Feds say too many in NL want recognition as Mi'kmaq
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IndigeNews
May 5, 2013, 6:43:55 PM5/5/13
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In Newfoundland, too many want recognition as Mi’kmaq Indians, federal
government says
Ottawa scrambles to renegotiate 2008 deal after 100,000 people register
as Mi'kmaq to receive benefits under agreement with Federation of
Newfoundland Indian
By: Sandro Contenta News, Published on Sun May 05 2013
Hector Pearce found the link to his aboriginal ancestry on a tombstone
near Bonne Bay, a stunning inlet in Newfoundland’s Gros Morne National
Park.
The dates marking the birth and death of Sarah Welsh confirmed she was
Pearce’s great grandmother. They also confirmed she was the
granddaughter of John Matthews, a Mi’kmaq Indian born in 1780 in Cape
La Hune on the island’s southern coast. Matthews, in other words, was
Pearce’s great, great, great grandfather.
The tombstone testified to an Indian bloodline Pearce suspected, for
the first time, only five years ago.
“When I was growing up, no one talked about it,” says Pearce, 68. “My
grandmother resembled very well a Mi’kmaq in her skin colour and her
high cheekbones. But she never mentioned it. And my mother, a very
intelligent person who knew all about our family tree and the
community’s social history, never spoke of it either.
“Those generations were a bit ashamed to articulate that connection
with the Mi’kmaq,” he says in a phone interview from Lewisporte, north
of Gander.
Pearce, a retired psychologist, spent six months compiling evidence of
his Indian ancestry, including all the birth, death and marriage
certificates he could find. He then applied, before last November’s
deadline, for official recognition as a Mi’kmaq Indian under an
agreement between the federal government and the Federation of
Newfoundland Indians.
Pearce was one of many. And that’s where the trouble begins.
About 100,000 people have applied for Mi’kmaq Indian [1] status — a
number so high it has sent the federal government scrambling to
renegotiate a deal it signed less than five years ago. (The number of
federally registered Indians in Canada, according to the 2006 census,
is 698,000.)
Conservative MP Greg Rickford, parliamentary secretary to the minister
of aboriginal affairs, made clear during a March 28 debate that the
government smells something fishy.
“It is simply not reasonable to expect that there would be more than
100,000 credible applications to be members of the Qalipu (Mi’kmaq)
band,” Rickford told the House of Commons. “That would be over four
times the original estimated number.
“These figures are all the more questionable since it has become clear
that many of the late stage of applications appear to no longer reside
in that province.”
Rickford made much of the need to ensure “the integrity of the
enrolment process.” He also noted that taxpayers’ dollars are at stake.
Under the 2008 agreement, those who receive Indian status — and their
descendents — will be eligible for federal payments for post-secondary
education and noninsured health benefits, including vision and dental
care.
The renegotiation is backed by the chief of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First
Nation Band, established under the same federal agreement in 2011.
Chief Brendan Sheppard, in a recent post on the band’s website [2],
echoed Rickford’s concerns, saying it was “neither reasonable nor
credible to expect more than 100,000 applications to be members of the
Qalipu band.”
That has made thousands of would-be Indians, including Pearce, mighty
mad.
“You don’t set up the criteria, have people apply and then say, ‘Oops,
too many people applied so we’re going to change the rules.’ That’s
simply not fair,” Pearce says. “We didn’t set up the criteria, they
did.”
Making matters worse, Pearce says, is that more than 23,000 people have
already received Mi’kmaq Indian status under the criteria the
government suddenly wants renegotiated. Why should more than 70,000
remaining applicants be treated differently?
“It’s a real mess, to say the least,” says Pearce, who recently helped
set up Qalipu Watchdogs [3], a group representing many of those left in
limbo.
The issue dates back to 1949, when Newfoundland and Labrador joined
Confederation — a deal with no specific arrangement for the province’s
aboriginal people.
“In the case of the Mi’kmaq, (then-premier Joey) Smallwood told the
federal government there were no Indians on the island of
Newfoundland,” says Adrian Tanner, a Memorial University
anthropologist.
“This could have been deliberate, Smallwood might not have wanted to
bother with a group who might interfere with his development plans; or
it might have been Smallwood’s ignorance, which is hard to believe as
he had an encyclopedic mania for Newfoundland facts.
“But on the west coast many of the Mi’kmaq anglicized their names, hid
their identity, and tried to avoid being called racist slurs, such as
“Jack-a-tar.” However, at the time of Confederation, it would not have
taken much effort for Smallwood to have found some Mi’kmaq population,”
Tanner says in an email.
