First Nations, Inuit and Metis leaders say work lays ahead on road to reconciliation

OTTAWA — The Liberal party of today is not quite the same as the one elected in 2015 promising to foster new paths and nation-to-nation relationships with Indigenous Peoples, the leaders of the three national Indigenous organizations said as they look ahead to the fourth National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Monday.

“Our reconciliation moment that started in 2015 really had, in the beginning, this blue-sky hope of a changed Canada,” said Natan Obed, the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, an organization that serves as the national voice for 70,000 Inuit in Canada.

“Now, in many cases, we’re trying to figure out how to implement our clear positions — the things that we hope to do to implement our rights or to build a better relationship with this country. But we’re seeing the challenges in either working with the federal government to do that, or even between Indigenous Peoples.”

Cassidy Caron, president of the Métis National Council representing Métis in Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia, says there was a seismic shift in the government’s agenda around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The housing crisis and the increased cost of living took over headline after headline, but there was a lack of acknowledgment from politicians that Indigenous Peoples have been at the front line of those crises long before they became political talking points, she said.

“With one year left before a federal election, there’s still significant work that needs to be done, and we have the ability to do it in partnership,” she said. “But we need a willing partner on the other side.”

Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations representing some 630 chiefs across the country, said the lives of Indigenous Peoples are literally on the line of that partnership.

She pointed to the police-involved killings of nine Indigenous people in recent weeks.

“If that was done to the same proportions on another community somewhere, it would be alarming,” she said.

“The whole of government is responsible for this.”

The ministers of Indigenous Services and Crown-Indigenous Relations acknowledge that progress may not be as swift as Indigenous Peoples may wish to see but insist their determination — and that of their government — has never wavered.

Still, agenda items remain unfulfilled, namely around the recognition of rights, child welfare reforms, the ever-growing infrastructure gap and clean drinking water.

Perhaps the most fraught discussion is about who recognized as Indigenous.

That issue came to a head after the Liberals introduced Bill C-53, a mechanism to formally recognize Métis governments in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

It was meant to be a means of creating a new relationship between Métis and the federal government, but soon devolved into questions about who should be considered Métis after a pressure campaign from First Nations who took issue with the Ontario group.

The future of that legislation is uncertain with a legal challenge and without unanimous support for the bill by Metis nation organizations included in the bill.

“The federal government has a responsibility to find a way to make (self-government) happen, working alongside our Métis governments,” said Caron.

Obed has been begging the federal government to have a conversation about identity for years over a group he says is fraudulently claiming to be Inuit.

He says the federal government is being overly risk-averse about wanting to determine who is Indigenous, despite mounting pressure from Indigenous leaders for the government to follow their lead and their understanding of histories.

“This conversation is defining the future of Canada, and I don’t say this in a way that’s meant to be overstated,” he said.

“We’re in for another wave of dispossession based on non-Indigenous Canadians choosing to be Indigenous to take what they feel is theirs.”

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree says confirming Indigenous rights is an “arduous process.”

“Make no mistake, the role of the Canadian government is not to be the arbiter of Indigenous identity,” he said.

“Rather, the work that I’m trying to do is to ensure that anyone who’s asserting that identity gets a fair process, one that is guided by Section 35 (of the Charter) but also historical records that can confirm their identity.”

Child welfare is another major area of contention.

The federal government triumphantly announced in July that it had reached a $47.8-billion agreement with First Nations to reform the on-reserve child welfare system. The settlement came after years of litigation at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal over chronic underfunding of those systems.

Woodhouse Nepinak billed it as a win for the federal government in the effort to materially change the lives of First Nations kids.

But the victory is not certain: The deal has caused fractures among chiefs, some of whom think it doesn’t go far enough. It’s set to go to a vote at a special AFN assembly in October.

Another piece of legislation chiefs say could change the lives of First Nations is Bill C-61, which was co-developed with First Nations to ensure communities have clean water and can protect the source-water on their territories.

But the bill has stalled at a House of Commons committee, and many chiefs have questioned whether Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu believes First Nations have a right to clean drinking water.

She didn’t answer that question directly in an interview, but said the committee has heard “a variety of different amendments” along that line. She said she is open to adopting any changes that strengthen the goal of the bill, which is “to make sure that First Nations have access to clean drinking water” and control over that water.

Asked whether she has confidence that bill will be made law before the next election, Hajdu lamented the fact that the NDP ended the supply-and-confidence agreement that has kept her minority government in power for over two years.

“My goal is to have this, hopefully, to Senate by December,” she said. “That will entirely be dependent on the speed of the opposition parties and whether or not they’re going to play games in the House, as they did last spring, which delayed the debate on the legislation.”

The government did pass a bill creating a National Council for Reconciliation earlier this year but Obed wishes it had not become law.

The council, which is intended to fulfil a call to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report, will monitor and report on the federal government’s progress toward reconciliation. It has seats for all three national Indigenous organizations.

But Obed, who has billed the council as “toothless,” said his organization is debating whether to put forward a name for it at all.

“We feel that this particular body may actually cause a threat to our continued work on reconciliation based on who may or may not be appointed, and based on what the government of Canada chooses to do with the recommendations and reports that are given back,” he said.

He said he worries the council could be “weaponized to be the authoritative position of Indigenous Peoples that the government of Canada then says it is working on or has achieved reconciliation from.”

Anandasangaree defended the council, saying it will not replace current accountability structures between national Indigenous organizations and the federal government.

“Reconciliation is hard, and reconciliation is not a passive exercise,” Anandasangaree said.

He said it’s going to take time and a significant amount of effort. “And I’ve said it before many times: it’s going to take every successive government coming forward from now onward to be on this path.”

Obed hopes if there is a change in government after the next election, the momentum Indigenous leaders and the Liberals have worked so hard to create isn’t all for naught.

“If you’re talking about the federal government, the language they speak is legislative — particular policies and orders of engagement,” he said.

“And if all of this was just because people decided to be nice when they didn’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.

Alessia Passafiume, The Canadian Press