SHAME ON THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA!

 

Indigenous descendants have good reason to be unpatriotic to Canada!

The Indian Act of 1876 systematically stripped Indigenous peoples of their legal autonomy, cultural heritage, and economic rights, treating them as wards of the state rather than self-governing nations.

The Indian Act was specifically enacted to consolidate previous colonial laws into a single federal statute designed to assimilate Indigenous peoples into Euro-Canadian society and eradicate their distinct cultural, political, and economic identities.

In effect causing the genocide of the Indigenous population.

Genocide is legally defined as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.

Various Canadian court decisions since 1876 determined that Indigenous rights pre-existed European Control and was not a gift from the Crown, that Indigenous rights to land and harvesting survived the assertion of Crown sovereignty; and the honour of the Crown imposed a duty to consult and accommodate:

the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (part of the Constitution Act, 1982) guaranteed that every individual in Canada has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age, or mental or physical disability.

Registration of Indigenous people, establishing status, began in 1867 with the Indian Act. This provided continual recognition entitlement to all male offspring’s regardless of who they married. but removed entitlement to children if an Indigenous women married a non-Indigenous male.

In 1985 the Indian Act was amended to curtail status registration called the “2^nd generation cutoff”. This removed eligibility if status people married non status people over two generations. The reason for this was said to primarily address concerns raised by First Nations leaders regarding resource pressures and the fear of ethno-cultural erosion within their communities. While this suited government intentions and possibly First Nation leaders, it sorely disrupted grass roots familial ties! The 2^nd generation cut off simple increased reservation populations with non-status membership and reduced official membership.

In 2017 bill s-3 ammended the Indian Act to completely remove the discrimination against women going all the way back to 1867.

To address the 2^nd generation cut off problem, bill s-2 is before parliament today to amend the Indian Act allowing status registration to the children if one parent is status.

While the genocidal components of the Indian Act are being eliminated, the Act is explicitly tied to treaties signed many years ago. Most Canadians, as well as status people, would like to see the Indian Act abolished, however, this is seen, understandably, by most Reservation people and leaders as a loss of control over unfulfilled treaty promises.

The issue has always been primarily Canadian sovereignty and the elimination of the inherent, sovereign rights of Indigenous peoples. For Reservation residents who witnessed the loss of inherent rights of most Indigenous descendants, the demise of the Indian Act is seen as the death knell of treaties signed many years ago!

Canada has exacerbated Indigenous identity through its colonial policies by alienating and excluding the majority of Indigenous descendants from modern treaty consultations, preferring instead to ignore, challenge, coerce, exclude, avoid, obfuscate, confuse, misdirect and generally laugh in the face of most Indigenous descendants----all the while professing to the world of being fair, law abiding and honorable!

Shame on the government of Canada!