Aboriginal people have been lobbying for their rights ever since.
In 2005, the federal and provincial governments signed a land claim
agreement with the Labrador Inuit — about 5,300 people — covering
72,500 square kilometres. In 2011, the governments signed a land claim
deal with leaders representing 2,400 Innu Indians of Labrador.
There is one Mi’kmaq reserve for a separate band at Conne River.
Accounts of the Mi’kmaq presence in Newfoundland go back to at least
the early 1600s. Allied with the French, their fortunes took a turn for
the worse when the British gained Newfoundland and much of present-day
Nova Scotia under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Many were pushed out
of Nova Scotia.
In Newfoundland, the Mi’kmaq were concentrated on the western coast —
known as the “French Shore” — where the French retained fishing rights.
But smaller communities could be found hunting, fishing and gathering
all over the island, says Angela Robinson, a Memorial University
anthropologist who has extensively researched the Mi’kmaq.
Generations of prejudice, marginalization and intermarriage followed.
Hiding Indian ancestry became so common that, at some point, whole
family histories were buried and forgotten. Families “would be highly
insulted if you said they were aboriginal,” Robinson says.
Then came the 1970s, when demands for native rights [4] across North
America — including the deadly showdown at Wounded Knee in South Dakota
— triggered what eventually become known in Newfoundland as “the
awakening.”
Roots and pride were rediscovered, although it wasn’t always easy.
“If someone taps you on the shoulder and says, ‘Were you aware you have
aboriginal ancestry?’ You suddenly have to come to terms with a
different aspect of who you are as a person,” Robinson says.
In 1989, the Federation of Newfoundland Indians launched a Federal
Court case seeking recognition under the Indian Act. The federal
government then agreed to talks and a deal was ratified in 2008 [5].
Prime Minister Stephen Harper flew to Newfoundland to announce and
praise the agreement.
It recognizes the Mi’kmaq as a band with no land or reserve. People
applying to be registered as Indians under federal law do not have to
meet a “blood quantum,” used by governments in the past to determine
the degree of ancestry. They have to prove they are of “Canadian Indian
ancestry.” They also have to prove they were members of a Mi’kmaq
community before 1949 or descendents of someone who was.
“The terms of inclusion in this band were quite broad,” Robinson says,
insisting that, given the extent of intermarriage and the large size of
Newfoundland families, few should be surprised at the numbers that
applied for recognition.
“The majority of people outside of St. John’s do have aboriginal
ancestry,” Robinson says.
Rickford, parliamentary secretary to Aboriginal Affairs Minister
Bernard Valcourt, has noted that when the deal was signed, the federal
government and the Federation of Newfoundland Indians both estimated
the Mi’kmaq band would number from 8,700 to 12,000 members.
That made sense, Rickford added, because the 2006 census found there
were about 23,450 residents of Newfoundland and Labrador who identified
themselves as aboriginals — a term that covers Inuit, North American
Indians and Metis. Of those, only 7,765 identified themselves as
members of a First Nation.
Rickford complained that two-thirds of the 100,000 who applied don’t
even live in Newfoundland. But the agreement the federal government
signed does not restrict status to those living in the province.
Last November, the government appointed lawyer Fred Caron to work with
band leaders to tighten enrolment guidelines. That turned into
full-blown negotiations when the 2008 agreement expired in March.
“We’re still in the process of negotiating a new agreement,” says Janet
McAuley, the band’s executive assistant. Sheppard, the band’s chief,
did not respond to requests for an interview.
Rickford said the goal of negotiations is “to find a solution that
treats all applicants fairly and equally, reflects the original intent
of the agreement and, of course, ensures the integrity of the enrolment
process.”
Gerry Byrne, Liberal MP for the Newfoundland riding of Humber-St.
Barbe-Baie Verte, has introduced a motion in parliament calling on the
agreement to be extended and remaining applicants to be assessed under
current criteria.
Byrne, who has applied for Indian status under the deal, notes the
committee assessing applications has always included two federal
government representatives. After four years of enforcing the
agreement’s enrolment criteria, the government has suddenly disowned
the process and tried to paint applicants as frauds, Byrne charges.
“Instead of saying, ‘We didn’t know what we were doing and we signed
something we regret,’ the government is now saying, ‘It’s the
applicant’s fault,’” Byrne says in an interview.
Byrne also challenges chief Sheppard, insisting he has no band mandate
to renegotiate the agreement. A change in enrolment criteria, Byrne
warns, could result in some of the 23,000 already approved as Mi’kmaq
getting their Indian status revoked.
