Thank you for the opportunity to speak to that.
The issues have affected our community in several very stringent ways. The community was one community, and it was severed at the time of treaty, when we were cookie cut into several distinct bands. There was a remnant that was processed under law and removed from the communities and therefore had to try to exist.
Over time, we impacted the registered communities, because we were still related by family and we married into or married out of those communities. As one issue, I have nephews who were born on or into a treaty community, and they experience the same rejection, I guess you would call it, because they don't have the same status. Even though they have Bill S-2 status, it's not enough for them to be fully appreciated by the community as full members.
Other things have happened that dispersed our people quite a bit, so it's been harder for us to keep our community history together, but whenever we come together at any event, our history blooms and comes back. It shows that we still have a vibrant and strong connection although it has been impacted by the enfranchisement rules.
These were very historic, but they impacted a historical Indian community that was extant when Canada showed up, and they chose to have different rules than the imperial Crown. In this way, we were treated in a separate and different way and processed differently than, say, peoples in Ontario or Quebec. There are differences in that way as well.
It has impacted our people in many ways, too, because we have this strong loss of a sense of identity, and even though we were present in the diaspora and we were always recognized as being Indian, we never had any connection to express that. It was very frustrating, because in many ways we experienced the racism from both sides over that time, and it's been difficult to comprehend.
With the passing of Bill S-2, I think that restoration would be complete.
As far as—