Dear Mr. Prime Minister
We heard you speak about a new relationship with the First People of Canada. The words you used were Nation to Nation and what was expressed and implied was a relationship that was equitable and vibrant: not a relationship where one side maintained “power over” the other: not a relationship that was lip service only and certainly not a relationship that would ultimately extinguish the existence of First Nations people.
The Indian Act is a BIG problem that we need to address. And not just superficially. It needs to go.
Trying to put a band-aid on the Indian Act seems to be tantamount to further entrenching a lopsided relationship.
However when this band-aid in the form of Bill S-3 is in itself a faulty fix, it is an insult on top of an insult. Why are the Canadian people tolerating discrimination against Indigenous women and children?
Until we are ready to do what is necessary to reimagine a relationship without the Indian Act, let us do what is right by amending the Act to reflect gender equality.
Read what Pamela Palmater and Sharon McIvor have to say. They illustrate the horrific implication of this faulty band-aid approach.
There were millions of Indigenous peoples in Canada before colonization and genocidal government policies aimed at reducing the number of Indians. Even today’s Indian Act maintains its disappearing Indian formula such that each First Nation has an extinction date; in 1992, a study was commissioned that showed that the current Indian rules related to registration will ensure the eventual extinction of registered status Indians—some First Nations sooner than others—in the spirit of the “final solution” advocated by John A. Macdonald and former superintendent of Indian Affairs Duncan Campbell Scott. It is not too much to expect that, in an era of reconciliation, Canada would stop targeting Indigenous women and children as the primary means of legislating Indians out of existence.
Unacceptable Mr.Prime Minister. Your words have to matter. They can’t be merely lip service to a phrase that sounds good. Do better. Do it now.
Talk soon.
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