[Witness spoke in Anishinaabemowin]
[English]
Good afternoon, members of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs. My name is Francis Kavanaugh. I am from Naotkamegwanning First Nation, and I am the ogichidaa or grand chief of Grand Council Treaty No. 3.
I am honoured to be appearing before you today to raise concerns of the Anishinabe nation in Treaty No. 3 regarding Bill C-53.
Grand Council Treaty No. 3 is the traditional government of the Anishinabe nation in Treaty No. 3. This includes 26 first nations in northwestern Ontario and two first nations in southeastern Manitoba. We are a nation with a common language, Anishinaabemowin. We have a shared creation story of the larger group of Anishinabe peoples living on Turtle Island, which is thousands of years old, and a migration story of how we came to be a nation at the height of land where the waters flow north into the Arctic watershed. This may be as long ago as 1200 A.D.
There are many concerning aspects of this bill that could be discussed. My focus today is on the concerns that relate directly to Treaty No. 3.
From our perspective, this bill must not pass. Seen in the context of previous agreements between Canada and the Métis Nation of Ontario, this bill provides a legislative pathway to reopening Treaty No. 3 without our involvement, let alone our consent. This bill is premised on a rewriting of history within our homeland, Manito Aki. It creates new section 35 rights within the 55,000 square miles of Treaty No. 3, absent of any historical or factual underpinning for such bestowal.
On misunderstandings of Treaty No. 3, we have several struggles with the Métis Nation of Ontario and their claims to represent some of the descendants of Treaty No. 3. These are based on narratives around an 1875 adhesion to Treaty No. 3. The misrepresentation stems from a racially problematic word used to describe mixed-blood Anishinabe. I’m talking here about the term “half-breed”. To be clear, Treaty No. 3 is only between two peoples, the British and the Anishinabe, in the presence of the Creator.
Euro-Canadians, believing in racial superiority, described our mixed Anishinabe kin as “half-breeds” only because they had the promise of white blood. British policy allowed these mixed Anishinabe to work in fur trade posts for salaries.
This is fact one: There were individuals with actual Métis cultural connection who intermarried with the Anishinabe well after 1873, and 1873 is a key date for the Powley case, developed by the Supreme Court of Canada. We have several modern-day citizens of the Anishinabe nation with a diversity of racial backgrounds. We are an inclusive nation and have been so because we have our own citizenship laws.
This is fact two: The Indian Act has caused many problems, including the issue we have today. So-called “half-breeds” in 1873 were affirmed as Anishinabe in 1875 because of Treaty No. 3 and the Anishinabe’s citizenship customs and law. This 1875 adhesion to treaty is sometimes called the “half-breed adhesion”.
Then the Indian Act produced non-status Indians in the 20th century because of Euro-Canadian views of caste and race and policies of enfranchisement. These colonial policies have separated our families for far too long, alienating our kin who do not have status under racist and exclusionary Indian Act provisions.
The Grand Council Treaty No. 3 would like to have the same powers of citizenship that we have exercised since time immemorial. Contrast our long fight for self-determination with that of the so-called Métis in Ontario. In the 1990s, we start seeing our Anishinabe but non-status kin—kin who lost status because of enfranchisement and discriminatory provisions of the Indian Act that have repeatedly been found unconstitutional—turning to Métis groups for hunting and fishing rights and belonging.
If we had the means, we may have been capable of helping them with their fight for justice to keep their status and membership in our first nations, but we did not have the means in the 1990s. Our poverty forced us to be on the sidelines as these individuals fought for status and resigned themselves to using their great-grandparents' half-breed identity to belong to the Métis groups.
These so-called half-breeds were not part of a distinct Métis community; they were part of the Anishinabe nation, as affirmed during treaty negotiations in the 1873 adhesion to Treaty No. 3.