The bureaucratic and political practice in rural and northern Manitoba has been a barrier to the employment-seeking process. Participants thoroughly discussed life on the reservation and their experiences dealing with the politics and structures that govern community programs on reserves. It is important to note that three participants work and live on reserves, and three participants travel to and negotiate with reserves on a regular basis. Participants expressed difficulty influencing decisions, as Participant C expressed in the comment, “because sometimes your ideas get a little bit squashed.”
Participants talked about new leadership tossing out existing programs when they come into power, and because they may only be there for two years, they want immediate results. Participant B explained one of the reasons for the high turnover of ECs on reserves:
The whole idea is for communities to hire their own people and keep them in the community as much as they can. But they hire [people] and they’re not prepared … really frustrated … having a hard time doing their job.
Current initiatives to support employment for Aboriginal job seekers in rural and northern Manitoba are primarily achieving results at a slower rate than the participants would like. Participant E commented, “There are very few real results from all this money spent.”
Participant wishes for more program dollars was the number one wish and came up repeatedly throughout the research. Participant B stated, “Their funding is all operational dollars.… We really had no money for projects.”
Employment programming and planning are short-sighted with minimal long-term gain. There is not enough being done to include the youth and prepare for a job market in the future. Participant E provided an example in the comment: “The turnover of people in our First Nations employment and training programs is just phenomenal.… Every time I go to a meeting, I only recognize five out of thirty people.”
The high turnover leaves the communities with poor employment guidance direction and gaps in linking the programs to the community workers of the future. As Participant F explained, while talking about meeting the future demand for programming, “With our First Nations people migrating to the urban reserves and being so vulnerable and not ready to survive in the urban environment.… What’s it going to cost if they don’t?”