That's a great question. You could apply it to each of the 634 reserves. I met with three chiefs this morning and asked them if they were a nation. Some chiefs will say yes. Others will get it and say no. We're part of the Cree Nation. But we've got Cree in Quebec, in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, the Nehiyaw peoples. You have Woodland Crees, Swampy Crees, Plains Crees. There are different dialects, but we're all part of that.
If you're talking about nation to nation, we're not structured by nations. Some chiefs want to go down that road. The Dene Nation gets together. The Dene peoples will get organized as Dene. The Mi'kmaq people on the east coast are organized as a Mi'kmaq people if you go by the nations, by the language. That's the ideal. We're not there yet.
Treaty areas are coming now. The agencies and tribal councils are creatures of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. We didn't come together and say let's form a tribal council as Indians. That didn't happen. It came together because of the Department of Indian Affairs and their district INAC offices at that time. We have to break away from the colonization and get back to ourselves, the nation to nation. Some nations will go back by their language and get together and get organized in that way. Other areas will look at treaty territories coming together.
There are options. We should maintain and reserve the right to proceed at our own pace. Once we get organized, then we need to start engaging the crown to move beyond the Indian Act. That's what it means to me, keeping in mind that whole vision to work towards a nation-to-nation collective. We're not structured and organized by nations. We have 634 first nations under the Indian Act, bands in some cases. We have to move beyond that. That's the challenge right now, and we're all at different levels. So it's going to take some time to get there. That's why I showed you the structure. I wanted to give you a little understanding that we as indigenous peoples have to break beyond the Indian Act and organize ourselves in the best way to serve our needs.