The bureaucratic instinct is always that what the public doesn't know can't hurt them. The net result is that band councils control almost all the cash flow on any given reserve, and if they wish to use their tremendous powers to engineer re-election, they are effectively accountable to no one. Councils control not just the cash, but the housing, welfare payments, subsidies for university education or other purposes and, in effect, the lives of most members. The federal government does not interfere. The dreadful powers of the hated Indian Agent have in effect been ceded to a native power structure.
Some bands are open and genuinely democratic.
In other cases, however, band members cannot obtain financial and other information in a timely way, and the required reporting to the department may be refused with impunity. Even with reporting, the government almost invariably takes a hands-off position on spending policy, no matter how public money is being used. The natural result, which would arise with any group of human beings given free money and effective control over their citizens, is some instances of waste and corruption. This has nothing to do with the people concerned, and everything to do with the system. All band members have an incentive to work together to extract the maximum from Ottawa, and thereafter no incentive to manage the money well on behalf of others, but only to get the most for one's own family.