[MUSIC] The court cases we just summarized are a part of a growing legal doctrine that pushes back against other legal doctrines that seek to deny a greater boundary for Aboriginal rights. The Van der Peet Case underlined that the sort of rights protected are only those integral to a distinctive culture. Through a complex legal test of the same name, the court thereby undercut the broad scope promised by the Sparrow Case. However, in the eyes of the government, both of these legal doctrines ultimately legitimate the settlement of Canada. The settlement, beginning in the east and moving west and northward, systematically removed Indigenous peoples from their lands for the purpose of colonization. Settlement patterns followed the fur trade and progressed to the opening of lands for new settlers arriving from Europe for the development of agriculture and eventually timber and mineral resource extraction. It was thought that if the Indigenous peoples were removed from their land base and assimilated to the broader Canadian society, that the lands would be open for development for the benefit of the Crown and new Canadians. The Crown set out to negotiate treaties with Indigenous peoples with the expressed intent of opening up land for development. The Numbered Treaties were the foundation of the agreements that allowed for the development of new lands for settlement and resource extraction. However, modern treaties and land claims negotiations were not initiated until the 1970s to the 1990s. In parts of British Columbia, Quebec, Labrador, and northern Canada, they continue to be negotiated today. Settlement was facilitated with the extension of new technologies. With the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway beginning in 1881, new settlements began to pop up across the country. These settlements mostly concentrated in the western portions of what is now known as Canada. The locations of trading posts and forts across the country became centres for not only Indigenous settlement, but also for the building of major centres including Winnipeg and Edmonton, and smaller communities such as Fort Qu'Appelle in Saskatchewan. The settlement of large numbers of Europeans in newly founded towns and cities resulted in the displacement of Indigenous peoples who had traditionally occupied those lands. In Edmonton, for example, the site of the interpretive Fort Edmonton Park was built close to the traditional crossing of the North Saskatchewan River. Archaeological evidence suggests that a number of Indigenous nations, including the Nehiyawak, have used this site for millennia. This displacement was not limited to the sites of intense settler occupation. It also happened in Canada's North. >> In the Arctic, for example, some Inuit were relocated into new northern communities. For decades, the government forced Inuit away from their traditional mobile lifestyle for ease of official administration. However, other Inuit exercised their own agency, and shifted toward living in northern hamlets in order to take advantage of settled life. During the time of the Cold War in the 1950s, some Inuit families were relocated from their Low Arctic homes to the Northern High Arctic. This was a strategic plan to affirm Canadian sovereignty in the north through occupation by Canadian citizens and military presence. The government misrepresented the availability of wildlife in the High Arctic, provided inadequate supplies and shelter, and reneged on their promise of allowing the Inuit to return to their original homes. The Inuit suffered great hardship in places like Grise Fjord and Resolute. The Canadian government apologized to the Inuit for this sad chapter in its history in 2010. Inuit were offered enfranchisement and citizenship, while other Indigenous peoples in Canada, unless they gave up their rights, would not be considered full, voting citizens until 1960. First Nations, Inuit in Canada have tried to address the political, economic, and cultural challenges facing Indigenous peoples through a range of strategies involving the transfer of jurisdictional and territorial powers. These strategies can be mapped onto three geographical scales in Canada, the reserve, the municipality, and the territory. Since the 1960s, varying levels of control over matters covered by the Indian Act, such as health, have been transferred to First Nations through a policy of devolution. More dramatically, comprehensive land claims, involving the transfer of land and jurisdictional powers, have also been pursued beginning in the 1970s. The Nisga'a Final Treaty Agreement in 1998 represents a final statement of all treaty and Aboriginal rights as envisioned under Section 25 and Section 35 of the Constitution. Under this treaty, the Nisga'a dissolved the reserves and have transitioned out of the Indian Act as they acquired new jurisdictional powers, adopted communal fee simple property, and established a municipal style of government within the province of BC. The treaty also provides the surface and subsurface rights as well as the transfer of funds and other financial benefits to the Nisga'a. >> At a different scale, that of the territory, an even bolder decentralization strategy toward providing Indigenous self-government and resource development for the benefit of all Canadians may be found. No doubt