Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2023

[Dean Gladue]

I'm not the president. I'm a region 3 director, Thompson—Okanagan, which is the beautiful Okanagan in B.C. I'm a minister of sports and active living, associate minister of justice and the minister of natural resources. I have a bit of a portfolio there.

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

For brevity I'll call you Dean—how about that?

[Dean Gladue]

Call me Dean. Call me “late for dinner”.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

That's a lot. Congratulations on all of those roles and the good work that you're doing in your community.

I want to know a bit more about the Métis of British Columbia because I am interested. I was doing a little bit of research, and I saw in the citizenship application form that there is a lot of talk about the process and the year 1901 as an important portion of it. As well, as part of your registration for citizenship application you require a five-generation pedigree chart. Can you tell us more about the Métis of B.C. and your system of enrolment?

[Dean Gladue]

I'm going to do the best I can in that regard. First of all, I'm not an expert in that. I can't, really, so things may be said in jest, but I do know this: We have one of the strictest genealogy enrolments in Canada. We have a very strict one. In fact, we went through a new process here recently, a process in which we've identified some who are not of Métis descent and things that were flawed. We're growing, and I'd say this is a new time and era for us.

When I played junior hockey years ago, I used to go to these native tournaments around Canada. I recall guys showing up with a card, and we knew they weren't because they were from my hometown. We knew they were not, but they had a card because the local native team wanted them to play. Again, we're a very competitive people. That was happening back in the day. In some ways it's still happening, and we need to clean that up. We need to know who are nehiyawk, who are the real people.

In B.C. we're doing that. We take that seriously and with pride. We've been in B.C. for a lot of years. My family came to British Columbia because we were still nomadic. We were still running from the Prairies. We were still running from the government in the late 1950s. That's why we came to the little town called Chetwynd and created what's called Moccasin Flats. We were still squatting land. Whenever we saw the government officials, I remember hiding in a tree or behind trees in the bush. Why? Nobody knew, but later I knew why.

When I say there are impacts, we have concerns about who are going to be Métis people. I played hockey the other day with a good friend of mine. He said, “Dean, I'm a capital M, not a small m,” meaning capital Métis to métis. We knew what he meant. He comes from the homeland. He comes from where we come from. We know. You know who you are, and the families know who they are.

The biggest challenge we have in B.C. is that some of them are just starting to come home. A 75-year-old-man named Phil Berlinski thought he was Polish all his life, and he passed. His mother passed many years ago. He had just found out she came from the Red River. We're still finding ourselves, but in the meantime some are trying to distinguish themselves as being Métis, but we know they're not.

We have a way to go in our genealogy. That's why we hired the experts, to make sure the right people are getting through the door.

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

Thank you for that.

Can you talk a little bit about where the relationship is between the Métis Nation B.C. and the Red River Métis?

[Dean Gladue]

They're our cousins. They're our family. I, myself, come from the Chartrand family as well. I come from many Métis communities. I have 38 Métis connections. Whenever I go to western Canada, everybody says that I'm related to everybody.

That's why.... My wife is from South Africa. We always joke about it because most times we are very well connected throughout the whole country. Anywhere I go in western Canada especially, I'm related. I'm well involved in sports. Even on the first nations side, there's family.

I'm of Iroquois descent as well. I am a descendent through the Calliou and Belcourt clan, who are Iroquois.

We are interconnected in many different ways. We're still interconnected and we still practice our ceremonies and our laws. That's important to me because I know how distinctly different we are. There are those nehiyaw moniyaw, those Métis people who are just coming home, but they don't understand yet the heart of what it means to be Métis because they grew up with a colonial mentality.

I hope that helps.

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

That was very interesting.

When we're discussing this bill, it does not include the Métis of B.C., but you're still in support of it. Can you tell me why?

[Dean Gladue]

It's because they're our family and they live there. Wherever I go in this world, I'm still Métis, but in Canada, they've built their culture in time and we know that.

That's why I come here to support my brothers and sisters. It's not that, if you live in a certain area, it means you're Métis. You are Métis as you move. We have to prove our existence through an evidence base.

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

Would you say that this legislation, which is for the Métis, would be a win for all Métis in Canada?

[Dean Gladue]

It would for the capital-M Métis, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

We're out of time there now.

We're going to go to Madame Bérube.

You have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being at the committee today.

