Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.
Today’s Liberal party is not exactly the same as the one elected in 2015 that promises to forge new paths and nation-to-nation relationships with Indigenous Peoples, the leaders of the three national Indigenous organizations say as they look ahead to the fourth National Day. for Truth and Reconciliation on Monday.
“Our moment of reconciliation that began in 2015, at first, had this blue-sky hope of a changed Canada,” said Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, an organization that serves as the national voice of 70,000 Inuit in Canada. .
“Now, in many cases, we’re trying to figure out how to implement our clear positions – the things we hope to do to exercise our rights or to build a better relationship with this country. But we see the challenges either in working with the federal government to do that, or even between Indigenous Peoples. “
Cassidy Caron, president of the Métis National Council which represents 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 higher cost of living took headline after headline, but there was a lack of recognition from politicians that Indigenous Peoples had been at the forefront of those crises long before they became political talking points, he said.
“With a year left before a federal election, there is still significant work to be done, and we have the ability to do it in partnership,” he said. “But we need a willing partner on the other side.”
Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations which represents approximately 630 chiefs across the country, said that the lives of Indigenous Peopleare literally on the line of that partnership.
He pointed to the police-involved killing of nine indigenous people in recent weeks.
“If that was done to the same proportions on another community somewhere, it would be terrifying,” he said.
“The whole government is responsible for this.”
The ministers of Indigenous Services and Indigenous Relations of the Crown recognize that progress may not be as fast as Indigenous People might wish to see but they insist that their decision – and the decision of their government – has never wavered.
Yet, agenda items are still unfulfilled, namely regarding the recognition of rights, child welfare reforms, the growing gap in infrastructure and clean drinking water.
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Perhaps the most difficult discussion concerns who is recognized as Indigenous.
That issue came to the fore after the Liberals introduced Bill C-53, a mechanism to formally recognize Métis governments in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
It was supposed 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 disagreed with Ontario group.
The future of that legislation is uncertain with a legal challenge and without unanimous support for the measure from 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,” Caron said.
Obed has been begging the federal government to have a conversation about identity for years for a group he says is fraudulently claiming to be Inuit.
He says the federal government is too reluctant to take a risk about wanting to decide who is indigenous, despite increasing pressure from Indigenous leaders for the government to follow their example and understanding of history.
“This conversation defines the future of Canada, and I don’t say this in a way that is meant to be overstated,” he said.
“We are in for another wave of dispossession based on non-Indigenous Canadians choosing to be Indigenousto take what they feel is theirs.”
Minister of the Crown-Indigenous Relations, Gary Anandasangaree, says that affirming Indigenous rights is a “hard process.”
“Make no mistake, the role of the Canadian government is not to be the arbiter of Indigenous identity,” he said.
“Rather, the work I’m trying to do is to ensure that anyone who asserts 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 in those systems.
Woodhouse Nepinak billed it as a victory for the federal government in the effort to dramatically change the lives of First Nations children.
But the victory is not certain: the agreement has caused fractures among bosses, some of whom think it does not go far enough. It is expected to go to a vote at a special AFN assembly in October.
Another piece of legislation that chiefs say could change the lives of First Nations is Bill C-61, which was developed in conjunction with First Nations to ensure communities have clean water and can protect the source water on their territories .
But the bill has stalled in a committee in the House of Commons, and many chiefs have questioned whether Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu believes First Nations have a right to clean drinking water.
She did not answer that question directly in an interview, but said the committee had 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 “ensure that First Nations have access to clean drinking water” and control over that water.
When asked if she had confidence that the measure will be enacted 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 aim is to get this, hopefully, to the Senedd by December,” he said. “That will be entirely dependent on the speed of the opposition parties and whether or not they are going to play games in the House, as they did last spring, which delayed the debate on the legislation.”
The government passed a bill creating a National Reconciliation Council earlier this year but Obed wishes it hadn’t become law.
The council, which is intended to carry out a call to action from the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, will monitor and report on the federal government’s progress towards reconciliation. It has seats for all three national Indigenous organisations.
But Obed, who has said that the council is “distracted,” said that his organization is debating whether it should offer him a name at all.
“We feel that this particular body could actually pose a threat to our ongoing work on reconciliation based on who may or may not be appointed, and based on what the Canadian government chooses to do with the recommendations and the reports that are given back,” he said.
He said he was concerned that the council could be “armed to be an authoritative position of Indigenous People that the Canadian government 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 would take time and a lot of effort. “And I’ve said it before many times: it’s going to take every successive government that comes forward from now on to be on this path.”
Obed hopes that if there is a change in government after the next election, the momentum that the Indigenous leaders and the Liberals have worked so hard to create is for nothing.
“If you’re talking about the federal government, the language they speak is legislative — specific policies and orders of engagement,” he said.
“And if all 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.”
(Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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