I can only share my story.
My whole life, I've known who I was, but I did not belong to my nation. No one since my great-grandmother had. As I mentioned, Indian status is something that was created around 1951, if I'm correct, and these things weren't documented. There weren't lists.
For example, with Bill C-31, changes had been made. Those people were contacted, and they became subsection 6(1) instead of subsection 6(2), and so forth. That's why I called it. We have to have this Indian registry of who the descendants are, because people have a right to know.
My great-grandmother.... As of right now, I am the only one who has status. Trying to contact people to make people aware and bringing them back to community are really important. My journey was about reconnecting with my community before asking for my status. Personally, that was my journey. There's a responsibility there to document the hurt, because some people don't know. There are people out there who have rights.
For me, it wasn't until I was working in Kahnawake that I learned about all of this. My granddaddy had never said that she lost status. I didn't know. As I learned what reconciliation was as a Franco-Ontarian woman, it was like finding out that you were adopted. It was like, “Wait a minute, this happened to my family. Wait a minute, this attacked me. Wait a minute, I was buried.” I think it's important that Canada has this accountability to people to maintain those lists.
To close on that statement, we face lots of situations with people who affirm indigenous identities. Those lists would be useful tools to confirm identity. However, at the end of the day, our nations get to decide belonging.
Personally—