The late Brian Mulroney’s legacy for Canada’s Indigenous peoples is marked by the contradictions of his good intentions, memorable failures, and devastatingly disappointing successes.
The former prime minister has been praised by some Indigenous leaders for the creation of the Royal Commission on Indigenous Peoples, recognition of the Métis people, and successful negotiations that led to the creation of Nunavut.
But for others, those achievements compare with the government’s failure to achieve autonomy during constitutional negotiations in the 1980s or the Oka crisis of 1990, which bloodied Canada’s reputation on the world stage. It is inferior.
“Don’t underestimate how traumatic Oka was for First Nations,” said Robert Falcon Ouellette, a former Liberal MP and current associate professor at the University of Ottawa, who is from Saskatchewan’s Red Kizikree Nation. .
“It was a disaster for Indigenous relations. It exposed the military and the state’s structural bias and discrimination to Indigenous peoples, which would be used against them.”
Shortly after becoming Canada’s 18th Prime Minister in September 1984, Mulroney took the first steps in a multi-year effort to address issues of Indigenous autonomy.
The Constitution Act of 1982, which handed back the Constitution and established the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, required the Prime Minister and Prime Minister to meet in Ottawa within a year of its passage to define the rights of Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau presided over the 1983 and 1984 talks, and Mulroney hosted the 1985 and 1987 talks. It ended without reaching an agreement on indigenous autonomy.
Constitutional negotiations in the 1980s
David Crombie, who served as Mulroney’s Indian Affairs and Northern Development Minister from September 17, 1984 to June 29, 1986, told CBC News that Mulroney’s proposal was rejected by some states, but that the He said he did his best.
“He thought he was doing the right thing,” Crombie said. “He wanted to do the right thing, but as anyone who’s been in this field knows, it’s a complicated field, and … it just didn’t work out for some people.”
At the end of the 1987 conference, Métis leader Jim Sinclair told Mulroney and the assembled premiers that the conference had been a failure, and questioned whether there was the goodwill necessary to reach an agreement in the first place.
“We have the right to self-government, the right to self-determination and the right to land,” he said. “This is not the end, it’s just the beginning…Don’t worry, Prime Minister and local premiers. I may be gone, but my people will be back.”
Attention: The late Jim Sinclair, speaking at the first Ministers’ Conference in 1978:
The next round of constitutional talks centered on the Meech Lake Accord, Mulroney’s effort to incorporate Quebec into the constitution by increasing provincial powers and declaring Quebec a distinct society.
The agreement proposed a constitutional amendment that would keep Quebec in Canada, but was strongly opposed by Indigenous leaders who said it ignored their rights.
In 1990, Manitoba First Nations Leader Elijah Harper, the only Manitoba First Nations MLA at the time, withheld his consent to the Meech Lake Accord, which prevented a vote in the province and ultimately led to the agreement’s failure. .
Mary May Simon, Canada’s first First Nations Governor-General, told CBC News Network. power and politics “Meech Lake was a difficult time for First Nations, or First Nations as we were called at the time,” he said in an interview aired Monday.
“Indigenous leaders were not given a lot of time to participate in Meech Lake…But I think there was a different attitude during the Charlottetown Accord negotiations.”
Mulroney’s next attempt to resolve constitutional issues, the 1991 Charlottetown Accords, included a clause affirming that Indigenous peoples in Canada had an “inherent right to self-government.”
Tony Belcourt, first president of the Canadian Council of First Nations and the Métis Ontario also joined the discussion. He described Mulroney as “a person who is kind to Indigenous people, especially Indigenous people.”
“Especially in the Charlottetown round, Métis It was a big win, a big win,” Belcourt told CBC News.
Louis Riel, Métis Commendation
Mulroney held a referendum in October 1992, putting the Charlottetown Agreement in the hands of voters. It was rejected by a vote of 55 to 45 percent.
Despite the failure of the Charlottetown Accord, the Mulroney government introduced a motion to recognize the Red River Métis in Congress in March 1992. Louis Riel, as Manitoba’s founder, helped Mulroney retain Métis affection people.
Following Mulroney’s death, David Chartrand, president of the Manitoba Métis Federation and Red River Métis National Government, praised the former Conservative premier.
“There is also no question that Brian Mulroney was decades ahead of his time in pursuing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples,” Chartrand said in a media statement.
Belcourt said Brian Mulroney is “most highly regarded” among Métis people.
“As far as I’m concerned, the legacy he left us with, I don’t see how he could top the list of prime ministers,” he said.
Oka and Nunavut
It is perhaps ironic that one of Mulroney’s most memorable successes in Native American policy unfolded at the same time as an episode often cited as his greatest failure.
In April 1990, after years of negotiations, Mulroney signed an agreement in principle for Nunavut’s land claims in Igloolik, Nunavut. The final agreement was signed three years later and approved by Congress in July 1993, leading to the creation of the new territory in 1999.
Paul Cuassa, Nunavut’s premier from 2017 to 2018 and Nunavut’s chief negotiator during negotiations to create the Federation of Nunavut and Tunngavik, told CBC News that the success of the negotiations was largely due to He credited Mulroney’s ability to understand “the uniqueness of the Inuit people.”
“I believe that for Inuit and for us, he was a more flexible person in terms of what we were looking for through land claims negotiations,” Kuassa told CBC News.
“Look where we are now. Our territory is one-fifth of Canada. We changed the map of Canada because there were a small number of Inuit in this area, and here we are. It was under the Mulroney government.”
Kuassa said Inuit elders have a custom of giving traditional names to “very important people.” Because of Mulroney’s efforts on their behalf and because of his pronounced chin, he was affectionately given the Inuktit name Taluk, which, according to Kwassa, means “jaw.” .
“He had that signature smile and face and you could tell by that jaw…that he was there to keep that smile,” he said.
Farther south in Oka, Quebec, the situation was very different. A 300-year-old land dispute was reignited when the Oka City Council voted to approve the expansion of a golf course on land claimed by the Kanesatake Mohican people.
The Mohicans are protesting that the development has barricaded the road leading to the site and refused to comply with police and court orders to reopen the road.
In August 1990, Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa invoked the National Defense Act, requiring the Canadian Armed Forces to replace the Quebec Provincial Police in Oka. Mulroney sent in Canadian troops.
Sean Carleton, an assistant professor of Indigenous history at the University of Manitoba, told CBC News that the footage, which has since been shown on television screens around the world, has given Canada a lot of bad publicity.
“Canada was trying to establish itself as a peacekeeping nation on the world stage, but we’re sending troops to essentially demonstrate military power at home,” Carleton said.
“Many international observers were very critical. By September 1990, when the Oka crisis ended, Canada looked like a bully.”
To reset Canada’s international reputation, Mulroney established the Royal Commission on Indigenous Peoples (RCAP) in 1991, which was tasked with studying Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples.
The commission submitted its 4,000-page final report in 1996, three years after Mulroney left office, calling for a complete restructuring of Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples.
Ouellette called the report’s findings “excellent,” but no action was taken — and the commission was formed because Mulroney needed a vigorous rebuttal to Oka. However, he added that the report addressed the issue of boarding schools and led to the discovery of truth and truth. Reconciliation Commission.
Belcourt told CBC News that while many were initially disappointed that none of the recommendations were implemented, the work that was done remains valuable to this day.
“All of the recommendations from RCAP are very solid recommendations, and I think any government can look at them and say, ‘Okay, let’s do this, and we’ll go a long way,'” he said. said.
