C I T I Z E N S H I P
Citizenship is one of, if not the most integral parts of an Indigenous Nation's right to be self-determining. A Nation's identity is determined by many factors, including shared histories, traditions, customs, practices, language(s), beliefs, and world view. This national identity is reinforced by the individual identities of its citizens and vice versa.
Just as individuals need the support, loyalty and recognition from their Nations, so too do Nations need the support, loyalty and recognition of their citizens to maintain its integrity. No Aboriginal Nation in Canada can ever hope to survive and thrive for seven generations into the future without making sure they have inclusive, respectful and non-discriminatory citizenship rules.
However, our traditional Indigenous Nations, like the Mi'kmaq, Mohawk, Maliseet, Cree, and Ojibway have been divided into smaller communities called bands. Citizenship rules in Indigenous Nations have been turned into membership rules for much smaller bands. These Nations have become so divided that there can be very different membership rules for bands which belong to the same Nation. Membership in a band is now more akin to membership in a club, based on superficial criteria like blood or residency, than the key aspects of Nationhood like common history, common purpose, loyalty, and shared set of values.
There is no doubt that this system was imposed upon Aboriginal Nations. Canada has designed and implemented laws and policies which were originally designed to assimilate Indians - in other words, ensure their eventual disappearance. However, while Indigenous peoples and Nations have suffered this interference with their traditional laws, rules and systems of governance, this does not justify the modern-day exclusion of their own people.
While Canada has now apologized for its assimilatory policies which were based on the racist presumption that Indians and their Nations were inferior to those of the European settlers, the Indian Act and its assimilatory formula for determining who is and is not an Indian is still the law today. The second-generation cut-off ensures that there will be no recognized Indians within several generations. Given that the majority of Indian Act bands use the status rules of the Indian Act to determine who can belong to their bands, then the disappearance of status Indians means the disappearance of those bands. Why would bands knowingly and purposefully do this to their own citizens?
While there can never be any justification for this, there are numerous reasons. They include years of colonization, assimilatory laws, loss of culture, loss of traditional concepts of identity and fear of having to share the remaining land and resources. Its very true that Canada tells bands that they can choose whomever they want as members, but if Canada only provides funding for a band's status members, then this is essentially an empty power.
Our traditional concepts of nationhood and identity have been reduced to blood and economics. It is time we advocate on our own behalf. Its time that Indigenous Nations acted as sovereign nations and put the focus back on their citizens and their national values. Its time to reject Canada's presumed authority over our individual, communal and national identities.
In this section of the website, I have included links to the citizenship codes contained in self-government agreements, modern treaties and comprehensive land claim agreements so that readers can see how citizenship is being determined in self-governing communities. Once thought of as the ultimate solution to the discriminatory status and band membership provisions of the Indian Act, these citizenship codes demonstrate that unless significant changes are made to how we think about our identity, self-government citizenship codes will simply be more of the "status" quo.