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So what is an person who gives up their status if they are no longer an Indian/First Nation.

   

They were just regular citizens for legal purposes. Their lived experience though, would have probably been similar to any off-reserve status indian (in terms of social accpetance, etc) which is why not many people opted to give up their status.

Interestingly, this same law said that any native woman who marries a non-native man automatically loses her status, and so do their children. But the law allowed native men to retrain status if they married a non-native woman, and their children would have status as well.

   

You are missing my point, whole idea of status is discriminatory. If I married a black woman that does not make her white, the whole thing should be abolished and leave everyone equal.

   

You are missing my point. It doesn't have anything to do with race per se since a person's race is the same regardless of whehter they gave up their rights or not. But as long as there is an Indian Act, and as long as there a treaties in effect, there are members of a separate legal entity called Indians. If you could waive a magic wand tomorrow and turn the DNA of all Natives into that of the blue-eyed blonde caucasians, they would still say they are entitled to the treaty rights.

Also, if a Native man's sons, grandsons, great grandsons, etc. all married white women, they would eventually be a family of status indians who are 99.9% white. But it's a moot point because the marriage provisions I described were eliminated (I believe in 1985).

   

I got your point completely, Im saying that we need to abolish the Indian Act.

   

The National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations has been saying that too. The only ones who want the status quo are the feds and (possibly) the Provinces.

   

Bullshit. Trudeau and Chretien tried and were roundly condemned at racists. Even extending the constitution to reserves was deemed racists. There's a whole whack of natives who have a lot invested in the status quo, including the AFN.

   

A Canadian, perhaps ?

   

My position is that they were always Canadian.

   

Well not always - before the white man there was no Canada. And Beaver has a point that at one time they were not given full Canadian rights. But now they have been, plus. So they're Canadian plus - that's hard to give up.

   

I don't know how you can say the AFN want the status quo, when they continue to lead the call for reform.

The problem with the Trudeau and Chretien reforms were that:

1) It was paternalistic and non-consultative, ie. the Feds just tried to 'impose" certain reforms unilaterally without adequate consultation. It was a typcial case of big government bureaucrats telling people "we know whats best for you, we don't need to hear from you, we've probably already thought of any legitimate input you could possibly provide"; AFN holds that the Federal government needs to consult and negotiate with the First Nations similiar to how the Feds negotiate with the Provinces.

2) it put the cart before the horse in some resepcts...for example while it proposed to remove much of the requirement for Indian Affairs approval of Band Council resolutions, there was little in place to ensure accountability and many Indians feared it would therefore be worse than the current situation.

   

Here it is 2012. Can someone intelligent please explain to me what treaty rights for natives actually apply to the 21st century. I don't want interpretation, I want the actual written rights that were defined in the treaties.

*Jeopardy music playing*

   

I'm not sure I understand what you're looking for...the treaties are all available online. They spell out, for example that James Bay Treaty signatories such as Attawapiskat FN have no right to resource royalties (the De Beers Diamond Mine is operating on their land). They also spell out that the in exchange for signing the treaty the government will provide them with funding. So if your questions is whether the treaty provisions in any way govern or have bearing on what is going on now, the answer is yes.

If your question is whether the provisions of the Treaties and Indian Act are appropriate for our times (or whether they were ever appropriate) then the answer from across the spectrum is no.

   

So what are our options? To scrap the entire Indian Act, which makes oh so many chiefs rich on the backs of their own peoples? How about this. We make all Canadians equal in all ways, not equality based upon race or who claims to be here first. Equal means equal not equal with benefits. We all have to grow up and realize that some people here have been dealt a bad hand in life but we all cannot be held accountable forever. We would be a better country if we got rid of these race-based programs that benefit those who seem to think they are entitled to something while putting down those who want to work for these benefits.

I went home this Christmas to a small community in Central/Northern Manitoba and I never considered myself a racist but wow! I will not say anything else about that!

   

Well, as I said before, its not really "race based". If First Nations was a type of "primitive" white people who had inhabited North America first, we'd still be in this same boat.

I don't think anyone's proposing to just hit "delete" on the Indian Act and let the chips fall they may, there would some kind of transition program and some new arrangement in place. I think everyone's in agreement that there would be some form of self-governance (which simply means their communities would administer their own affairs, just like any other community does) and there would have to be some some assistance in helping them set up a professional public service for them to do so. The questions are around things like whether those communities would fall within the jurisdiction and responsibility of the provinces, would they function outside of the provinces as sub-national jurisdictions (like a Territory) would they have the powers to tax income of their residents, etc.

As for your last comment, you can travel all around the world and even right here and see people of all races and colours acting that way. People in the US say that about Black people I can go to a lot of places here S. Ontario and see White "ghettos" where people are acting the same way. It's socio-economic.

   

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