In October, the attention of Canadians was briefly turned to a tainted-water crisis on the northern Ontario reserve of Kashechewan. An investigation found the cause of the problem was the incompetence of band workers. But the media ignored that: As with all native outrage stories, it proved more politically correct to lay blame on government and the alleged racism of society at large.

This week, Kashechewan is back in the news. On Sunday, the reserve's jail was hit by a fire that, in most communities, would have been contained. But not in Kashechewan, which lacks any semblance of firefighting capacity. With no functional fire engine, sprinkler systems or qualified fire-fighting personnel, the jail was turned into a "caged inferno." As a result, two inmates died.

Already, Kashechewan band chief Leo Friday has blamed the federal government for not providing better fire-fighting equipment. But the facts paint a different picture. As reported by the Toronto Star's Jessica Leeder, federal funds earmarked for fire protection in Kashechewan were instead spent by the band on housing -- despite efforts by Indian Affairs to encourage the band to prioritize fire safety.

The fire is therefore a tragic smack in the face to all those activists, academics and native lobbyists who have been arguing for years that more native self-government would transform life on native reserves for the better. In Kashechewan, it was precisely because the local band council had control over spending decisions that these two men died -- just as their control over water quality led to October's pollution crisis.

There is a guilt-induced abandonment of logic that takes place when native issues are discussed in this country. Like many reserves, Kashechewan is a tiny hamlet utterly devoid of the sort of university-trained administrators, technicians and engineers required to make a modern community function safely. Would the federal and provincial governments ever permit a similarly situated white community to manage a large budget, operate high-tech infrastructure, staff senior technical posts and supervise safety codes? Of course not. But because Kashechewan is native, one is asked to imagine, the band is able to draw on some ancient, mystical sense of cultural autonomy that permits it to manage its own affairs.

What an outrage that none of our political leaders dares debunk any of this. In purely monetary terms, Ottawa has been enormously generous to reserve Indians -- cutting large cheques every time a new crisis emerges. At present, we spend $8-billion annually on native programs -- more than $70,000 per reserve household. But the manner in which these funds are administered, effectively bribing aboriginals to live in remote communities with no jobs, no economic prospects and no real democracy, is cruel.

The sad truth is that the most humane thing to be done with places like Kashechewan is for them to be abandoned and their inhabitants integrated into urban job centres. As the latest tragedy shows, the preposterous fantasy that self-government will cure such communities of their pathologies and squalor is literally killing Canada's natives.

National Post, Wednesday, January 11, 2006