1. NATIVE RIGHTS: Examples of Issues & Controversies in recent years

2. TREATIES WITH THE FIRST NATIONS

3. These treaties deal with Land Claims
These treaties deal with Land Claims. There are still many in North America which are not settled.

4. Most of these issues deal with Treaty Rights signed many years ago in peace treaties with First Nations groups by Canada and, before Confederation, Britain. In Nova Scotia, October 1st is Treaty Day. This day marks interacial friendship.

5. The ideology of eurocentricism had a major role in the destruction, oppression, and suppression of Aboriginal civilizations. Eurocentricism stems from the belief that Europeans are politically and culturally superior to all other people in the world. The image of the uncivilized Native originated long ago; Europeans held the belief that indigenous societies were barbaric, subhuman, and savage for centuries

6. After Confederation in 1867, the Indian Act (1876) was brought in
After Confederation in 1867, the Indian Act (1876) was brought in. It reduced Indians to an oppressed people that were wards of the state administered by White Indian agents. It set up the Reservation System and denied them full Cdn. Citizen status (e.g. voting rights). Women who married non-Natives lost all status, as did their children. This began to change in the 1950s when PM John Diefenbaker began some reforms that addressed these Justice issues (e.g. The Right to Vote). Pierre Trudeau and his Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chretien attempted further reforms (settle land claims, remove all status/tax exemptions) in 1969, but it was rejected by the First Nations because they were not consulted.

7. Residential Schools

8. The history of Indian residential schools began with the infamous Davin Report. In 1879 Regina MP Nicholas Flood Davin was commissioned by Sir John A. Macdonald to study and report on the internal workings of the American Indian industrial boarding schools, and advise on the feasibility of establishing similar schools in Canada. Davin's Report praised and recommended the American school prototype. This marked the beginning of the Indian residential school system in Canada. Davin firmly believed, as did other politicians, that "if anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young"

9. Aboriginal children were removed from their reservations and sent to schools far away from home
School life was modeled after military life:
children were issued uniforms
learned drill practices
marched to and from classes and the dining hall for meals
School structure operated on academics for half a day and trades the other half
Children were not allowed to speak their native tongue
The school operated a printing and newspaper program (to supplement its small source of funding received from the federal government)

10. The only difference between American and Canadian residential schools was Canadian residential schools were operated by Christian churches at the request of the government. "Thus the interests of church and state merged in a marriage of convenience…the churches could harvest souls at government-funded schools while meeting the shared mandate to eradicate all that was Indian in the children“ THUS, THE GOAL WAS ASSIMILATION.

11. Years later, reports of physical, psychological and sexual abuse surfaced. The school were shut down IN THE 1970S AND 1980S and legal compensation settlements are ongoing between the government and the victimized former students.

12. The Oka Crisis 1990
In the summer of 1990 at Oka, near Montreal, a proposed increase of holes to 18 to the nine hole golf course resulted in a months long armed standoff in which one SQ police officer was killed. The golf course was on sacred Mohawk land. Mohawk warriors came north from the U.S. to fight with their Cdn. brothers and sisters. They shut down bridges to Montreal, disrupting commuters, leading to local non-Natives rioting.
PM Brian Mulroney eventually sent in the army to calm things down. The crisis lasted 78 days.

16. Ipperwash, Ontario 1995
The Ipperwash Crisis was an Indigenous land dispute that occurred in Ipperwash Provincial Park, Ontario in Several members of the Stoney Point Ojibway band occupied the park in order to assert their claim to the land. This led to a violent confrontation between protestors and the Ontario Provincial Police, who killed protestor Dudley George. The ensuing controversy was a major event in Canadian politics, and a provincial inquiry, under former Ontario Chief Justice Sidney Linden, investigating the events was completed in the fall of The OPP police were found to have overeacted and killed an unarmed man. Even the former Premier Mike Harris was given some blame in this unfortunate incident.

