Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 10th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 64 of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.

Today's meeting is in hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of Thursday, June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person and remotely using the Zoom application.

The proceedings will be made available on the House of Commons website. For your information, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entire committee.

For those participating virtually, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.

You may speak in the official language of your choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting in French, English and Inuktitut. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French, and I would encourage you to select that now.

If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately, and we will ensure that interpretation is properly restored before resuming the proceedings—

[The Clerk of the Committee, Vanessa Davies]

Madam Chair, I'm so sorry to interrupt you. Somehow, we are in camera and we need to switch over the technology.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Okay. We will briefly suspend.

[The Clerk]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Please proceed, Madam Chair.

Okay.

For members participating in person, proceed as you usually would when the whole committee is meeting in person in a committee room.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. For those in the room, your mic will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer.

Please address your remarks through the chair.

When speaking, speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do the best we can to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members, whether they are participating virtually or in person.

I would like to ask the committee to consider the adoption of a budget for the restitution of land studies. That will be our first item of business today. You should have all received it by email. It covers costs related to our meetings, including witness expenses, meals and telephone lines.

I would ask for your agreement now.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Second, there has been some interest in having an informal meeting at the offices of the Native Women's Association of Canada on June 21 to celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day. In order to have an off-site meeting, we would have to prepare a travel budget that would cover transportation and interpretation services.

Is it the will of the committee to participate in such an event and instruct the clerk to prepare a budget?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Great. We will pursue that.

Now, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on November 21, 2022, the committee is commencing its important study on the restitution of land to first nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

Today we welcome Dr. Ellen Gabriel, as an individual, by video conference. We may also be hearing from Dr. Hayden King, executive director of the Yellowhead Institute, who may be joining us shortly.

Dr. Gabriel, you can begin with five minutes of introduction.

Thank you.

[The Clerk]

Before we start, Madam Chair—I'm so sorry to interrupt—Dr. King won't be joining us. He doesn't have the proper equipment for the meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Okay. Thank you.

Dr. Gabriel, you will be the only one on the panel, but I'll be very conscious of your time and energy. I'll watch the clock carefully, and if we have to shorten things up, that's what we'll do. Certainly signal if you need a break or anything.

Would you like to proceed with your five-minute introductory comments?

[Ellen Gabriel, Indigenous Land Defender from Kanehsatà:ke, As an Individual]

I want to clarify that I am not a doctor. There is just Dr. King.

I am going to greet you in my language.

[Witness spoke in Mohawk]

[English]

I wanted to greet you in my language, because that is one of the things related to land.

I just want to alert the translators that I might be veering off-script. Thank you.

As indigenous people, we have been living on reserves. These are tiny, postage stamp-sized pieces of land the government has allowed us to live on and set aside for us, yet settlers and their governments still want to chip away at our homelands. Our traditional homelands are millions of square miles, not a few square miles. “Land back” is about restoring our indigenous laws and relationship with mother earth, ourselves and all our relations.

If I may, I will begin by talking about what is happening in my community of Kanesatake. Last week, Radio-Canada described how Kanesatake is, for all intents and purposes, a failed state. This is due to the collusion of the federal, provincial, municipal and band council governments to deny us our rights to our lands and to steal our lands and sell them. Anonymous and brave souls in the community felt the need to hide their identities to denounce the gunfire and intimidation, and the incapacity of the band council to apply the law in the face of extensive organized crime. We know there are many things involved in this case.

I want to say that Kanesatake has been abandoned by those who purport to uphold the rule of law. Whether it is on the land issue, dealing with multi-generational trauma or addressing the lawlessness in our community, the federal, provincial and municipal governments have thrown their hands up, so we live in very precarious, uncertain and unsafe communities.

The fact is that, since the government has surrendered our community to organized crime and allowed gangsters to shield themselves behind the appearance of defending indigenous sovereignty, it is our responsibility to try to create some kind of governance and cohesion, which is impossible in the current state. For most of my life, I have been fighting for our land, culture, language, self-determination and human rights.

This brings me back to land back. Land remains the foundation of indigenous languages and cultures, and it's the basis of our relationship to all our relations. It is, in essence, the pillar of our identity and governance structure. Any serious land back program determined to truly restore the dignity and health of indigenous communities must situate land returns within a broader multi-generational and intersectional approach of restoring relationships, culture and language within indigenous communities.

