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Striving for self-government First Nation tries to repatriate membership control By Brian Back POSTED: DECEMBER 25, 2010
To date, a vote favours repatriation 169 to 11.
"Without control of our membership, we remain under the yoke of the Indian
Act, where they determine who
we are as a First Nation," TFN
Chief Roxane Ayotte said.
"It's time to end this archaic colonial discrimination.
It's time to have
the legal entity that Canada created to recognize us, actually correspond
to who we say we are."
It has been a grotesque dance to bring control home. The band tried to get
its newly written membership code accepted by Indian and Northern Affairs
Canada (INAC) in 2007, but was unable to reach the high legal bar: a
majority of the electorate must vote in favour.
The electorate was the membership list at INAC. It has maintained the list of
status Indians since 1907, but it was a bloated mess that included many
deceased members.
In 2008, the Federal Court of Appeal (in
Odanak v. Canada) lowered the
bar. It ruled that First Nations could clean up the lists. It also ruled a
majority of the list must vote, but only a majority of those who voted
needed to vote in favour.
The TFN waded through the names over the summer and fall. Forty were
deceased.
Many addresses and contact information were missing.
People who lived, or moved, off the reserve retained their
membership, but often didn't report their new addresses. More than half
the membership lived off island. TFN staff searched other databases and
used family, friends and word of mouth to locate some addresses.
Those people who could not be found were removed (but will regain the
right to vote when they provide contact information). In the end, 580 names
shrank to 368. Votes needed to
meet the threshold: 185. Considerably lower than the 2007 level.
On November 16, polls (Bear Island, Temagami, North Bay, Toronto, Ottawa,
Thunder Bay) and mail-in balloting closed for secret ballots. First Nation
members who missed those can vote, and have, by written consent, a
mechanism without a polling-booth deadline.
Self-determination and self-government
Repatriated power
allows bands to write a code that opens membership to non-status Indians.
The Teme-Augama Anishnabai is the tribal super-group that includes status
(TFN members) and non-status Indians. These are the descendants of the
original 14 families.
In 1975, the TAA was created as an organization to re-unite everyone, to
assert self-determination, and take the lead in the court case and
settlement negotiations.
"When they first made the band list they had somebody who
didn't even know
us strike names off the list," TAA Chief John McKenzie said.
Those left off, or women who later married someone without status, found
they, and their descendants, lost their status.
"They deny membership to some of our children and many other Teme-Augama
Anishnabai citizens who happened to be descendant from anishnabai kwe'wuk
[women] rather than anishnabai nini'wuk [men]," Ayotte said. "That's
racist and sexist."
Through the TAA those dispossessed regained their voice and a stake in the
outcome of the settlement.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1991 that TAA members had not received all
their rights and benefits. Settlement negotiations followed. At the
eleventh hour, in 1993, Ontario's lawyers balked at handing the benefits
over to an unincorporated body, the TAA. The easiest solution appeared to
be through the incorporated TFN, so Ontario added a new demand that the
First Nation, too, ratify the agreement.
Although the TAA approved the agreement, the vote did not go as planned at
the TFN. For reasons that had to do with internal politics, distrust and
uncertainty, its membership, suddenly thrust into a vote, rejected the
settlement. The deal collapsed.
In a renewed round of negotiations, in 2001, the legal-entity issue
needed to be resolved for progress to continue. To make the settlement fair to all, if the TFN was to
be the benefit receptacle, it had to expand its membership to the
non-status Indians in the TAA. Repatriation and the new inclusive code
would make that possible.
There were other benefits to super-sizing: it would eliminate duplicate
organizations and unite the people more completely than under a dual
TFN-TAA partnership.
At the time this story was published, the band remained six votes short of
185.
"If a member has lived in Toronto for decades, they have another life," Ayotte said.
"It is hard to get them to vote, no matter what their
opinion, but they have the right, and a duty."
Marvyn Morrison, the returns officer, expects more consents.
The potential membership for the TFN under the new membership code
approximates 1,200. But it would be an imbalanced marriage. Benefits and
funds received from INAC would largely go to status members. Benefits from
other sources would be shared by everyone.
Down the road, aboriginal people see an end to the legal distinction
between status and non-status Indians. Repatriation would be a big step to
realization.
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