Kahkewistahaw First Nation V. Taypotat Case Study

Aboriginal persons in Canada have been facing oppression ever since colonization began. Even when Canada gained independence from the British Empire, the oppression continued and still goes on today. One major contributing factor to the oppression of Aboriginal people in Canada is the actions taken by the Government. The Government of Canada has in fact mistreated and found to be partaking in wrongdoing when dealing with the Aboriginal population in this country. With this ugly truth being revealed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had to be tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. (cite)

The Canadian government is biased against the Aboriginal population and uses less funding towards them. Perry Bellegarde, Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, stressed that “more funding is desperately needed for equal education on reserves, [because] the government spends 3 000 dollars less per student [in a reserve] than the national average”. Many Aboriginal people in Canada, including Bellegarde, feel as if the government is treating their population as they did when residential schools were still running. The Canadian government does not treat the Aboriginal and the non-Aboriginal population equally. They are spending a significantly lower amount of money for the education of Aboriginal youth. They are oppressing the Aboriginal population but many of them are taking a stand for their rights and demanding more. There have been many lawsuits involving members of the Aboriginal population and the Canadian government, but the largest one is the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA). This agreement was made after many large scale campaigns were done and a class-action lawsuit was filed, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, to pressure the Canadian government to recognize the abuses of the residential school system and to gain compensation. The class-action lawsuit ended with a multi-billion dollar agreement to help improve the conditions of

Although the Canadian government has done a great deal to repair the injustices inflicted on the First Nations people of Canada, legislation is no where near where it needs to be to ensure future protection of aboriginal rights in the nation. An examination of the documents that comprise the Canadian Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms reveal that there is very little in the supreme legal documents of the nation that protect aboriginal rights. When compared with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples it is clear that the Canadian Constitution does not acknowledge numerous provisions regarding indigenous people that the UN resolution has included. The most important of these provisions is the

The Grassy Narrows (Asubpeeschoseewagong) First Nation is an Ojibwa First Nation located north of Kenora, ON. The community has been fighting against environmental injustices imposed on them from various actors over the last 40 years (Rodgers, 2009, para. 10), involving issues with mercury poisoned fish (para. 1) clear cutting of their lands (para. 27) and subsequent degradation of their land, water and food sources. This essay will detail the environmental justice struggles of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, point out the unfair treatment and environmental racism they have been subject to and will also question the role that authority, power and litigation have played within the community.

In the 19th century, The Canadian government believed that it was their job to educate the Aboriginal people in Canada. European settlers felt that the aboriginal people were savage, ignorant, and like children needed guidance, and needed to be “civilized”. Ultimately, they wanted to assimilate the Aboriginal people into Canadian and Christian ways of living life in Canada. The Canadian government came up with a policy called “aggressive assimilation” to be taught at industrial schools that would be run by the churches and government funded. They chose children to go to these schools because they are easier to manipulate and mold than the adults and felt that school was the best way to do so. With the hopes of the assimilated children will teach their children their new way of life and that their traditions and culture will diminish or be completely gone in a few generations. In the 1880’s, the government began to construct the residential schools across Canada. Authorities often would take kids from their home, to isolate them from their family and familiar communities. In 1920 is when the Indian Act came in effect where every Aboriginal child was obligated to attend a residential school and it was illegal for them to go to any other institution.

The First Nations people of Canada have a long list of treaty rights, as well as many undefined aboriginal rights, from their right to hunt and fish on their land to housing and annuities. However, it’s not all gift-giving and sunshine; while the government of Canada is supposed to respect their rights to hunt on their land and the right to hold title to their land, there are many disputes such as the Ron Sparrow case and the Oka Crisis that show that the Aboriginal peoples’ inherent rights are not always respected, with cases such as that of Don Marshall that show that the government might not exactly be on the First Nation’s side.

When someone speaks of great inequalities and human rights violations, very seldom is Canada as a nation (in a broader sense,) conjured together with these thoughts. However, in reality probably some of the greatest human right violations within our time and even within the late modern period, and most concerning examples of them, can be found through looking back into Canadian history. For many this may be a surprise to hear, however for others, specifically the native population of Canada, we can assume this is well understood. Commonly known today as Indian residential schools, a great act of wrong was committed under the command and leadership of the Canadian government starting back with elementary roots through the passage of the

In examining the constitutional jurisprudence since 1982, it can be seen that most cases have followed along with Trudeau’s objectives of individual rights protection. However, Trudeau’s article The Value of a Just Society notes that communal rights of Aboriginal communities represent a notable exception. He defends this, mentioning that these collective rights are enshrined where “the rights of individuals may be indistinct and difficult to define.” The Canadian Constitution is uncommon in the fact that it protects cultural rights, such as linguistic and Aboriginal rights. It is important for Canada to protect these rights, as Canada is made up of many different groups of people. It was Trudeau’s desire that the constitution protect everyone equally, “without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.” By assigning rights to the individual rather than to collectives, linguistic

