Critical Events and the Funding of Indigenous Organizations

Abstract

Many Canadian advocacy organizations were founded with federal government funding. However, in recent years, with federal budget cuts that funding has come into question. In this article, we analyze the funding of Indigenous organizations in Nova Scotia between 1960 and 2014 in order to examine whether or not the province filled gaps created by a changing political and economic context at the federal level. We analyze how the amount of funding and number of organizations funded changed during this period and consider how national and provincial critical events, federal Supreme Court decisions, changes in governments, and the founding of key organizations affect those shifts. Overall, we find that the province did make up shortfalls in funding during the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, offering more funds and to a wider number of organizations, but at the same time we see less funding per organization over time and ultimately cutbacks at the provincial level mirroring broader national trends toward austerity and neo-liberalism.