Tanner, the anthropologist, argues the agreement’s concept of an Indian
band without land paved the way for suspicions of taxpayers being had.
“The landless band concept is flawed because, without land and
community, it looks to the public like just another handout, and plays
into the anti-aboriginal backlash,” Tanner says.
As a federally recognized band, the Mi’kmaq will receive funding for
economic development. But without a land base, its individual members
won’t get the tax breaks of Indians who live on reserves.
Pearce, the would-be Mi’kmaq, laments media coverage he claims
generally portrays applicants as “a bunch of Newfoundlanders that are
just interested in becoming a member of this band so they can derive
all these benefits from the federal government.”
“Most people I meet will say, ‘Yes, there may be some benefits there
for my kids or my grandkids as far as university education is concerned
but, really, I’m interested in my family ancestry and I’d like to
establish the fact that it was Mi’kmaq.”
If there are cheats, it’s up to the assessing committee to catch them,
says Pearce.
Pearce, who has two sons and six grandchildren, says his lobby group
has repeated requested meetings with the federal government and Mi’kmaq
band council but received no response. They’ve held two protests in
front of the council’s Corner Brook offices and are planning more.
An agreement celebrated as a cure for injustice is now the source of
division and anger.
[photo at link] Qalipu (Mi’kmaq) Chief Brendan Sheppard says it is not
reasonable to expect 100,000 applicants for his band.
* Protesters gather outside the Qalipu Band office in Corner Brook last
month to protest possible changes to the band's enrolment process.
“You don’t set up the criteria, have people apply and then say, ‘Oops,
too many people applied so we’re going to change the rules.’ That’s
simply not fair.”
Hector Pearce - Newfoundlander who has found his Mi’kmaq roots
Links
[1]
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2012/06/20/
reconciliation_must_occur_between_aboriginal_people_and_all_other_canadi
ans.html
[2] http://qalipu.ca/
[3] Qalipu Watchdogs http://www.qalipuwatchdogs.com/
[4]
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2012/06/21/
most_canadians_harbour_myths_about_aboriginal_people.html
[5]
http://qalipu.ca/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/2011sept-Agreement-In-
Principle.pdf
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2013/05/05/
in_newfoundland_too_many_want_recognition_as_mikmaq_indians_federal_gove
rnment_says.html
<========<< o >>========>
IndigeNews - Indigenous News Service
News about / by / for Indigenous Peoples
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indigenous-news/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wabanaki-news/
government says
Ottawa scrambles to renegotiate 2008 deal after 100,000 people register
as Mi'kmaq to receive benefits under agreement with Federation of
Newfoundland Indian
By: Sandro Contenta News, Published on Sun May 05 2013
Hector Pearce found the link to his aboriginal ancestry on a tombstone
near Bonne Bay, a stunning inlet in Newfoundland’s Gros Morne National
Park.
The dates marking the birth and death of Sarah Welsh confirmed she was
Pearce’s great grandmother. They also confirmed she was the
granddaughter of John Matthews, a Mi’kmaq Indian born in 1780 in Cape
La Hune on the island’s southern coast. Matthews, in other words, was
Pearce’s great, great, great grandfather.
The tombstone testified to an Indian bloodline Pearce suspected, for
the first time, only five years ago.
“When I was growing up, no one talked about it,” says Pearce, 68. “My
grandmother resembled very well a Mi’kmaq in her skin colour and her
high cheekbones. But she never mentioned it. And my mother, a very
intelligent person who knew all about our family tree and the
community’s social history, never spoke of it either.
“Those generations were a bit ashamed to articulate that connection
with the Mi’kmaq,” he says in a phone interview from Lewisporte, north
of Gander.
Pearce, a retired psychologist, spent six months compiling evidence of
his Indian ancestry, including all the birth, death and marriage
certificates he could find. He then applied, before last November’s
deadline, for official recognition as a Mi’kmaq Indian under an
agreement between the federal government and the Federation of
Newfoundland Indians.
Pearce was one of many. And that’s where the trouble begins.
About 100,000 people have applied for Mi’kmaq Indian [1] status — a
number so high it has sent the federal government scrambling to
renegotiate a deal it signed less than five years ago. (The number of
federally registered Indians in Canada, according to the 2006 census,
is 698,000.)
Conservative MP Greg Rickford, parliamentary secretary to the minister
of aboriginal affairs, made clear during a March 28 debate that the
government smells something fishy.
“It is simply not reasonable to expect that there would be more than
100,000 credible applications to be members of the Qalipu (Mi’kmaq)
band,” Rickford told the House of Commons. “That would be over four
times the original estimated number.
