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A dozen children make a suicide pact in Attawapiskat. A house fire kills nine members of a family — three of them children under 5 — in Pikangikum.Two-thirds of all First Nation communities have been under at least one drinking water advisory over the past decade. Only four out of 10 young adults living on reserve finish high school, compared with nine out of 10 non-Aboriginal Canadians. Indigenous children are twice as likely to live in poverty as other kids. If you’re paying attention, the bad news seems endless.

My heart breaks every time I learn of disaster and pain striking a First Nation community. It breaks, first, for the reality of the situation. But it breaks a second time, for the sick feeling in my stomach that nothing will happen to change this bleak reality — at least, not nearly quickly enough.

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It doesn’t have to be this way.

I spent 24 years working as a lawyer, policy adviser and negotiator for the Canadian government. I sat across the table from First Nations leaders of many nations, as we struggled, together, to forge the compromises that would advance our respective interests. I sat around federal government tables with civil servants and ministers as we struggled to develop the fixes (for what we knew was broken) that would gain both cabinet approval and First Nations buy-in.