Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, North America, Population

CANADA: Top Court Confirms Rights of Metis People

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Oct 2 2003 (IPS) - Recognition by Canada’s top court that the Métis, a people of mixed European-indigenous ancestry, deserve full constitutional protection is an important opening for a group that has politically, socially and economically ”fallen through the cracks", say advocates for the people.

The Métis National Council resorted to a court challenge when governments at the federal and provincial levels refused to negotiate with the Métis after their rights were enshrined in section 35 of the Canadian Constitution in 1982, along with those of the country’s other original inhabitants, the North American Indians (or first nations peoples) and the northern Inuit..

Canada is one of the few countries in the world where ”the mixed blood population evolved into a distinct people, with their own language (Michif, a combination of French and Cree, a first nations language spoken across Canada), culture, way of life, music, song, dress,” says Jason Madden, a Council lawyer.

Madden estimates that close to one million people out of a population of 32 million Canadians have some form of indigenous ancestry, and about 295,000, living mainly in scattered communities across northern and western Canada, identify themselves as Métis, according to Statistics Canada.

Overall, their standard of living is lower than that of the Canadian population. For example, a recent Statistics Canada study found that one of the by-products of the inadequate housing and poverty experienced by Métis and first nations peoples living away from their treaty lands is chronic health problems, including diabetes, high blood pressure and arthritis.

The Métis National Council was one of several interested parties in the Supreme Court of Canada case involving Steve Powley, a Métis man living near Sault Ste Marie, north of Toronto in central Canada’s Ontario province.

Powley had been charged in 1993 of contravening the province’s game laws by killing a moose without a hunting license.

But in its decision in September, the Supreme Court accepted his argument that members of historically recognised Métis communities have the constitutional right to hunt for food year round in Ontario.

At the time of Powley’s conviction, only first nations people who could trace their ancestry back to before European settlement and were registered under the federal Indian Act as part of a group that had negotiated a treaty with British authorities before Canada became a nation, had access to protected game and fish in Ontario.

While the legal results are ”narrow”, the decision is the first time that the Supreme Court has responded positively to a legal assertion of Métis rights since they were formally established in 1982, says University of Saskatchewan law professor Paul Chartrand, the author of a number of books and articles on aboriginal legal issues and formerly a member of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

It also offers an indication of how the court might decide future cases involving the Métis, he adds. ”This is unfinished business. The Powley decision is putting pressure on the Government of Canada to give substance to the constitutional recognition of 1982."

The Supreme Court clearly noted that the Métis are largely, if not exclusively, descendants of first nations people and British or French settlers who intermarried during Canada’s colonial period, particularly within the fur trade.

By setting out that framework for Métis identification, the court has made it easier for the Métis National Council to propose a registry for membership in the Métis nation, which would, among other powers, control and conserve the game and fish that is hunted, say observers.

Because many Canadians have some indigenous roots, the definition of who is a Métis continues to be controversial, says an historian of Métis origin, Olive Dickason, a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta. ”There has to be an officially recognised consensus of what a Métis is," she told IPS.

Margaret Wilson, who heads the Metro Toronto Métis and Aboriginal Historical and Education Association and looks European in origin, expressed her delight with the Supreme Court decision.

Wilson only discovered her Métis heritage when she called her Scottish aunt to announce her impending marriage to a man of the Algonquin first nation in central Canada. ”She said, ‘where do you think you came from’? That was the first knowledge that I had a native background.”

Madden says Métis themselves should determine the membership of their communities, not the Canadian government.

Once a Métis registry was in place, the next step would be for the people to establish land bases in areas of Canada, such as northwest Saskatchewan – a plains province – where they live in large numbers in various communities.

Until recently, Métis have been kept out of negotiations with companies seeking to exploit local resources like oil, gas, mining or forestry, in those areas, Madden adds.

He says this is changing as corporate Canada has decided it is better to consult indigenous people about the land rather than fight them in court. ”In Northern Alberta, the Métis Association now owns an oil well," he points out.