Today’s Liberal Party is nothing like the Liberal Party elected in 2015, which promised to foster a new path and nation-to-nation relations with Indigenous peoples, leaders of three national Indigenous organizations say for the fourth time. He spoke in anticipation of National Foundation Day. Monday for Truth and Reconciliation.
“Our moment of reconciliation that began in 2015 really started with a blue sky of hope that Canada would change,” said Inuit Tapirit, a spokesperson for Canada’s 70,000 Inuit people.・Natan Obed, chairman of Kanatami, said: .
“Right now, in many cases, we have to think about our clear position, how do we do what we want to do to fulfill our rights or to build a better relationship with this country? But we’re seeing a challenge, either working with the federal government to make that happen, or working together among First Nations. ”
Cassidy Caron, president of the Métis National Council, which represents Métis people in Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia, says there have been dramatic changes in government policy before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. .
While the housing crisis and rising cost of living grabbed headline after headline, she said there was a lack of recognition from politicians that Indigenous peoples were on the front lines of those crises long before they became a political topic. Ta.
“With a year left until the federal election, there is still important work to do, and we have the ability to do it together,” she said. “But we need a willing partner on the other side.”
Cindy Woodhouse-Nepinak, national president of the Assembly of First Nations, which represents about 630 chiefs across the country, said the lives of First Nations literally depend on that partnership.
She pointed to nine police-involved killings of Indigenous people in recent weeks.
“If it happened at the same rate in some other community, it would be concerning,” she said.
“The whole government is responsible for this.”
The Minister for Indigenous Services and the Minister for Crown and Indigenous Relations acknowledge that progress may not be as rapid as Indigenous peoples would like, but insist their resolve, and that of the Government, has never wavered. are.
Yet agenda items such as rights recognition, child welfare reform, growing infrastructure disparities, and clean drinking water remain unfulfilled.
Perhaps the most vexing debate concerns who qualifies as Indigenous.
The issue surfaced after the Liberal Party introduced Bill C-53, a mechanism to formally recognize Métis governments in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
This was intended as a means of forging a new relationship between Métis and the federal government, but after a pressure campaign from First Nations who challenged the Ontario group, questions about who should be considered Métis soon emerged. It developed into
Without legal challenges and unanimous support for the bill from the Métis national organizations included in the bill, the bill’s future is uncertain.
“The federal government has a responsibility to work with the Métis government to find ways to achieve (autonomy),” Caron said.
Obed has been pleading with the federal government for years to discuss identity with groups that have fraudulently claimed to be Inuit.
He said the federal government has been excessively risk-averse and unwilling to identify who is Indigenous, despite growing pressure from Indigenous leaders for the government to follow Indigenous precedent and historical understanding. He said he thought so.
“This conversation is going to define the future of Canada, and I don’t mean to overstate this,” he said.
“We are on the verge of a new wave of dispossession based on non-Indigenous Canadians choosing to be Indigenous to take away what they think is theirs.”
Gary Anandasangaree, Minister for Crown and Indigenous Relations, said affirming the rights of Indigenous peoples was a “difficult process”.
“Make no mistake, the role of the Canadian government is not to adjudicate Indigenous identity,” he said.
“Rather, what I am trying to do is ensure that anyone claiming that identity receives a fair process based not only on Article 35 (of the Charter) but also on the historical record that can confirm their identity. ”
Child welfare is also a major issue.
In July, the federal government triumphantly announced that it had reached a $47.8 billion agreement with First Nations to reform the protected child welfare system. The settlement comes after years of litigation in the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal over the chronic underfunding of these programs.
Woodhouse-Nepinak billed this as a victory for the federal government’s efforts to substantially change the lives of Indigenous children.
However, victory is not certain. The agreement has caused a rift among chiefs, some of whom believe it does not go far enough. The bill is expected to be voted on at the AFN special general meeting in October.
Another bill that chiefs say could change the lives of First Nations is a bill co-developed with First Nations to ensure communities have clean water and protect water sources within their territories. It’s C-61.
But the bill has stalled in a House of Commons committee, with many chiefs questioning whether Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu believes Indigenous peoples have a right to clean drinking water.
He did not directly answer that question in an interview, but said the committee had heard “various amendments” along those lines. He said he was open to any changes that would strengthen the bill’s purpose to “ensure Indigenous peoples have access to clean drinking water” and manage that water.
Asked if he was confident the bill would pass before the next election, Hajdu lamented the fact that the NDP had scrapped the Supply and Confidence Agreement that had kept the minority government in power for more than two years.
“My goal is to get this to the Senate, hopefully by December,” she said. “That will depend entirely on the speed of the opposition and whether they play games in the House like they did last spring when they delayed consideration of the bill.”
The government passed a bill establishing a National Reconciliation Council earlier this year, but Obed hoped it would not become law.
The council aims to fulfill the call to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report and will monitor and report on the federal government’s progress toward reconciliation. It holds seats in all three national indigenous organizations.
But Mr Obed, who called the council “insane”, said the council was debating whether to publish its name at all.
“Depending on who is appointed or not appointed, and how the Government of Canada handles the recommendations and reports submitted, this particular body could pose a real threat to our ongoing reconciliation work. “We feel there is,” he said.
He said he was concerned that the council could be “weaponized as an authoritative position for Indigenous peoples to claim that the Government of Canada is committed to or has achieved reconciliation.”
Anandasangaree defended the council, saying it does not replace the current accountability structure between national indigenous organizations and the federal government.
“Reconciliation is difficult, and reconciliation is not a passive exercise,” Anandasangaree said.
He said it would take time and a lot of effort. “And as I’ve said many times before, we’re going to need every successive administration to continue down this path.”
Mr Obed is hopeful that a change of government after the next election will ensure that all the momentum Indigenous leaders and the Liberal Party have worked hard to build is not wasted.
“When you’re talking about the federal government, the language they speak is legislation – specific policies and engagement orders,” he said.
“If all of this is because people decide to be kind when they don’t have to, that’s an unfortunate interpretation of what we’re all doing.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2024.