Mr. Gladue, thank you and congratulations on everything you've become today. I hope one day you'll write a book about yourself. That would be very interesting.

For now, can you explain how passing the bill would contribute to reconciliation?

[Dean Gladue]

That last question sort of died off on me. For some reason, I can't hear the interpretation.

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

Can you explain how passing the bill would contribute to reconciliation?

[Dean Gladue]

It will, massively. It would make me feel like a real part of Canada, a part of our growth into what my ancestors always believed in, which was to be a part of what Canada is. Louis Riel, in his very essence, and my grandfather believed that we want to build a future for our own children so we can live in a good way.

What happened throughout history was that we got forgotten, especially after the resistance of 1885. We felt we were knocked off to the side. We were just existing, as they say. We were homeless, really. For 100 years, a lot of our people were homeless. Some are still homeless just because of economics. There could be mental illness and other factors.

My family and I are the only ones among my siblings who outright own a house, to this day. Everybody else is still trying to find themselves. That has to do with the fact that they just feel unheard at the government level. I've seen it in the RCMP, as a former officer. Someone would come in and ask what band I belonged to. I'd reply, “I don't belong to a band, I'm Métis.” I'd try to explain and they'd say, "You're just one of us.”

Yes, we're Canadian. “One of us” is that, but I'm Métis. A Métis is a Métis is a Métis. That's what I believe we are, but within the distinction of what is all of Canada.

We need to know that our history is there. We can't lose that. Losing the language is genocide, and we're fighting like crazy to keep our culture and our language alive.

I hope that helps.

This legislation would impact us for reconciliation because we're at odds with first nations as well in some ways. We have to build bridges with our brothers and sisters. We're not taking anybody's pie. There's enough for everybody. Our services lack within our nation.

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

We've asked this question before, but in your opinion, why are some first nations and Métis communities opposed to the bill?

[Dean Gladue]

It's because, again, they feel that.... We do come from.... I come from a descendant of a Cree kokum and an Iroquois. There was a time 300 years ago when we were Iroquois or I was Cree, but I was also a distinct Scottish and a distinct French. Through that history, we came together and created a language and a culture that was distinct and different. Otipemisiwak—that's what the Cree called us—“those who govern themselves”, “the flower people”. The first nations were seeing within us how we created our own sense of being in government, our own sense of ways of life.

In first nations, it's not about.... Forty years ago, which is when the Constitution was being put into play, were they consulted? Was there proper consultation going on? We don't know at the time. I'm going to say that I'm not an expert in that. I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but what I do know is that I have over 300 years of culture in me that says I have a voice now, and if I speak up, I'm not going to go to jail. If there are three or four of us in a gathering, we're not an illegal assembly. Those laws of the Indian Act applied to us in many ways.

Today I sit here hoping that we have a better future for our children, but we're not going anywhere. First nations are not going anywhere. We have to build a better Canada than what Canada is, and our indigenous people can play a major role in building that, because there was a time in history when we got kicked out of Canada's ways, and we were dictated what to do and where to live. Scrip came up earlier. My parents had scrip, but then you look at our stories—a simple bottle of whiskey took one family's scrip away because he had no idea what was going on.

Land base was all about, “We share the land.” The European mentality was, “I want a piece of land,” but we didn't know the value of it. We all did it: “I'll just go elsewhere.” There was lots of land to be had in Canada. That's why we went into the bush, and we lived there and we lived off the land.

Some days my mom and dad want to go there and live back there. They want to be there, but we were in a housing project in Chetwynd. We were put into it in 1972. There was even a documentary done on my people, Moccasin Flats. It's on YouTube.

In my eyes, yes, this will build a better nation, plus we'll have better times playing when we go play aboriginal hockey together.

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

If you could convince reluctant first nations to support the bill, what would you really want to tell them? How would you address their fears?

[Dean Gladue]

You are us; we are you. We all belong to the same people. We all bleed red.

I've had this debate with many. My best friend is first nations. My best friend's brother is a chief. When I live in my northern area, where Mr. Zimmer's from, in the northeast, where I grew up, where all my family still exists, we have great dialogue because we talk to each other. We haven't lost our ways with first nations where I'm from. It's about going back to that table and talking to one another.

