To be prosperous, native people in Canada need what many other Canadians often take for granted, and are absolutely essential for success in the modern world: responsible, accountable, government and economic freedom.

As it is now, the lives of Indians, formerly in the hands of the Indian Act, are now in the hands of band councils. Most of the models of band government and self-government put forward by Indian leaders just replace federal government paternalism with the paternalism of the official Indian leadership.

This works in practice about as badly as you might expect. Every other week brings a new horror story about abuse of power and misspent money. Patronage, nepotism, corruption, and fiscal incompetence are rampant. (But that's what happens when you give the leaders of small communities with weak democratic institutions, no economic freedom and no opportunity, tens of millions of dollars of other people's money.)

Indian bands need to be more democratically open and accountable to their own members. They also need to be accountable to the taxpayers for the public money they spend.

Closely tied to the lack of strong democratic institutions is the lack of strong economic institutions. Attracting jobs to reserves means making reserve life less political and more respectful of the rules of a successful market economy - including the rule of law, economic freedom, and property rights. It is the lack of these things that isolate native people from the successful modern economy.

But even with economic reform, there are never going to be enough stable jobs on reserves to support the entire Indian population. Efforts by Indian bands to bring more jobs to reserves should be encouraged, but in the world of globalization and free trade agreements, you can't create an independently sustainable economy on an Indian reserve anymore than you could in Outlook, Saskatchewan if you built a wall around it.

The bottom line is that Indians must take advantage of opportunities in the modern Canadian economy by joining that economy. Reserves can join by making political and economic reforms, and individuals can also join by living and working off-reserve, a choice already made by growing numbers of status Indians.

So if economic freedom and stronger political institutions are the answer, how do we get there when the Indian leadership resists every move that could fetter its power One way might be to send the billions in federal money that goes to band leaders directly to Indian people, and therefore require Indian governments to tax their people for the services they provide. To flip over the old slogan "there is no representation without taxation." Such a reform would put the purse-strings and the political control in the hands of Indian people where it belongs. Also if federal money was paid directly to Indians they could make personal choices about how to spend it and where to live, and many more might choose to live where the opportunities are.

If we continue down the present path, subsidizing undemocratic governments that control every aspect of their peoples' lives, we are perpetuating a system of unsustainable Indian enclaves with horrible social and economic problems. It's time we said: "You can't treat Canadians that way!" It's time to redefine self-government - not as government by Indian leadership, but government by Indian people. In other words, democracy.