Commentary
Passed into law by Parliament in 1876, Canada’s Indian Act has always been, and remains today, inherently discriminatory because it creates a separate legal status for one group of Canadians based on their race, ethnicity, or ancestry.
In 1969, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau proposed abolishing the Indian Act to make Canadians equal before the law. Formally known as the “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, 1969,” the idea was to repeal race-based laws and policies that harmed aboriginals by separating them from the rest of Canadian society. The Department of Indian Affairs would be dismantled within five years. Treaties would be respected by giving aboriginals the right to sell their reserve lands, or to privatize reserves into individual or band ownership, such that aboriginals would own the land. The federal government would transfer its constitutional authority over “Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians” to the provinces. Trudeau’s proposal would obviously take power and control away from local aboriginal leaders….