Since the beginning of colonization, indigenous people of Canada have been repressed in many ways by the Westerners. Aboriginal women have been having a really hard time, being not only aboriginal, but also women in a male-dominated society where women are seen as secondary and don’t have all the rights and privileges that men have. We will focus here on the legal discrimination against indigenous women in Canada that came with the Indian Act of 1876 and the amendment of 1985, how those two events influenced women. We will first study why indigenous women have been more discriminated than indigenous men, then how the Indian Act reinforced this inequity. Then we will see how the 1985 amendment came to be, a century later and what are the consequences of legal discrimination for indigenous women in Canada. We will conclude that, in a context of discrimination against natives with colonization, the Indian Act made legal injustices in detriment of indigenous women, and that after years of favouritism against them they finally gained a bit of justice through the amendment of 1985.

Over the past years, Canadian courts have repeatedly urged that aboriginal title conflicts should be resolved through negotiation, rather than litigation. The primary reason being that litigation is costly and time-consuming. For example, the decision for the Delgamuukw case took a duration of thirteen years. Furthermore, litigations that deal with the issue of aboriginal rights and title are “generally narrowly focused” and “ultimately leaves the question [posed about] how aboriginal rights and title apply unwarned.” For instance, the courts of Canada repeatedly failed to come up with a clear definition on the legal scope of Aboriginal rights despite the fact that they have several opportunities to do so. The Delgamuukw case clearly

Many court cases within Canada regarding Indigenous people have been discriminatory. The Daniels v. Canada (Indian Affairs and Northern Development) case was legally and culturally inappropriate in many ways due to the lack of care for the evidence put forth by Daniels and obvious discrimination. Thankfully, once the case reached the Supreme Court of Canada, the previous trials and decisions were put to rest and a proper and legally sound decision was made. The Daniels v. Canada (Indian Affairs and Northern Development), 2016 SCC 12, [2016] 1 S.C.R. 99 case was filed by Harry Daniels in 1999. Harry Daniels wanted Metis and non-status Indian rights to be mentioned in the new constitution along side status Indians and Inuit. This would mean

In 1985, Canada implemented the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Under Section 15 of the Charter, all Canadians regardless of their (1)“race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability” were officially given the right to be protected by the law, and benefit from the law without discrimination.

It was found at trial that the requirement of being “an ordinarily resident on the reserve” in Section 77 of the Indian Act, violates the intent of the Charter section based on “Aboriginality-Residence” as a new analogous ground of discrimination. It was determined that the Indian Act electoral system was inequitable as it discriminated against a disadvantaged group. It was the confrontation of indigenous voting rights through Corbiere that made Parliament recognize that the Indian Act must be modified. The Indian Act was changed and now defines an elector as someone who is at least 18 years old and a registered member of the band. Corbiere impacted the way some bands formulated their own rules governing membership. Section 77(1) of the Indian Act now states “A member of a band who has attained the age of eighteen years and is ordinarily resident on the reserve is qualified to vote for a person nominated to be chief of the band, and where the reserve for voting purposes consists of one section to vote for persons nominated as councillors.”

In the last week of April, Justin Trudeau visited Saskatoon’s Oskayak High School. During his visit, he received “tough questions from First Nations teens on their futures and his promises” (Harper A6). The teens asked about First Nations suicides, genocide, Third World living conditions and respect for treaties. “How do you intend to honour the promises your ancestors made with mine exactly written in all the signed treaties across Canada, to make up and pay for the acts of genocide our ancestors were subject to long before and after the signing of Treaty Six?” “How do you (…) plan to right the wrongs of the past 22 elected prime ministers who failed?” “Are we not considered Canadians? If we are, why do you allow the First People of this land

Over the past years, Canadian courts have repeatedly urged that aboriginal title conflicts should be resolved through negotiation, rather than litigation. The primary reason being that litigation is costly and time-consuming. For example, the decision for the Delgamuukw case took a duration of thirteen years. Furthermore, litigations that deal with the issue of aboriginal rights and title are “generally narrowly focused” and “ultimately leaves the question [posed about] how aboriginal rights and title apply unwarned.” For instance, the courts of Canada repeatedly failed to come up with a clear definition on the legal scope of Aboriginal rights despite the fact that they have several opportunities to do so. The Delgamuuku case clearly illustrates this when the Court “did not define how aboriginal title applied for the First Nations involved.” Instead, the Court came to the conclusion that a new trial was required, which ultimately will be more expensive and take longer.