Canadians have a lot of thinking to do with regards to the relationship between the First Nations governments, provincial governments, and the federal government.
Traditionally, the approach has been for the "white" governments (not called that, but thought of that way) to send welfare to reserves but maintaining the traditional political organization of those reserves. So, you'd still have non-democratic chiefs or band councils. This was to cleanse the (white) Canadian conscience of paternalism, cultural imperialism, or chauvinism — by letting the "natives" continue to practice their own traditions on their own land.
What's the result? Band leaders drive Cadillacs while the band members (of other governments they'd be called "citizens" or, in this case, "subjects") generally live in poverty or bare subsistance. Welfare is not being distributed in the way the federal government intended, because the bands aren't democratic and there's no accountability — and as a result, band members are being oppressed.
A lot of the stigma against cultural intervention stems from the idea that North America was relatively peaceful before the whites came along, and that European culture "contaminated" the agrarian or hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the aborigines, who are widely considered to have "been here first" and that they coexisted peacefully with nature. This simply isn't true.
The Iroquois held an empire that extended over several modern states and won that empire through war. They would have continued to consolidate their power if it hadn't have been for the American Revolution. They had slaves, they had a republic in which franchise was granted to members of only five tribes, and held the balance of power in North America until they were pitted against the revolutionaries. The Iroquois made war on the Algonquins and forced the migration of many tribes — just like the Europeans did, but on a smaller scale.
In Newfoundland, the Mi'cmagh are considered the "First Nations people," even though they were in the process of invading and occupying the island, usurping it from the Beothuk, when the Europeans arrived. There are no Beothuk left today, and while Europeans earn the credit for striking the death blow, their fate had already been sealed generations before, in war with the Mi'cmagh. That makes them, at least, the second nation.
And I hardly need mention the Inca, Maya, or especially the Aztec, who had a larger and richer civilization than Spain itself at the time of the arrival of the Conquistadors. In fact, many examples can be found of aboriginal peoples who fought wars of aggression with one another, enslaved one another, conquered each others' territory and drove one another out into the wilderness.
While the ancient native use of land couldn't rival modern industry, or even sixteenth century logging and farming, for destructive power, there is evidence that some tribes hunted some large game species, and even some bird species, to extinction. Different tribes had different cultures and different approaches to nature. Furthermore, modern aborigines can't claim to be able to use ancestral techniques of "ecology" any better than North American whites — these skills have hardly "passed down" from generation to generation, and there's nothing genetic or instinctual about them. We can all pursue ecology.
So what are we supposed to do about it all? The answer doesn't lie in welfare, maintenance of undemocratic institutions in the name of blind adherence to tradition, or flowery romanticism about North American history and prehistory. What is needed is for everyone, native and non-native alike, to participate in creating an environment in which natives have equal access to education and opportunity. Preserving cultural identity is not about pantomiming dead traditions; it's about participating in forging a new understanding of one's culture in light of new circumstances.
Integration, without assimilation, is the only way this can be achieved.