Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 19th, 2023

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Okay. That sounds good. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here.

Mr. Marshall, do you have any specific recommendations on how we can improve some of these land back operations? You said, I think, that addition to reserve was one of the mechanisms that your community was using. I wonder if there is any specific thing that you could say, such as, “Hey, if this piece wasn't part of that” or “We did this because back in the past we used the fax machine and today we don't use the fax machine anymore.” Some of these notices that have to go out and things like that, putting notices in the newspaper, for example, aren't necessarily the most effective way to get it out.

Is there something like this that we need to change so that we can make some of these things work more quickly?

[Graham Marshall]

Absolutely, and thank you for that question.

The ATR process throughout the country of Canada has always been long. The ATR process took approximately 12 years for that parcel of land to be acquired. ATRs require 12 years and this is going on.

Just in observing the standing committee today and the colleagues around the table throughout the point of order, this is a prime example of how systems and policies cannot follow through. Just as we have points of order and everything is delayed, this is what happens with the ATR. In these great buildings in our capital city of the country of Canada, when we have points of order and have delays and so on, when it comes down to indigenous lands and communities, we feel that point of order. We feel that delay. When we have delays like that of ATR processes that take 12 years, it's because of systems and policies that are exercised, which I see with my own eyes today with these points of order and these delays.

When you look at the word “community”, you have to observe and to remember there's another word in that word: That word is “unity”. We all have to work together. We all have to “co-succeed”. If we are one of the greatest countries in the world, then we have to show the world why that is. When we look at land back and look at indigenous peoples, when observing and talking about oil and gas, a lot of my brothers and sisters from coast to coast to coast do not have clean drinking water in this great country. There are Canadians today who don't have clean drinking water.

I find it really disrespectful to talk about oil and gas when we don't even have clean drinking water for my indigenous brothers and sisters throughout this great country.

Thank you for your question.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Going back to the ATR, you said it took 12 years. Was there anything specific? I've heard complaints about the fact that the individuals your community ends up dealing with—I don't know if you were intimately involved in the ATR or not—who come from the government aren't empowered to make decisions. Has that been your experience?

[Graham Marshall]

There are just different institutions and different policies that create these ATR policies when we look at 12 years. In order to own that parcel of land that we were dispossessed of, because the ATR process took so long, we took matters into our own hands and acquired and bought that land back for our own community. We just disregarded the ATR process and bought that land back.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

That land you bought back is not part of the reserve, then.

[Graham Marshall]

It is now. With the ATR process...that we've acquired, now it is part of the additions to reserve as part of Membertou First Nation.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

How did you fund the purchase of that land back?

[Graham Marshall]

It's through own-source revenue. We are becoming one of the top indigenous communities in Canada. When we acquire and look for places.... We weren't always like that. We were always in a deficit, and we always heard the word “can't”: “We can't do this as an indigenous people, and we can't do that.” That's one word that's really not in our vocabulary.

Coming from a proud people, we always find a way we can help our people and help our nations and help our land. Becoming successful like that, we were able and were blessed to create that opportunity out of our own place.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

I'll cede my time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

We'll now go to Mr. Battiste, who will have his six minutes.

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

Thank you.

My question is for Keptin Augustine.

Stephen, you said that the Mi'kmaq treaties never ceded any land. There's a common misconception in Canada that all the first nations treaties signed land away. Can you tell us if that's true within the Mi'kmaq treaties?

Also, within three minutes, can you state for us how the Mi'kmaq were displaced from their land if they never ceded it?

[Chief Stephen Augustine]

The treaties of peace and friendship were more about peace and friendship, not about the land. When we made agreements with the British, we hadn't really agreed to give up the land. The British only assumed that they defeated us, and they defeated the French and took over sovereignty of the land.

It was only after 1867, with the creation of Canada with the British North America Act, that the federal statute laws and the provincial statute laws divided responsibilities for Indians and we became a federal responsibility. The federal government took over colonizing the indigenous people, taking control over our lands and putting us on Indian reserves.

We have our own traditional government that signed the treaties with the British. We call it the Mi'kmaq Grand Council. It's our traditional governance structure. Our own people have recognized since 1888, when the federal government instituted federal statute law, that this was the way we're supposed to elect our chiefs, through a democratic system.

I am a hereditary chief and I come from a long line of chiefs. As a hereditary chief, I welcomed Queen Elizabeth in Halifax when she visited Canada—welcoming another hereditary leader. It was her family and my family that signed the treaty in 1760. There was no land surrendered back then.

It's a given notion, which is really a false notion, that the federal government took over the responsibility for the Indians at Confederation.

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

Thank you, Mr. Augustine.

I heard both you and Mr. Marshall talk about the importance of land. We heard a lot of testimony on land back that talked about land differently than as property, but more or less as an equal partner, because we have a connection to it. I think you said that we belong to the land; the land does not belong to us.

Mr. Marshall, can you talk a little bit about netukulimk, the Mi'kmaq concept of the responsibility to that land and what that means to the Mi'kmaq?

[Graham Marshall]

Yes. Netukulimk is the meaning of the balance of life, to understand taking what we need and therefore always making sure that we protect it for the generations to come.

