Ignorance of the law no excuse… when you make the law Trudeau government shows utter disregard for its own 2021 Indigenous rights legislation
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On June 21, 2021, the federal government passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.
A month earlier, leaders from Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced that approximately 215 potential burial sites of students were found with ground-penetrating radar at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
The two events are connected. The public outcry following the Kamloops discoveries generated momentum that led, directly, to passing the legislation.
Canada’s UNDRIP Act has two stated goals. The first is to recognize and affirm the 46 articles in the UN declaration that constitute Indigenous rights: self-government, political, cultural and legal institutions and protections for intellectual properties, languages and lands and resources, among other things.
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The second is to provide a framework for Canada to implement Indigenous rights into policy and practice. Essentially, to bring Canadian laws and Indigenous rights into harmony and fulfil Section 35 of the Constitution to ensure “Aboriginal and treaty rights are recognized and affirmed.”
The most essential principle in the UNDRIP Act, therefore, is that any project, partnership, or initiative involving Indigenous peoples must attain the “free, prior, and informed consent” of Indigenous peoples.
That simple principle is one of respect, but it’s also to stop Canada’s century-and-a-half practice of ignoring, denying or obliterating Indigenous lands, resources and rights with little to no permission or engagement.
Canada’s entire economy and infrastructure was (and still is) built on the principle Indigenous rights don’t matter. From June 2021 onwards, this was supposed to change, and Canada is supposed to include Indigenous peoples in everything that will impact them.
Almost two years later, it’s like nobody in Ottawa has read the memo.
The most essential principle in the UNDRIP Act, therefore, is that any project, partnership, or initiative involving Indigenous peoples must attain the “free, prior, and informed consent” of Indigenous peoples.
In just the past year, I’ve written columns on how federal and provincial identification still cannot be obtained using Indigenous languages, how Canada’s health, child-welfare and justice systems continue to ostracize and ignore Indigenous-led solutions and how Indigenous leaders aren’t invited to first ministers conferences.
There has been some change in “consultation” — particularly in areas of resource development — but for the most part, as former Cree MP Romeo Saganash said in 2018 of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Parliament, Canada “doesn’t give a f—k” about Indigenous rights.
The latest episode came this month when the federal government announced it had hired the Netherlands-based International Commission on Missing Persons to study issues surrounding gravesites located near former residential schools.
The $2 million contract tasks the ICMP to facilitate “an extremely sensitive engagement process” with Indigenous communities and Canadians that includes an “expert roundtable,” two national “town halls” and “approximately 35 regional engagement sessions.” For all sessions Indigenous facilitators will be hired to “ensure that spiritual and ceremonial needs are met” while the ICMP provides “expertise and educational elements on all matters related to identification, repatriation, and DNA analysis.”
The ICMP will then produce a report by summer with recommendations.
JUSTIN TANG / CANADIAN PRESS FILES “They don’t understand the constitutional regime that we’re under. They don’t understand Section 35 constitutional protected rights. They don’t know anything about Indigenous laws and protocol,” Kimberly Murray said.
The announcement shocked Kimberly Murray, the Indigenous and federal-appointed Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools.
“They have no competency with Indigenous people within Canada,” Murray told media when describing the ICMP. “They don’t understand the constitutional regime that we’re under. They don’t understand Section 35 constitutional protected rights. They don’t know anything about Indigenous laws and protocol.”
The ICMP, to its credit, hired Sheila North, the former grand chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak and Bunibonibee Cree Nation leader to help – but it’s a case of too little, too late.
“The government of Canada is just doing what it’s always done,” said Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, chair of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation governing circle, “not trusting, not supporting and not thinking there’s a competency level in the Indigenous community to manage this.”
It’s pretty telling to hear that from someone such as Wesley-Esquimaux, a Liberal ministerial committee appointee and three-time federal election candidate for the party.
DAVID LIPNOWSKI / CANADIAN PRESS FILES Stephanie Scott, executive director of the NCTR, noted Indigenous experts have already done or are doing what the ICMP has been hired to do.
Stephanie Scott, executive director of the NCTR, issued a news release calling the contract “profoundly unfair and harmful” to survivors and communities, and noted Indigenous experts have already done or are doing what the ICMP has been hired to do.
How Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller decided to hire an international firm and not inform the special interlocutor of unmarked graves or the centre in charge of residential school research is, in itself, baffling.
But the reality that the Liberals are ignoring the very law they passed in 2021 — literally in the shadow of the Kamloops unmarked graves discoveries — is staggering.
“How many times do we need to repeat nothing about us, without us?” asked NCTR Survivors Circle member Eugene Arcand.
It’s a good question. If rights, the law, f-bombs and friends don’t matter, what does?
niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca
Niigaan Sinclair
Columnist
Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe and is a columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.
