Meegwetch. Thank you for that question.
What we want is to be able to take the time to look at the facts and the evidence to actually determine whom we are actually speaking to. Currently, this whole approach has been “recognize first and verify later”. What we are saying is that we want to be at the table to look at whom exactly we're speaking to when we talk about this legislation, because from our standpoint, there's a facade of whom these people represent. Some of them are, in fact, our own people. They are using our own history to basically hijack the identity of a nation that never existed.
Yes, there are people with mixed ancestry. Yes, there are people connected to our nations, but that does not make them Métis. That makes them either part of the Canadian society, as they lived for generations, or part of ours, as they got disassociated from our nations. If they can show the evidence, we would gladly entertain the citizenship within our nations.