As Mi'kmaq people, we signed one of the strongest treaties in the country of Canada, of no surrender of land, but also of peace and friendship. When we look at peace and friendship and the importance of land and the importance of who we are, netukulimk is so important to understand the balance of where we come from and where we are.

When we look at those treaties that were signed by our ancestors, our ancestors weren't acknowledging the Mi'kmaq of the 1700s in those treaties; they were protecting the legacy they were leaving behind for the generations to come.

When we look at Mi'kmaq today, in 2023, we ask fellow Mi'kmaq and non-Mi'kmaq what legacy we are going to leave behind for this country and what legacy we are going to leave behind in the next hundred years or two hundred years. It is that there is no surrender of the land, which we continue to do today.

We have to protect our ways of netukulimk and protect our way of life throughout our territory of the Mi'kmaq.

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

Would you both agree that as part of land back, a big part of that, the focus is the protection of the land for future generations, not necessarily just about property?

[Graham Marshall]

For protocol, Saqamaw has to answer that first.

[Chief Stephen Augustine]

I would add, in terms of netukulimk, that we use our indigenous ceremony to negotiate our survival on the land. That's the reason we don't take everything on the land and stockpile. There is actually a spiritual ceremonial balance in terms of negotiating our survival on the land.

What was your question again, Jaime?

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

It was about stewardship of the land being an important part of land back. Would you agree with that?

[Chief Stephen Augustine]

Well, in the modern context, we can use the ideology of stewardship. It has its biblical context that man is above the land and the animals, whereas in our culture, we are equal to the plants and the birds and the fish. They are our relatives.

I think it's more of a concept of trying to incorporate the indigenous perspective of land, especially our relationship and how we treat these elements that are part of our culture.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Thank you.

That's the end of our six minutes.

We're going now to Madame Bérubé.

Welcome.

You have the floor for six minutes.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses who are with us today.

While you are here, Mr. Munnings, we would like you to elaborate on indigenous rights in relation to our study on the restitution of ancestral lands.

How do you define indigenous rights and how is that related to the restitution of lands?

[Adam Munnings]

Thank you for your question.

When we look at indigenous rights, we're looking at indigenous laws and at the land from the perspective that Chief Augustine and Councillor Marshall were talking about. We're looking at it through a different lens. That's the place we have to start—looking at it through an indigenous lens. All living creatures are the same. We're cousins. We're related. Non-living is where the separation is. That's the way the lens in some cultures works. Every culture across Canada is a little bit different in that relationship.

We have to start from there and then we have to start digging into indigenous laws and indigenous ways of knowing. Those are different across Canada for each nation.

That takes some digging, but it's also hard to look at because our culture was stolen from us, as indigenous people. Our culture has been taken away. I don't know my culture very much. I'm Anishinabe from Curve Lake. I had it all stolen. I don't speak my language. My mom can understand her language and I know some words.

As we go across Canada, that's a common thread. People are trying to bring back the language. The language is the main piece that tells us our indigenous laws and where those come from. The work has to be done to bring language back, to bring our culture back and to bring back our connection to the land, which we don't have.

In the case of my client, Semiahmoo First Nation, they don't have that connection to their fishing, to their hunting or to any of their land. They need to have that connection brought back. For Semiahmoo, it's different because they're an urban aboriginal band. Their traditional territory is all developed. We have to think about what “land back” means for them. They want to help protect and bring back their fisheries because that's important to their culture.

That's kind of what we're talking about with indigenous rights with regard to land back. It's about changing the way people think of it from a property perspective to a perspective where we're connected to it and part of it.

Thanks.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

At the committee's last meeting, we talked about the excessive federal bureaucracy, which you mentioned before. Communities have been hurt a great deal by federal delays.

Given your expertise, what would you recommend to the federal government from a legal point of view to accelerate the process? What should the next steps be?

[Adam Munnings]

Thank you.

To speed up the process, I think there needs to be a look at the steps. There are no clear steps for ATR. We kind of get lost in the Canadian government staff or the Department of Justice staff looking at their liabilities and what that is, rather than looking at getting the lands back to the nations as quickly as possible. We get tied up in environmental reviews and we get tied up in what municipalities say.

From a first nations lens, a municipality is a child of the provincial government and its opinions shouldn't overtake the nations getting their land back. A lot of times in the ATR process, for example, municipalities provide comments about municipal services, about access to roads and about all this loss of taxation revenue, but it's the nation's land, so why are we delayed because of a municipality? Why are we delayed because of the liability of Canada? Why are we delayed because of all this bureaucracy and people who have to have a say in things, when it's our land?

As an indigenous person, I'm looking at it as my land and wondering why it's taking you so long to give it back to me. That's some of the bureaucracy that comes up with that.

Then we get tied up in people playing politics, for example. They're bringing up other issues that don't necessarily reflect that it's indigenous land. They want to talk about something else and then they start playing politics with local MPs and other things to raise other issues, when the issue for nations is getting that land back and reconnecting with that land.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

My question is for Chief Augustine.

I see that you served as ethnology curator for the eastern Maritimes at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau. You were also named a member of the Order of Canada for advancing Mi'kmaq studies and for sharing your expertise with various public organizations.

Based on your experience, what do you take away from what federal institutions teach about ancestral lands? What should we learn about the culture of Mi'kmaq ancestral lands that we have not yet learned?