17. Dudley George: Killed by the OPP at Ipperwash. Subject of CTV movie
ONE DEAD INDIAN

18. Once home to the Stoney Point native community, the Ipperwash reserve was taken over by Ottawa in 1942 for a military training camp, with the promise that the land would be returned at the end of the Second World War. More than 50 years later, with the base closed and nearby Ipperwash Park a lakeside playground for summer holiday-makers, Stoney Point natives entered the park on Sept. 4, 1995, to stage a peaceful protest to back their land claim. What happened two days later - and why – WAS the subject of a provincial inquiry, which OCCURRED IN EARLY Former premier Mike Harris denied ordering in police to remove the protesters. An Ontario Provincial Police riot squad, backed by a heavily armed tactical unit, marched on the protesters the night of Sept. 6. In the ensuing melee, 38-year-old George was fatally shot by provincial police officer Kenneth Deane as police opened fire on unarmed protesters. Band councillor Slippery George was almost beaten to death by officers when he tried to talk the police into backing off. In the decade since that night, George's brother Sam and other family members have continued to pressure the province for justice - and answers to a number of troubling questions: Why did the Ontario Provincial Police decide to confront native protesters that night and who gave the order? Was it strictly a police decision or was pressure brought to bear from THE Premier Queen's Park?

19. Burnt Church, New Brunswick
As Indigenous people, Mi'kmaq claim they have the right to catch lobster out of season. The non-Aboriginals claim that that if this is allowed lobster stocks (an important source of income) could be depleted.
In September 1999, a Supreme Court of Canada ruling, The Marshall Decision, acknowledged that treaties from the 1770s held that a Mi'kmaq man, Donald Marshall, Jr., had the right to fish for eels out of season. The Burnt Church First Nation interpreted the judgment as meaning that they could catch lobster out of season and began to put out traps.
Angry non-Aboriginals damaged and destroyed a number of Mi'kmaq lobster traps in the weeks to come. Local Mi'kmaq retaliated by destroying non-Aboriginal fishing boats and buildings.
Government Minister Herb Dhaliwal and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans managed to sign fishing agreements with 29 of 34 Atlantic Coast bands but the Burnt Church First Nation was not convinced. The Canadian Government ordered the Mi'kmaq to reduce the total number of lobster traps used, leaving members of the Burnt Church First Nation with a total of 40 traps for the whole community. Some Mi'kmaq resisted this, claiming that they already have conservation methods in place to ensure the lobster stock would not be depleted off the Atlantic coast.

20. In 2000 and 2001, rising conflict led to a series of standoffs between police and Aboriginals, and a number of arrests were made. (famous footage of Coast Guard ramming a small fishing boat made worldwide news).The federal government offered to pay for a two million dollar fishing wharf and five new fishing boats for the Mi'kmaq. The Natives rejected the offer, believing it could be interpreted as a surrender of their legal fishing rights. In April 2002, a Federal report on the crisis suggested that a number of police charges be dropped and that fishermen should be compensated for damaged traps and boats. They also recommended, however, that First Nations fishermen should not be allowed to fish out of season, and should attain fishing licences like non-aboriginal fishermen.

24. Caledonia, Ontario 2006
The current Caledonia land dispute came to the attention of the general public on February 28, On that date, protesters from the Six Nations of the Grand River began a demonstration to raise awareness about First Nation land claims in Ontario, Canada, and particularly about their claim to a parcel of land in Caledonia, Ontario, a community within the single-tier municipality of Haldimand County, roughly 20 kilometres southwest of Hamilton. Soon after this demonstration, the demonstrators occupied the disputed land.
The land at the centre of the dispute covers 40 hectares which was to be developed by Henco Industries Ltd. into a residential subdivision known as the Douglas Creek Estates. It is part of a 385,000-hectare plot of land known as the "Haldimand Tract", which was granted, in 1784, by the Crown to the Six Nations of the Grand River, for their use in settlement. Henco argues that the Six Nations surrendered their rights to the land in 1841, and Henco later purchased it from the Crown. The Six Nations, however, maintain that their title to the land was never relinquished.

26. The Territory of Nunavut:
Eastern part of the NWT that was created in 1999 to give Northern Innu and Inuit self government and more input into their own affairs.

27. The capital, Iqaluit (formerly Frobisher Bay) on Baffin Island, in the east, was chosen by the 1995 Nunavut Capital Plebiscite. Other major communities include Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay. Nunavut also includes Ellesmere Island to the north, as well as the eastern and southern portions of Victoria Island in the west. Nunavut is both the least populated and the largest of the provinces and territorities of Canada. It has a population of only 30,782 spread over an area the size of Western Europe. If Nunavut were a sovereign nation, it would be the least densely populated in the world: Nearby Greenland, for example, has almost the same area and twice the population. Nunavut means 'our land' in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit

28. The main united voice for Native people in Canada.