In 1985, when indigenous women who had lost status due to marrying non-indigenous men regained their status under the Indian Act, there was no compensation or extension of our reserve lands to accommodate the thousands of individuals who'd regained status and wanted to live back in their mothers' communities. In fact, our population, as indigenous people, is the fastest-growing, yet our land base has remained unchanged since the creation of reserves. If we contest development, we are incessantly forced into costly colonial court systems necessitating lawyers who uphold colonial laws. As land defenders, we do not have the budget to do this, so we are considered the troublemakers in our communities.

I have spent my life denouncing and fighting the Government of Canada, because it is stealing our land, but I will open my hand to anyone....

When we defend our rights, we are criminalized. Conversely, I will fiercely denounce a PR-driven approach to piecemeal token gifts that satisfy Twitter #LandBack slogans without understanding the deeper context wherein such a project would become truly transformational. The right to free, prior and informed consent is relentlessly under attack, diluted to a right to consultation in the service of those who want to profit from the theft of indigenous peoples' homelands. Let us not allow land back to follow the same path.

That this situation is difficult, complex and dark does not mean it is hopeless. Indigenous peoples have found hope in hopeless places since settlers arrived on these lands. Serious, long-term work is needed, and it can be done together.

In closing, I would like to recommend that there be an independent investigation of Canada's, Quebec's, Oka's and the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake's collusion to defraud the Kanienkehaka of Kanesatake of our homelands and human rights. I'll ask this question: Whose sovereignty are we protecting, if there is a double standard applied to the human rights of indigenous peoples and our rights to self-determination?

Skén:nen. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Thank you, Ms. Gabriel. It is an honour to hear from you.

We will begin our first round of questions, beginning with the Conservatives and Mr. Schmale for six minutes.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

I'm actually going to jump in—it's Mr. Melillo, Madam Chair—as long as you're all right with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Yes, I am. Please proceed.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Even if you're not, I think I'm going to do it anyway.

Thank you very much.

Thank you to our witness Ms. Gabriel for being here.

We appreciate your testimony so far. Obviously, this is a very important conversation. I want to thank you for making some time to be a part of it here today.

A question arose locally for me.... I come from Kenora, Ontario, in the district of Kenora. There are 42 first nations within that electoral district across Treaty No. 3, Treaty No. 5 and Treaty No. 9. One of the big concerns I continually hear is how difficult it is for the nations to develop and build on their land. They are struggling to grow. They are limited, as you mentioned—I don't remember the exact terminology you used—to that small square of land.

In northern Ontario, we have no shortage of land. It's all around us, but it's quite difficult for the first nations I have the honour of representing to access that in order to expand and grow. As a result, of course, many people have to leave their communities. Sometimes, they end up in large urban centres and a completely different world that unfortunately leads to a number of other challenges—but that is an aside.

The point of the question I want to get to is this: Obviously, we're having a very broad discussion on land back, in terms of the growth of first nations and those additions to reserves. I also know that it's an incredibly long, drawn-out process. Do you have any thoughts around that, specifically? How can the government help make that a much easier process, so that first nations can have access to the land—a lot of it was traditionally theirs in the first place—in order to grow and expand?

[Ellen Gabriel]

That's a good question, and I think it's the $22-trillion question.

We're talking about politicians who are concerned about their constituents' priorities, and indigenous people are not the priority in Canada. It's pretty evident. We have spoken about the return of lands, which includes national parks. I live in a community that is the oldest existing Mohawk community. It was there long before Europeans arrived. We have Oka National Park. The government has stated uncategorically that this piece of land is not part of the discussion for land back.

Our traditional homelands need to be accessible. We need to have a say over what happens on those lands, but we need to have the restoration of a community land base that provides sustainable development and sustainable economic security, and also food security—not just for us humans. We hunt deer and moose, and we fish. Where I'm from, you can't do any of that anymore because so much land has been taken for development.

