I understand that both witnesses are first nations or status Indians—as am I, from the Mi'kmaq community—so I'll direct some of the questions around how we can verify first nations in our communities instead of the indigenous box. It's very difficult. We're looking at three separate indigenous groups who all have different ways of determining who is a member of the Inuit, who is a member of the Métis and who is a member of the first nations.
There are challenges within first nations with the Indian Act, in terms of status after 1985. Section 6 cuts off the ability for first nations to pass down their status past the second generation. Further to that, there's a non-stated paternity policy that says if you are a woman who doesn't know, or doesn't want to list, who the father of your child is, it's automatically the assumption that the father would be non-status.
With the discrimination that currently exists within the Indian Act and the challenges around how we're determining registration, how do you recommend that we best verify whether someone is first nations and belonging to a community? Would you say that the Indian Act's band membership and status is the be-all and end-all, or do you think there have to be some grace and some exceptions? How do we do this?