![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe Toronto Star last Sunday had an interesting article on the legal assimilation of First Nations in Canada, Nicholas Keung's "'Status Indians' face threat of extinction".
In Canada, members of the First Nations--not, incidentally, including Inuit, Métis, or unregistered Indians--are all listed on the Indian Register, which defines who can and who cannot be considered a member of a First Nations by government, and thus be eligible for a wide variety of benefits. This, as a parliamentary report notes, is a serious problem.
In the final analysis, the Indian Act may end up seeing the assimilation of First Nations into the general Canadian population. If the Indian Act is not revised, if intermarriage rates continue to grow, language shifts to English or French from native languages continue, and the ongoing urbanization of First Nations population goes on at the standard rate, in the end nearly all First Nations populations save those concentrated in native-majority territories--Inuit Nunavut and Nunavik in northern Québec, say, or Cree-populated areas in the northern prairie provinces, perhaps--might just blend in and so remove the basis for any continued autonomous regimes. Probably, perhaps; I find it telling that Nicholas Keung is the Star's immigration reporter, not native affairs reporter.
Leaning against a creamy white war monument on the 1,200-hectare Alderville First Nation reserve north of Cobourg, Wayne Beaver wonders how long his ancestors' land will remain in his people's hands.
They've survived decimation by disease and discrimination, but now Canada's native people are facing what Beaver calls "a legislated extinction of status Indians."
Statistics that show the self-identified aboriginal population is growing fast – a 45 per cent jump over 10 years to 1.2 million – can be deceiving, said Beaver. Under Canadian law, those who "count" are "status Indians" – a group strictly defined by the Indian Act.
Many First Nations communities will die out within a few generations, in terms of registered Indians. That's because the "two-generation cut-off" created when the Indian Act was revised in 1985 stipulates only children born of two Indian status parents inherit status. Because of intermarriage, some communities will see their last status Indian born as soon as 2012.
"Status matters, because all our funding is tied to how many status Indians we have in our nation," said Beaver, 69, whose 1,000-member community expects to see its last status Indians born in 2032.
"What happens to the land when there is no more (status) Indians? The reserve would be returned to ... the federal government. Eventually, we will lose our land and everything that we call ours now."
Bill C-31 was passed in response to a formal censure by the United Nations, which decried the old law's practice of discriminating against Indian women: Women lost their status when they married a non-status person. Men did not.
But instead of opening the doors to the non-status partners of aboriginal women – a move that would have hugely increased Ottawa's financial obligations – the amendments ensured that men and women suffered equal losses.
The new law extended Indian status and its accompanying rights, benefits and services – such as tax immunity, health benefits and reserve housing – to just one more generation by creating two classes of "status Indians": the 6(1) Indian who has two status parents, and the 6(2), who was born in a union of a status person with a non-status person. If a 6(2) marries a non-status spouse, their children are deemed to be non-status.
In Canada, members of the First Nations--not, incidentally, including Inuit, Métis, or unregistered Indians--are all listed on the Indian Register, which defines who can and who cannot be considered a member of a First Nations by government, and thus be eligible for a wide variety of benefits. This, as a parliamentary report notes, is a serious problem.
The most important target of criticism is the “second generation cut-off rule” that results in the loss of Indian status after two successive generations of parenting by non-Indians. People registered under section 6(2) have fewer rights than those registered under section 6(1), because they cannot pass on status to their child unless the child’s other parent is also a registered Indian. One criticism comes from women who, prior to 1985, lost status because of marriages to non-Indian men. These women are able to regain status under section 6(1); however, their children are entitled to registration only under section 6(2). In contrast, the children of Indian men who married non-Indian women, whose registration before 1985 was continued under section 6(1), are able to pass on status if they marry non-Indians.(27)
Children of unmarried non-Indian women and Indian men are also treated differently according to gender. Male lineage criteria in the legislation prior to 1985 permitted the registration of all such male children born before 1985. After the passage of Bill C‑31, however, female children born to Indian men and non-Indian women between 4 September 1951 and 17 April 1985 became eligible for registration only as the children of one Indian parent.
The application of the amendments has also led to a situation in which members of the same family may be registered in different categories. One example could occur in a family that enfranchised, and in which the mother is a non-Indian. Under Bill C‑31, a child born prior to the family’s enfranchisement is eligible for registration under section 6(1), while a child born after enfranchisement is eligible only under section 6(2), since one parent is not an Indian. This affects the ability to pass on status, because the latter child will be able to pass on status to his or her children only if their other parent is a status Indian.
In the final analysis, the Indian Act may end up seeing the assimilation of First Nations into the general Canadian population. If the Indian Act is not revised, if intermarriage rates continue to grow, language shifts to English or French from native languages continue, and the ongoing urbanization of First Nations population goes on at the standard rate, in the end nearly all First Nations populations save those concentrated in native-majority territories--Inuit Nunavut and Nunavik in northern Québec, say, or Cree-populated areas in the northern prairie provinces, perhaps--might just blend in and so remove the basis for any continued autonomous regimes. Probably, perhaps; I find it telling that Nicholas Keung is the Star's immigration reporter, not native affairs reporter.
