Aboriginal Community Essay

Similar to other indigenous communities of the world, Canadian indigenous communities have a long history of sharing their resources among the community members (Gray et al., 2003; Anderson and Giberson, 2004). In the absence of proper financial institution they lived by the "barter economy," "a system of exchange where goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money" (Sullivan, 2003; p. 243). They did not have any individual identity rather they lived on sharing their resources, lands, and capitals and lived a communal life (Gray et al., 2003; Anderson and Giberson, 2004). The latitude of communal living has been changed; effect of colonization, rising capitalist economy
Besides, they also do not have any financial institution that can provide them loans. "There is no Aboriginal organization that can guarantee sustainability. So, it's not going to happen. Who are the people getting funding'? Weil-established organizations like the Salvation Army, pity groups? Related to the word partnership is sustainability. So how are you going to get sustainability from an Aboriginal group, organization, when historically they are never allowed to have any kind of economic base., or any kind of real estate? And you want them to have partners with the rest of society. And you want them to have sustainability. Ah, it doesn't make sense to me" (Aboriginal homelessness professional in Walker, 2003). Considering this scenario, Certificate of Possession(CP) can play a vital role in solving the private property rights issue along with the housing crisis. Many first nation communities (301 FN communities) have already employed and now using CP to cope up with their bad housing conditions and housing shortage (Alcantara, 2002). CP found in the sections 20-29 of the Indian Act that allows the band council to assign the right of possession to a portion of reserve land to an individual band member or members (Alcantara, 2002). It allows the designated member or members or their heir or heirs to build a house on it or extract surface any resources from it. However, CP does not grant the