I'm going to say this in a statement here, and I'm not going to...because of embarrassment. I have a friend whose child has a treaty card, and if you want to use blood quantum, it's 10% blood quantum. I'm almost 100% blood quantum, but I'm Métis. My great-grandfather wanted us to be free people. We will not be put—as he said—onto a farm or into a cage. We exerted our rights back in the day, and I'm learning that, but now I'm learning to speak up and hear my voice. I am my ancestors' voice now. I speak for them who were silenced, and that's why I'm a passionate person.

I consider myself a warrior, but a warrior who needs to build peace. Blessed are the peacemakers. That's how I see myself, and I hope other first nations see themselves as that, as well as others.

As we've seen, in other parts of the world, there's great strife going on. I hope we never see a Canada like that. I want to be building. I want my children and my children's children to be a part of a great Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Thank you.

I'm going to have to jump in and move to Ms. Idlout for her six minutes.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Qujannamiik.

I'd like to give Grand Chief Joel Abram a very quick response to the great testimony that Dean Gladue just shared with us. I don't know if you've been hearing it in my interventions, but I hope that there's solidarity among first nations, Métis and Inuit. When I heard your testimony, I didn't hear that you want a strong sense of solidarity with Métis. I wonder, having heard Dean speak, if you could share your reaction to that.

[Grand Chief Joel Abram]

I don't really have an issue overall with Métis people, but our real issue is in Ontario and specifically with the Métis Nation of Ontario, where they're having real claims to consultation rights and harvesting rights within our homelands. We know their objectives are about land, and this legislation is tied to that.

I'm not a lawyer, but we did speak with several about this issue. I understand that the Supreme Court of Canada has made it clear that the foundation of section 35 rights in Canadian law is about our presence in our homelands before Europeans came here. In other words, it's our pre-existing relationship with land over which the Crown now exerts jurisdiction that is the very foundation of section 35 rights in Canadian law. We can't speak about section 35 rights without speaking about land, because without that relationship with land there would be no section 35 rights.

Even in the Supreme Court's 1996 decision in Van der Peet, these were the words of Chief Justice Lamer:

...the doctrine of aboriginal rights exists, and is recognized and affirmed by s. 35(1), because of one simple fact: when Europeans arrived in North America, aboriginal peoples were already here, living in communities on the land, and participating in distinctive cultures, as they had done for centuries. It is this fact, and this fact above all others, which separates aboriginal peoples from all other minority groups in Canadian society and which mandates their special legal, and now constitutional, status.

More specifically, what s. 35(1) does is provide the constitutional framework through which the fact that aboriginals lived on the land in distinctive societies, with their own practices, traditions and cultures, is acknowledged and reconciled with the sovereignty of the Crown.

Recognizing that section 35 right to self-government is necessarily about land because there cannot be section 35 rights without that pre-existing relationship with specific homelands.

The Supreme Court, in Powley, did say that there were Métis nations in Ontario that had section 35 rights. We're not asking Parliament to ignore that, but no court in Canada, including its top court, has ever recognized Métis rights to self-government anywhere in Ontario, let alone across the entire province. When it comes to Métis in general, we don't have an issue, but we know that, specifically in Ontario, the Métis Nation of Ontario is vastly overreaching in terms of what kind of recognition they're going to be getting. That's our major concern.

If Canada had consulted with us, then it would have known that. In fact, [Technical difficulty—Editor] Canada has run fast in the other direction without discussion or answers. It's been acting as though we do not already have well-established treaty relationships with it. It has turned its back on a covenant chain and the process agreed to through it to resolve disputes by meeting in council and discussing issues and concerns among the treaty nations. Not only has Canada not consulted, but it's breaching fundamental treaty obligations by refusing to sit down with us [Technical difficulty—Editor] to hear our concerns and engage in reasoned dialogue. The only thing that we have is this process here, today.

There's a recent decision from the Supreme Court in Quebec that talks about the covenant [Technical difficulty—Editor] chain and the dispute resolution process. That case involved two individuals from the Mohawks of Kahnawake, where the discussion of the covenant chain applies equally to our first nations in Ontario.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

I'm sorry, Grand Chief Abram, but we're losing your sound quality, so I'm going to stop here for a second. Sometimes with buffering or other things, the technical stuff I don't understand, it might get better. Give it a pause here and we'll see if the interpretation either catches up or comes back.

Can you resume? I apologize for cutting you off there. Please resume now.