Are the problems on the Attawapiskat reserve a case of inadequate funding or "the self-imposed troubles of people unable or unwilling to shift for themselves" (to borrow a phrase from a Toronto Star article)? Personally I think it's a bit of both.
Dividing the $90 million of government funding since 2006 by an estimate of the on-reserve population of the reserve puts you at $11500/person-year (and the band says that no more than 6.5% of this was for housing. Is that a lot of money or only a little relatively speaking? The northern allowance paid to government workers there in addition to their salary to account for their higher living and travel costs apparently is between $11,000 and $16,500 per year, and similarly the tax code is also setup to subsidize Northern living. All told $11,500/year doesn't sound like a lot of money relatively speaking (although that $11,000-$16,5000 Northern allowance drops down a bit if you divide the average number of dependents of an employee in that part of the country).
I think that the troubles aren't entirely the result of government funding though (although my views would affect all living in the Canadian northern territories rather than just First Nations groups). Why should we consider a community only accessible by air for much of the year to be something sustainable at the same living standards as the rest of the country? If first nations people living off-reserve in Canada do substantially better economically, educationally, etc why should we not encourage such changes? (I'd also advocate getting rid of the reserve system and bringing in things like private property rights as groups like the Nisga'a have done, but that's a whole other story).
