Madam Speaker, I take my friend at his word, and the notion of nation-to-nation implies a certain respect and capacity for self-determination. The self-determination of identity must be the most basic form of self-determination we have. My friend identifies himself as a sovereign person, not for me to impose on him who I think he is. In his community that is also true, but that is not true for first nations people. The Department of Indian Affairs has done that since the inception of our country, to say who is first nations and who is not. If their mother got together with a non-native guy, not only are they not first nations, but anyone who descends from them is not as well. It does not matter if they are raised in the community, speak the language, enrich themselves with that deep culture, it does not matter, Ottawa will determine it. That continues today.
This legislation goes back part of the way but stops in the 50s. As for those affected before that and descended from those people, Ottawa will continue to determine they are not first nations, regardless of who they think they are and who they know themselves to be.
The ability to define who we are, individually and within our communities, lies at the heart of this. Our friend used the broken car analogy. The Indian Act is so much worse than that. South Africa came here to study the reserve system when it was looking to establish apartheid in South Africa. It is not a coincidence, it is a disgrace, and it should highlight for us how bad and inherently rooted this is in this institution. In order to get it out it is going to take at the least the amount of effort that was put in to oppress first nations people for so many decades.