Aboriginal Issues

Ottawa eyes change to border rules for Indigenous communities. ‘It is an injustice that continues to divide our people’

The territory where Tim Argetsinger’s ancestors once moved freely and hunted in the Arctic spanned 2.5 million square kilometres of land — about a quarter of the size of Canada.

Today, that same land crosses a slew of international borders — parts of Canada, Greenland, Alaska in the U.S., and the Chukotka region of Russia, dividing up the members of his nation and community.

So when Argetsinger travels from the Native Village of Kotzebue, his hometown in Alaska, to Nuuk in Greenland, where his wife is from, and Ottawa, where his employer is, he must follow the same immigration laws and border rules as an American.

Ottawa wants to pay class action lawyers roughly half the amount they’re requesting in legal fees for a multi-billion dollar First Nations child welfare compensation case — the largest settlement agreement in Canadian history.

The federal government argued before Federal Court this past week that it should pay the class action lawyers between $40 million and $50 million, rather than the $80 million they’ve requested.

Federal Court Justice Mandy Aylen, who reserved her decision on Thursday, said the court must take into consideration the size of the settlement agreement and the fact that the case was based on more than 10 years of litigation at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT).

Statistics Canada produced an important report last week into the murders of Indigenous women and girls. It should have a significant impact on public policy in Canada, but almost certainly won’t because it conflicts with the “woke” narrative about who murders Indigenous women and why.

The report has several fascinating findings, but here is the key one: In most cases (86%), “the person accused of their homicide was also Indigenous.”

OTTAWA – A new Statistics Canada report says homicides of Indigenous women and girls are less likely to result in the most serious murder charges than cases in which victims were non-Indigenous.

More than half of cases involving non-Indigenous women and girls between 2009 and 2021 resulted in charges of first-degree murder, but the offences of second-degree murder and manslaughter were more common when the victim was Indigenous.

StatCan says during that time period, Indigenous women and girls were killed at a rate six times higher than that of women and girls who were not Indigenous.

Phyllis Webstad’s The Orange Shirt Story, published in 2018, is in school libraries across Canada. The cover depicts young Phyllis in an orange shirt confronted by two black-habited Catholic nuns, one with scissors in her hand, the other clutching a rosary behind her back. Inside the book, illustrations show four black-habited nuns greeting her outside the school, a nun removing her orange shirt, a nun cutting her hair, and a nun hovering over her while she prays at bedtime. The text states that the nuns made her shower, took her orange shirt away, gave her other clothes to wear, and cut her hair short.

A legal battle playing out in a northern Ontario courtroom this month has seen an alliance of First Nations argue they are owed upwards of $100 billion for the Crown’s failure to honour a 173-year-old treaty promise, while the federal and provincial governments claim they are either owed far less, or nothing at all.

The case being heard in Thunder Bay, Ont.(opens in a new tab), could have historic implications for First Nations representing roughly 15,000 Anishinaabe people(opens in a new tab) along the northern shores of Lake Superior and is being closely followed by legal observers.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s action plan for implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was released in June 2023. It acknowledges that to protect self-determination, self-government and recognition of treaties, ”Indigenous governments, like any order of government, (should) have access to ongoing, long-term and stable fiscal mechanisms and revenues to fulfil their roles and responsibilities as governments, and ensure their citizens’ well-being and ability to thrive.”

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Canada has accused itself of genocide for the most part. Only a handful of dissident ‘deniers’ like me continue to point out that the claims of children being forcibly torn from their mother’s arms is not supported by the thousands of Indian Residential School enrollment forms, signed by parents. On the forms is a spot for designating the child’s family’s religion — which is typically filled in with Roman Catholic (R.C.) or Anglican. Rarely blank. Meaning, the families had chosen Christianity some time ago and they wanted their children to continue learning in that religious tradition. So, no forcible indoctrination either.