OTTAWAIt was brisk and overcast on Parliament Hill this week when a small group from the distant First Nation of Attawapiskat presented a letter to two Liberal cabinet ministers charged with Indigenous affairs.
Less than a decade ago, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence staged a hunger strike on an island in the Ottawa River, a protest that helped ignite a national Indigenous rights movement called Idle No More.
And here they were again, leaders of the same nation clustered on the sidewalk near the Centennial Flame with a flag and staff lined with eagle feathers, pressing a different government over the same concerns that have long animated their people: treaty rights, self-determination, poverty, and housing.
That last one is connected with a longstanding demand of the First Nation to add a tract of land to its reserve where the Attawapiskat River empties into James Bay. It also touches on an issue that Marc Miller, the newly-minted Liberal Crown-Indigenous relations minister, is striving to place at the front of the governments reconciliation agenda: land.
In his first comments in the new role this fall, Miller turned heads when he stated that its time to give land back to Indigenous peoples. It was an invocation of an established goal of Indigenous activists pressing to reverse the damaging impacts of colonialism in this country, one of the core aims of Idle No More and other movements since. And it was a statement with potential relevance to Indigenous nations across Canada, from the Wetsuweten opposing a pipeline project in northern B.C., to the people of Attawapiskat who are hoping to acquire new land for housing in their community.
Yet skepticism abounds, not least in Attawapiskat, where Gerald Mattinas has been pushing to expand the reserve to make room for the new housing. Speaking with the Star by phone on Friday, the Attawapiskat band councillor said discussions with government over adding the land to the reserve have led to nothing over the past seven years.
Politicians are politicians. They can say anything and then they forget all about it, Mattinas said.
For Hayden King, director of the Yellowhead Institute in downtown Toronto, Millers endorsement of giving land back is a surprise, given how virtually all Canadian governments before have refused to engage in conversations like this.
But King added that there are many ideas about what land back looks like. These include literally giving land owned by settler Canadians to Indigenous peoples, as well as visions of establishing Indigenous jurisdiction over traditional land and the resources it contains. Some, such as the Secwpemc leader Arthur Manuel, have argued the return of land and the wealth it produces should serve as the economic foundation of empowered Indigenous governments.
It varies from place to place, circumstance to circumstance, but I think it has these three underlying features, which are: Indigenous authority over their own territory; the restitution of actual lands, resources and wealth; and the revitalization of Indigenous culture, he said.
As Miller explained in a recent interview with the Star, he sees land at the heart of Canadas project of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Miller said that, all too often, when politicians discuss the issues of economic development and inequality that plague Indigenous communities, they will exclude the discussion of land.
This exclusion, he argued, has perpetuated two things: the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their land, and the exacerbation of economic inequality. The solution, for Miller: give land back.
I cant walk into a community and talk about self-determination or a rights framework without talking about land, or in the case where land cant be restituted proper compensation, he said.
The issue of land and who it belongs to is central to several disputes that have caught national attention with cascading consequences across the country, said Nicole Robertson, an advocate and entrepreneur and member of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation in northern Manitoba.
These disputes have taken place in areas where the traditional territory of an Indigenous nation was never ceded nor shared through a treaty or land claim, such as with the hereditary leaders of the Wetsuweten who oppose the construction of the Coastal GasLink. Theyve also occurred where treaties have been signed, including a site dubbed 1492 Land Back Lane in Caledonia, Ont., where development has occurred despite the existence of a treaty between the Haudenosaunee and British Crown in 1784.
For Robertson, this shows that land back means respecting the authority of Indigenous nations over their traditional territories. We need to come to this place of understanding that First Nations always should have the last say if theres any type of resource or energy extraction thats going on in and around their treaty boundaries and traditional territory, she said.
Another consideration is how resource development and the permits for construction fall under provincial jurisdiction, something that Miller acknowledged complicates any attempt to give land back to dispossessed Indigenous communities.
As a government, we cant wash our hands from that reality, he said, adding that such issues involve difficult conversations that could fuel frustrations of slow progress.
Some of that frustration is playing out right now. In northern Ontario, the Neskantaga First Nation is taking the province to court, arguing it was not properly consulted about the planned construction of a road through what it claims as unceded traditional territory. And in Saskatchewan, NDP MLA Betty Nippy-Albright has been voicing concerns about provincial auctions of Crown land, which she argues are resulting in the sale of territory thats meant to be available for the hunting and fishing rights of treaty nations.
This is another way for this provincial government to eradicate every treaty right we have, she told the Star this week. They do not care about the treaties that were signed by our ancestors.
For King at the Yellowhead Institute, the governments adoption of the phrase land back is cause for some wariness. Pointing to criticism that the Liberals attempted recognition of Indigenous rights in government policies didnt go far enough, he said he is concerned the government could simply use the language of land back activism and follow familiar policies that dont achieve what activists are pushing for.
In Attawapiskat, meanwhile, Mattinas is hoping for more than just the status quo though he said its not easy to expect more after trying so long with no progress.
Its how we are as First Nations. Thats the kind of treatment that any First Nation gets across Canada, he said. Were never a priority.
With files from Tonda MacCharles
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