You may wonder what all this history has to do with why we are here on Bill C-428. It is because if you do not understand this history, verified by your documents, you will not understand our fierce opposition to your bill.
Treaty No. 2 in no way diminishes our sovereignty. To the contrary, it gave and still gives your crown the right to exercise its sovereignty over its settlers and the land we shared with them. Every other document is smoke and mirrors and incantations of doctrines of discovery and our inferiority, which made it necessary for you to still, in the 21st century, be amending an act for the gradual civilization of Indians.
Your bill is an infringement on our sovereignty, a breach of our treaty, a breach of the honour of the crown. We want to re-establish the true legal spirit and intent of that treaty. We want a mutually productive, friendly, warm relationship with you and your people.
We continue to hold out our hand of friendship to you, yet while you meet here to discuss removing obsolete nonsense from the Indian Act, your continuing violation of the treaty is killing us. It is a cause of great misery and trauma as Wab Kinew was noting earlier today.
I'll give you one example. Among our Treaty No. 2 first nations, one has been totally dispossessed, Lake St. Martin. Well over 1,000 people were evacuated from there due to deliberate flooding by the Government of Manitoba in order to save the people of Winnipeg from flooding.
Chief Eastman's community was deliberately flooded. The Ebb and Flow reserve of Chief Houle was severely damaged by intentional flooding.
Where has the federal government been? We are still dealing with this problem two years later. “Isn't that a provincial matter?” you ask. This action causes a trespass on our reserve lands, and the federal government has the obligation to take action. In fact, under the Indian Act, which you want to amend, it has the sole authority to lay those trespassing charges.
In case you didn't know about this flooding, it happened in May 2011 and destroyed nearly 200 homes, making the community uninhabitable. Those hundreds and hundreds of people are still, two years later, living in hotels in Winnipeg in temporary placements with nothing tangible on the horizon except promises and requests for patience. This is just one of over a half-dozen communities that are suffering from this kind of flooding of their homes.
Further, we are damaged and traumatized because the schools we insisted upon as part of Treaty No. 2 have been pauperized into an inferior system of education. Only 38% of our high school students graduate. Compare that to the rest of Canada. That's something we have to be mindful of.