“These figures are all the more questionable since it has become clear
that many of the late stage of applications appear to no longer reside
in that province.”
Rickford made much of the need to ensure “the integrity of the
enrolment process.” He also noted that taxpayers’ dollars are at stake.
Under the 2008 agreement, those who receive Indian status — and their
descendents — will be eligible for federal payments for post-secondary
education and noninsured health benefits, including vision and dental
care.
The renegotiation is backed by the chief of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First
Nation Band, established under the same federal agreement in 2011.
Chief Brendan Sheppard, in a recent post on the band’s website [2],
echoed Rickford’s concerns, saying it was “neither reasonable nor
credible to expect more than 100,000 applications to be members of the
Qalipu band.”
That has made thousands of would-be Indians, including Pearce, mighty
mad.
“You don’t set up the criteria, have people apply and then say, ‘Oops,
too many people applied so we’re going to change the rules.’ That’s
simply not fair,” Pearce says. “We didn’t set up the criteria, they
did.”
Making matters worse, Pearce says, is that more than 23,000 people have
already received Mi’kmaq Indian status under the criteria the
government suddenly wants renegotiated. Why should more than 70,000
remaining applicants be treated differently?
“It’s a real mess, to say the least,” says Pearce, who recently helped
set up Qalipu Watchdogs [3], a group representing many of those left in
limbo.
The issue dates back to 1949, when Newfoundland and Labrador joined
Confederation — a deal with no specific arrangement for the province’s
aboriginal people.
“In the case of the Mi’kmaq, (then-premier Joey) Smallwood told the
federal government there were no Indians on the island of
Newfoundland,” says Adrian Tanner, a Memorial University
anthropologist.
“This could have been deliberate, Smallwood might not have wanted to
bother with a group who might interfere with his development plans; or
it might have been Smallwood’s ignorance, which is hard to believe as
he had an encyclopedic mania for Newfoundland facts.
“But on the west coast many of the Mi’kmaq anglicized their names, hid
their identity, and tried to avoid being called racist slurs, such as
“Jack-a-tar.” However, at the time of Confederation, it would not have
taken much effort for Smallwood to have found some Mi’kmaq population,”
Tanner says in an email.
Aboriginal people have been lobbying for their rights ever since.
In 2005, the federal and provincial governments signed a land claim
agreement with the Labrador Inuit — about 5,300 people — covering
72,500 square kilometres. In 2011, the governments signed a land claim
deal with leaders representing 2,400 Innu Indians of Labrador.
There is one Mi’kmaq reserve for a separate band at Conne River.
Accounts of the Mi’kmaq presence in Newfoundland go back to at least
the early 1600s. Allied with the French, their fortunes took a turn for
the worse when the British gained Newfoundland and much of present-day
Nova Scotia under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Many were pushed out
of Nova Scotia.
In Newfoundland, the Mi’kmaq were concentrated on the western coast —
known as the “French Shore” — where the French retained fishing rights.
But smaller communities could be found hunting, fishing and gathering
all over the island, says Angela Robinson, a Memorial University
anthropologist who has extensively researched the Mi’kmaq.
Generations of prejudice, marginalization and intermarriage followed.
Hiding Indian ancestry became so common that, at some point, whole
family histories were buried and forgotten. Families “would be highly
insulted if you said they were aboriginal,” Robinson says.
Then came the 1970s, when demands for native rights [4] across North
America — including the deadly showdown at Wounded Knee in South Dakota
— triggered what eventually become known in Newfoundland as “the
awakening.”
Roots and pride were rediscovered, although it wasn’t always easy.
“If someone taps you on the shoulder and says, ‘Were you aware you have
aboriginal ancestry?’ You suddenly have to come to terms with a
different aspect of who you are as a person,” Robinson says.
In 1989, the Federation of Newfoundland Indians launched a Federal
Court case seeking recognition under the Indian Act. The federal
government then agreed to talks and a deal was ratified in 2008 [5].
Prime Minister Stephen Harper flew to Newfoundland to announce and
praise the agreement.
It recognizes the Mi’kmaq as a band with no land or reserve. People
applying to be registered as Indians under federal law do not have to
meet a “blood quantum,” used by governments in the past to determine
the degree of ancestry. They have to prove they are of “Canadian Indian
ancestry.” They also have to prove they were members of a Mi’kmaq
community before 1949 or descendents of someone who was.
“The terms of inclusion in this band were quite broad,” Robinson says,
insisting that, given the extent of intermarriage and the large size of
Newfoundland families, few should be surprised at the numbers that
applied for recognition.
