Introduction: Aboriginal Peoples: The Changing Face of Canada

Abstract

This theme issue of American Review of Canadian Studies deals with the People of Canada. To begin, some background information is in order; it may make your reading of the issue more productive. Defining the people of Canada is somewhat problematic. In the United States, the situation is pretty straightforward: if you carry a tribal identification or have one issued to you through the Bureau of Affairs, you are an Indian. Without the card, you can call yourself an Indian, but governmental agencies will not recognize you as such. In Canada, by contrast, and as Ovide Mercredi, former Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, has pointed out, the Canadian government recognizes seventeen different categories of under the Act. [1] Without detailing these seventeen categories--a daunting task in any case--in Canada there are Status Indians which, more or less, corresponds to the U.S. definition of Indian; that is, they all carry a tribal identification. Ot her in Canada who are Aboriginals without specific tribal membership are called Non-status Indians. In addition to these First Nations people, there are those people who are of mixed Indian and European descent--called Metis. And to complete the official governmental recognition scheme, Canada certainly includes the Inuit of the Arctic under the Aboriginal umbrella. As our legal scholar Kent McNeil reminds us here: The peoples are defined by the Canadian Constitution as including 'the Indian, Inuit and Metis peoples of Canada': as found in section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982, (U.K.) c.11. Exploring the differences further, the Canadian Constitution says that, The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed (section 35[1]). It is up to the courts to define just what those rights are and how they are to be exercised. current fishing-rights problems in the Maritimes--recognized by the Canadian Supreme Court--are certainly testing that Constitutional rights recognition. While it is true that the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that government/Native treaties are indeed the supreme Law of the Land (Article Vi, U.S. Constitution), in contrast to the Canadian experience, the U.S. offers no Constitutional protection to (or explanation of) the aboriginal rights of Native people outside what maybe expressed within a treaty. Instead, the U.S. Constitution gives Congress plenary power over the regulation of affairs (Article 1, section 8). Another notable difference in the history of people in North America is that of war. Native people of the U.S. were subjected to four centuries of genocidal war; the people of Canada--the Beothuk people of the Maritimes being the most egregious exception--were generally spared the ravages of outright genocide. Furthermore, people of Canada did not face the devastating policy of Removal as did their brethren south of the border. But while not facing Removal, the people of Canada certainly suffered (and continue to suffer) through the policy of relegating people to lives of official neglect on reserves. …