If the federal government and provincial governments want to chip in together to buy back land that should never have been out of our hands, that is a reconciliation action they could do. However, we are always forced under a racist guide. Where I come from, the neighbouring municipality of Oka sees us as villains and criminals. Villains and criminals exist in and outside the community. We are trying to restore a traditional land base use and a guarantee of that. It would be something you could include in any sort of discussion, but it always goes back to colonial laws. It needs to incorporate indigenous laws and how we take care of the land.

I don't know whether that answers your question.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Certainly, I really appreciate that.

One of the things you mentioned that was particularly interesting to me was food security. I think that is something that's maybe not necessarily intuitively a part of this, but certainly, as you mentioned, it's a very important part. I know that many of the nations that fall into my district have one store they're able to shop at, and their prices are inflated. They rely on their firearms. They rely on hunting to be able to go out on the land and provide for their families.

I don't have much time left, so maybe I'll just stop my comments there.

Could you speak more to the food security aspect and how important being able to hunt on the land is?

[Ellen Gabriel]

Yes, hunting and fishing are ways, especially, as you know, with the high cost of living and because of pandemic shortages.... This is a multi-generational issue. To be able to hunt, you need to have access to the land. National parks on our traditional territory prevent us from having access to those traditional ways of life that are part of food sovereignty.

Also, within the forests and the lands are our traditional medicines that help us keep healthy mentally, spiritually and physically. Those are being destroyed by development, condos, resource development or fishing. The waters are polluted from raw sewage or whatever waste is going into those waters. Everything that could be possible in, say, a northern community is not applicable to my community. You need to be aware that it's not one-size-fits-all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Thank you, Mr. Melillo.

We'll now go to Mr. Battiste for the Liberal Party for six minutes.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Kwe.

Thank you, Ms. Gabriel, for being our first witness in what I think is an historic study on land back.

I can't help but reflect that I was 10 years old during the Oka crisis, where land was of dispute. That got national recognition.

To be a Mi'kmaq member of Parliament 33 years later asking a Haudenosaunee questions around land and restitution of land is, I think, a very great sign of the progress we have made in Canada, but there's still so much work to be done.

In starting the basis for a foundation of land back, I understand that the Royal Proclamation of 1763 forbade settlers from claiming land from the aboriginal occupants unless it had been first bought by the Crown and then sold to the settlers.

To your knowledge, in your communities and in surrounding nations, was land ever purchased or ceded to nations in the pre-Confederation treaties?

[Ellen Gabriel]

I should preface by saying that I'm not a treaty person. The Haudenosaunee people are not treaty people. We had treaties like the Two Row Wampum treaty, which is referenced quite often. We know the royal proclamation did not include Quebec, so that doesn't apply here.

In regard to how land is used by the Haudenosaunee people, it's the women who hold title to the land. It's this rupture of the family unit that has caused colonization to attack, not just the family unit but the land itself. We look at how the land has been destroyed and contaminated. This is what's happened to indigenous people. You could see it as a symbolic representation of what has happened to the identity of indigenous people.

The foundation for me is not colonial laws. The foundation for me is Kaianere'kó:wa, the Great Law of Peace. That teaches us how to work with the land, to love the land, to love our relations and to try to find peaceful ways for resolution, but the way this current system exists makes it impossible. It's impossible because not only is it costly with lawyers and a lot of people do not have the resources, but the land, which is a huge part of our identity—in fact, it's the pillar of our identity—we're losing more of that land so that future generations are not going to be able to enjoy it.

In my community, we are still fighting for those same pieces of land. Oka still claims that land. They are still playing golf on that eight-hole golf course. We have not even come close to a solution.

When I spoke to Marc Miller about the organized crime, the lack of safety and the vulnerability of people like me and others, he said that we can't do anything, but we can't not do anything. To me, this is really evidence of the lack of goodwill that is needed to talk about what it means to have land back.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Ms. Gabriel, to follow up on the question that I asked, to the best of your knowledge, did your nation ever cede, surrender or sell the land that was originally bestowed upon them?

[Ellen Gabriel]

To my knowledge, no, none of that land was ever given away or ceded. In fact, we lost a lot of lives to that, especially after the War of 1812 when our community's population was decimated. Twice in my community, we had smallpox outbreaks, thanks to the British.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Ms. Gabriel.

I'm glad you brought up the indigenous knowledge and the peaceful way of resolution. Do you think that the idea of land back is something we should be fearful of in Canada?