibility hypothesis means the most effective way to prevent an insurrection is to make one less feasible. Hence, he concludes Ottawa must reinforce the security guarantee in and near First Nations by safeguarding critical transportation infrastructure, beefing up policing on reserves and cracking down on illegal drugs.