The problem is that the Indian Act prior to 1985 allowed entirely non-indigenous women who married indigenous status Indian men to become status Indians. They were then allowed to pass that Indian status on to their children, whether they existed prior to that union or not, and also through the process of adoption.
There are many intricate issues embedded within that question. We have always believed that each indigenous nation has the ultimate power to dictate who its members are, to control who those members are and to assert who those members are, yet we have the Inuit saying that the Nunatukavut are not a legitimate organization. You have the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, in September 2024, doling out $24.4 million to erect a treaty centre to a pretendian club.
These are infractions of colonial interference in who Inuit, Métis and first nations people are. We have to listen to Inuit people. We have to listen to first nations people. We have to listen to Métis. We have to.