inspired by the first modern land claim agreement in North America, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, the granting of home rule for Greenland and its Inuit population by Denmark in 1979, and the emergence of Aboriginal rights at common law in Canada, Inuit political organizations such as the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada began to pursue both Inuit rights and the establishment of Nunavut, a new territorial entity carved out of the Northwest Territories. As a result of a 1992 referendum, the division of the Northwest Territories and the establishment of Nunavut received public consent from the Inuit. In the following year, the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement of 1993 provided new rights to the Inuit in exchange for their rights to Aboriginal title. The Nunavut Act established the new territory. Similar to other comprehensive claims, new legal entities were established to manage communal monies and lands. In this case, the settlement compensation of $1.14 billion is handled by the Nunavut Trust. Additionally, a corporation, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., was established to ensure the full implementation of the Nunavut land claims agreement, and defend the rights of the Act's Inuit beneficiaries. It would also hold all Inuit-owned land, comprising of more than 350,000 square kilometres, including some 40,000 square kilometres for which mineral rights are also held. For the development of natural resources on Crown land, the Inuit also receive royalty payments. >> Distinct from other comprehensive claims, the Nunavut Act of 1993 contained a provision for a territorial government. In 1999, Nunavut was established as a territory with three official languages, Inuktitut, English, and French. While it has a legislative assembly, cabinet and court system that functions similar to the public governments found in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, the Nunavut has de facto Inuit self-government owing to the fact that the territory's population is 85% Inuit. This would appear to suggest that the Inuit interests would be assured through the government's responsibilities for health, social services, justice, education, and economic programs. Although Nunavut is not a province, given the increased devolution of province-like powers to the territories, an argument can be made that it is incrementally taking up a position within Canada's federal constitutional structure. It may be considered to have significant advantages over other self-determination strategies, such as the municipal model under the Nisga'a Treaty. However, there are critics of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. Some Inuit believe that the land and compensation were sorely inadequate. Furthermore, the agreement also provides for new institutions such as the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and the Nunavut Water Board. These were designed to give greater ambit for the use of Inuit knowledge or Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, or IQ, in the decision making regarding the development of resources. Thus beyond the structures of government, Inuit intellectual resources, here in the form of values surrounding the land, water, and ice, were intended to direct its operations. However, similar integrationist approaches found in co-management regimes elsewhere, Inuit have been frustrated to find that western science continues to dominate over IQ. The relative success of the agreement for improving the lives of Inuit can further be questioned, given that Inuit share with First Nations in having social and health outcomes markedly worse than the general Canadian public, including shorter life expectancy, higher levels of infant mortality, poverty, overcrowded housing, and suicide. [MUSIC] >> The Daniel's Decision was a Supreme Court case that was brought out, or handed down, in April of 2016. The important thing to understand about court decisions in a place like Canada is that they can have an impact on subsequent policy relationships between the different parties who are involved in the court case. Now the Daniel's Decision is not as important as people are making it out to be, but it's also extremely important because a negative decision would have been horrendous. So what the case basically says is that Métis are Indians for the purposes of section 9124 of the British North America Act. That is not, to be clear, the same thing as saying that Métis are Indians as in Status Indians. We're not, and the case has nothing to do with Indian status. If we think about the importance of court cases in general, they can have an impact on how and why people understand themselves as people. And certainly, in an Indigenous context, especially for people who don't come from strong family or community context, they very often understand court decisions or they want court decisions to tell them who they are. But court decisions can't tell us who we are. That's what we have family and community for. So people who read these kinds of decisions with an eye that it tells them if they were something that they weren't the moment before the court decision came out is basically reproducing the kinds of racist and racialized logics that court decisions in Canada tend to reproduce. [MUSIC]
