In the summer of 1990, the town of Oka, Quebec, planned to expand a private golf course and build housing on a forest known as the Pines, land that the Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) of Kanehsatà:ke had claimed for centuries and which included a burial ground. When protesters blocked a dirt road into the Pines, Quebec's provincial police raided the barricade on July 11, 1990; in the gunfire, police Corporal Marcel Lemay was killed. Mohawks at nearby Kahnawà:ke blocked the Mercier Bridge into Montreal in solidarity. The standoff lasted 78 days, until September 26, and the Canadian Army was sent in. Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin filmed behind the barricades, and her documentary Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993) showed the crisis from inside. Oka forced the country to face land claims that had been ignored for generations, and it is a good starting point for this lesson: what has changed for First Nations, Métis and Inuit since 1982, and what has not?
Land, title and self-government
After Oka, Ottawa created the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP). Its five-volume final report, released on November 21, 1996, called for a renewed relationship among nations based on mutual recognition, respect, sharing and responsibility, and made 440 recommendations, including recognizing Indigenous self-government. Governments acted on only a few of them at the time. Meanwhile, Indigenous nations used the courts and negotiations, building on section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 (see the first lesson of this unit).
| Year | Development | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| 1985 | Bill C-31 amends the Indian Act | Restored status to many First Nations women and their children, though inequalities in status rules continued for years |
| 1997 | Delgamuukw decision (Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en) | Supreme Court accepted oral histories as evidence and described what Aboriginal title means |
| 1999 | Nunavut becomes a territory on April 1 | Created through the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (1993); a territory with a large Inuit majority and Inuktitut as an official language |
| 2000 | Nisga'a Final Agreement takes effect | A modern treaty in British Columbia that included land and self-government for the Nisga'a Nation |
| 2003 | R. v. Powley | Supreme Court recognized Métis harvesting rights under section 35, in a case from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario |
| 2005 | Nunatsiavut Government established | Inuit self-government in northern Labrador |
| 2014 | Tsilhqot'in decision | First time the Supreme Court declared Aboriginal title to a specific area of land |
| 2016 | Daniels decision | Métis and non-status First Nations people are "Indians" under federal jurisdiction in section 91(24) |
Residential schools: survivors, apology and the TRC
The last federally funded residential school closed in 1996 (see Unit 4 for the system's history). Survivors had begun speaking publicly: in 1990 Phil Fontaine, then Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, described the abuse he suffered at school. Thousands of survivors sued, leading to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, which took effect in 2007, provided compensation and created a truth commission. On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized in the House of Commons, with Indigenous leaders present on the floor of the House, for the schools' aim of removing children from their families and cultures. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), chaired by Justice Murray Sinclair, heard from thousands of survivors and in 2015 issued 94 Calls to Action. It concluded that the system was part of a policy it described as cultural genocide, and documented that thousands of children died at the schools.
Activism, inquiries and new laws
- Idle No More (from late 2012): started by four women in Saskatchewan (Jessica Gordon, Sylvia McAdam, Sheelah McLean and Nina Wilson) to oppose a federal budget bill that changed environmental protections for waterways and rules for reserve lands; it spread into round dances and rallies across Canada and abroad.
- Child welfare: on January 26, 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled that Ottawa discriminated against First Nations children by underfunding child welfare on reserves and failing to apply Jordan's Principle, a 2007 commitment that First Nations children get the services they need without delays over which government pays. After years of further orders, the Federal Court approved a compensation settlement of about 23 billion dollars in October 2023; negotiations over long-term reform continued.
- Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls: the National Inquiry (2016–2019) released its final report on June 3, 2019, with 231 Calls for Justice. It concluded that the violence amounted to a race-based genocide; some commentators disputed the use of that term, while many families and advocates welcomed it.
- UNDRIP: Canada was one of four countries to vote against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, endorsed it in 2010, and passed the UNDRIP Act on June 21, 2021, committing to align federal laws with it.
- Leadership: Mary Simon, an Inuk leader from Nunavik, became the first Indigenous Governor General in July 2021.