A new bill recognizing Métis rights in Ontario, Alberta and Quebec is being met with outrage from First Nations and Métis groups.

By Joy SpearChief Morris Ottawa Bureau

The Toronto Star: A new bill recognizing Métis rights in Ontario, Alberta and Quebec is being met with outrage from First Nations and Métis groups, who say the proposed legislation supports false claims of Métis identity in Ontario.

The Métis Nation of Ontario, or MNO, has been publicly criticized by First Nations chiefs in the province over the past few years after the provincial government recognized new Métis communities the chiefs say never existed.

The MNO denies the claims, saying the history of Métis in Ontario has always been there.

Bill C-53 has increased the urgency among many First Nations and the Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF) to stop the legislation. They fear the government is rushing into a constitutional relationship without their consent. If passed, the bill will open the door to Métis self-government rights and, in Ontario specifically, impact First Nations’ treaty rights, including land rights and funding, they say.

“We’ve been accused of being Métis deniers and that kind of thing and we’re not. That’s simply not true,” said Nipissing First Nation Chief Scott McLeod.

McLeod, the spokesperson for the Chiefs of Ontario’s rights assertion committee, said while they acknowledge that some of the MNO members may have Indigenous ancestry, there is no historical evidence that supports “a distinct culture and nation” of Métis people within their territories. “Bill C-53 further entrenches the fictitious fabrication of nations that were never in these territories, and that’s really what we’re strongly opposed to,” he said.

The “Recognition of Certain Métis Governments in Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan and Métis Self-Government Act” was introduced in June by then Crown-Indigenous relations minister Marc Miller. The bill is currently being studied by Parliament’s standing committee on Indigenous and northern affairs.

The bill builds upon the self-government agreements signed with MNO, the Métis Nation of Alberta and Métis Nation—Saskatchewan in February to “promote reconciliation, advance their visions for self-determination and formalize our relationships,” said Crown-Indigenous Relations spokesperson Joanna Sivasankaran.

Federal recognition of self-government rights would give the Métis communities greater power over their internal affairs and how they govern their citizens. The Métis Nation of Ontario signed another self-government agreement with the federal government in June 2019. These agreements are part of 22 agreements currently involving 40 Indigenous communities across Canada.

If passed, Bill C-53 will mean federal recognition of self-government rights for the Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan Métis communities and provide a framework for signing “self-government treaties.” Indigenous self-government and treaty rights are affirmed in the Constitution Act.

But the Chiefs of Ontario and Manitoba Métis Federation fear federal recognition of the MNO is unwarranted, going against their own historical accounts of who is Indigenous and who is entitled to those rights under the Constitution.

“This is no longer about an individual academic or author stealing an identity. This is about the attempted theft of the identity of a nation,” William Goodon of the Red River Métis, an MMF minister, said to MPs on the standing committee last week. “Our nation goes back centuries, and we assure the committee that these historic Métis communities, quote-unquote, in most of Ontario have no connection to us.”

Who are the Métis Nation of Ontario?

The MNO was established in 1993 and currently recognizes 25,000 Métis citizens from across the province. The federation’s mandate is to establish and promote Métis self-governance and rights, protect and preserve the Métis culture and improve the social and economic well-being of Métis children, families and communities in Ontario.

In 2017, Ontario formally recognized “six new historic Métis communities” through an identification process with the MNO.

MNO president Margaret Froh said Métis in Ontario have been fighting for decades for recognition. “Historically, the Métis have been known as the forgotten people. We’ve been turned away from treaty tables, we haven’t been recognized,” she said.

McLeod of the Nipissing First Nation said the Chiefs of Ontario had not viewed the MNO as a concern until the 2017 provincial recognition. . “Most of our leadership were busy dealing with child welfare issues, with addiction issues, housing issues, infrastructure issues, freshwater issues. So, this was always kind of in the back of our minds and something that we knew we had to deal with at some point,” he said.

How is status determined?

The Assembly of First Nations passed a resolution in July at its Annual General Assembly in Halifax to “protect First Nations rights and interests from unfounded Métis rights assertions.”

The motion was put forward by McLeod. “The underlying issue, we believe, is that no matter who they are, if they’re claiming to have some type of ancestry or rights to nationhood in our territories, then they should be asking the nations of those territories, not a settler government that we gave permission to be here on our lands,” McLeod said.

Legal recognition as a First Nations person, or “Indian status,” is determined through the Indian Act, a colonial policy established in 1876 to mitigate First Nations treaty rights and reserves. The act has historically determined who can and cannot be called an “Indian” under Canadian law.

In 1985, the act was amended to implement a second-generation policy, which means if two generations in a row marry non-First Nations people, the children of the third generation will not have Indian status. Many First Nations argue they should be able to determine their own membership.

The Métis Nation are not subject to the Indian Act and have determined their own membership.

“Canada has ignored us for 150 years. In some ways that’s been a blessing because we didn’t have to be subjected to that kind of meddling,” Goodon said to the committee on the subject. Froh of the MNO said there has been a lack of understanding of who the Métis are and their history in Ontario, and Bill C-53 is bringing this to the forefront.

“The reality is that the history of Métis in Ontario is there. It’s been there for a very long time,” Froh said.

“It’s very disappointing to be at a point in time where some are coming forward to, once again, deny Métis existence, deny our rights, and seek to hold us back from realizing that destiny that our past leaders really fought for and died for,” she said.

The Manitoba Métis Federation disagrees with the MNO. Goodon said they have done extensive work on the Métis nations in Ontario as part of their continued understanding of the Métis homeland. McLeod argues that First Nations in Ontario are already seeing Métis assertions within their own lands, including MNO communities benefiting from provincial and federal resources.

“They’ve just shrunk our pie of what we can use and that we desperately need as Indigenous people living on reserves that have been through the residential school system and all the impacts of the Indian Act,” McLeod said.

How are land rights impacted?

The Chiefs of Ontario have said one of their biggest concerns is land rights and they worry that if passed, the bill will infringe on Indigenous territories.

Crown-Indigenous Relations spokesperson Sivasankaran said the bill provides a clear framework for self-government treaties that will provide law-making powers for Métis governments and their citizens, which “are not premised on a land base and do not involve land-related rights or harvesting rights,” nor do they impact the treaty rights “of any other Indigenous groups.”

But McLeod said land is central to the question of self-government treaties and that “you can’t have a treaty if you don’t have a land base.” “This is where the smoke and mirrors come out. The federal government and the Métis Nation of Ontario say it’s not about land because there’s nothing in there written about land,” he said.

Kurtis Boyer, an assistant professor and the Research Chair in Métis Governance and Policy at the University of Saskatchewan’s Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, said it is possible to establish self-government treaties without land, as Métis were historically removed from their lands through colonial policies. “The idea that self-government requires land is an old idea that comes from Western Europe,” said Boyer, who is a Métis citizen of MNS.

Manitoba Métis Federation chief of staff Al Benoit told the committee last week that by not providing parameters around land and natural resources, the government is giving the MNO, MNA and MNS “blank sheets of paper” with “unrestricted pens” to write new treaties. “With Bill C-53, Parliament is being asked to blindly approve future unknown, yet-to-be-written, constitutionally protected treaties without Parliament ever seeing them,” Benoit said.

Joy SpearChief-Morris is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics and Indigenous issues for the Star. Reach her via email: jspearchiefmorris@thestar.ca