“The majority of people outside of St. John’s do have aboriginal
ancestry,” Robinson says.
Rickford, parliamentary secretary to Aboriginal Affairs Minister
Bernard Valcourt, has noted that when the deal was signed, the federal
government and the Federation of Newfoundland Indians both estimated
the Mi’kmaq band would number from 8,700 to 12,000 members.
That made sense, Rickford added, because the 2006 census found there
were about 23,450 residents of Newfoundland and Labrador who identified
themselves as aboriginals — a term that covers Inuit, North American
Indians and Metis. Of those, only 7,765 identified themselves as
members of a First Nation.
Rickford complained that two-thirds of the 100,000 who applied don’t
even live in Newfoundland. But the agreement the federal government
signed does not restrict status to those living in the province.
Last November, the government appointed lawyer Fred Caron to work with
band leaders to tighten enrolment guidelines. That turned into
full-blown negotiations when the 2008 agreement expired in March.
“We’re still in the process of negotiating a new agreement,” says Janet
McAuley, the band’s executive assistant. Sheppard, the band’s chief,
did not respond to requests for an interview.
Rickford said the goal of negotiations is “to find a solution that
treats all applicants fairly and equally, reflects the original intent
of the agreement and, of course, ensures the integrity of the enrolment
process.”
Gerry Byrne, Liberal MP for the Newfoundland riding of Humber-St.
Barbe-Baie Verte, has introduced a motion in parliament calling on the
agreement to be extended and remaining applicants to be assessed under
current criteria.
Byrne, who has applied for Indian status under the deal, notes the
committee assessing applications has always included two federal
government representatives. After four years of enforcing the
agreement’s enrolment criteria, the government has suddenly disowned
the process and tried to paint applicants as frauds, Byrne charges.
“Instead of saying, ‘We didn’t know what we were doing and we signed
something we regret,’ the government is now saying, ‘It’s the
applicant’s fault,’” Byrne says in an interview.
Byrne also challenges chief Sheppard, insisting he has no band mandate
to renegotiate the agreement. A change in enrolment criteria, Byrne
warns, could result in some of the 23,000 already approved as Mi’kmaq
getting their Indian status revoked.
Tanner, the anthropologist, argues the agreement’s concept of an Indian
band without land paved the way for suspicions of taxpayers being had.
“The landless band concept is flawed because, without land and
community, it looks to the public like just another handout, and plays
into the anti-aboriginal backlash,” Tanner says.
As a federally recognized band, the Mi’kmaq will receive funding for
economic development. But without a land base, its individual members
won’t get the tax breaks of Indians who live on reserves.
Pearce, the would-be Mi’kmaq, laments media coverage he claims
generally portrays applicants as “a bunch of Newfoundlanders that are
just interested in becoming a member of this band so they can derive
all these benefits from the federal government.”
“Most people I meet will say, ‘Yes, there may be some benefits there
for my kids or my grandkids as far as university education is concerned
but, really, I’m interested in my family ancestry and I’d like to
establish the fact that it was Mi’kmaq.”
If there are cheats, it’s up to the assessing committee to catch them,
says Pearce.
Pearce, who has two sons and six grandchildren, says his lobby group
has repeated requested meetings with the federal government and Mi’kmaq
band council but received no response. They’ve held two protests in
front of the council’s Corner Brook offices and are planning more.
An agreement celebrated as a cure for injustice is now the source of
division and anger.
[photo at link] Qalipu (Mi’kmaq) Chief Brendan Sheppard says it is not
reasonable to expect 100,000 applicants for his band.
* Protesters gather outside the Qalipu Band office in Corner Brook last
month to protest possible changes to the band's enrolment process.
“You don’t set up the criteria, have people apply and then say, ‘Oops,
too many people applied so we’re going to change the rules.’ That’s
simply not fair.”
Hector Pearce - Newfoundlander who has found his Mi’kmaq roots
Links
[1]
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2012/06/20/
reconciliation_must_occur_between_aboriginal_people_and_all_other_canadi
ans.html
[2] http://qalipu.ca/
[3] Qalipu Watchdogs http://www.qalipuwatchdogs.com/
[4]
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2012/06/21/
most_canadians_harbour_myths_about_aboriginal_people.html
[5]
http://qalipu.ca/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/2011sept-Agreement-In-
Principle.pdf
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2013/05/05/
in_newfoundland_too_many_want_recognition_as_mikmaq_indians_federal_gove
rnment_says.html
<========<< o >>========>
IndigeNews - Indigenous News Service
News about / by / for Indigenous Peoples
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indigenous-news/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wabanaki-news/
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