W(h)ither the Indian Act? How Statutory Law Is Rewriting Canada’s Settler Colonial Formation

Abstract

This article documents how the Indian Act, the historic legal regime structuring settler colonialism in Canada, is being displaced by new statutory law, as nearly fifty federal statutes passed by successive governments between 2005 and 2020 rewrite First Nations land, taxation, resource, and governance regimes. I focus attention on these new laws, asking how they differ in instrument and ideology from the Indian Act. Particularly, I explore how new legislation responds to the Indian Act’s (unintended) affirmation of the unique political status of Indigenous peoples and manages the long-sedimented legal and regulatory differences between reserve and Canadian jurisdictions. Transferring our attention from the Indian Act to actual sites of legislative activity, we are better positioned to perceive, critique, and challenge the evolving formation of settler colonialism in Canada today.

《印第安法案》是构架加拿大定居者殖民主义的历史性法律制度。2005年至2020年间, 历届政府通过了近50项联邦法规, 改写了“第一民族”的土地、税收、资源和治理制度。本文记录了新的成文法如何取代《印第安法案》, 关注这些新的法律, 探寻它们与《印第安法案》在文书和意识形态上的不同。特别地, 我探讨了新的立法如何回应《印第安法案》中对土著民族特殊政治地位的（非主动性的）肯定, 如何处理印第安保护区和加拿大管辖区之间长期存在的法律和监管差异。将注意力从《印第安法案》转移到立法活动的实际地点, 我们能够更好地感知、批判和挑战加拿大定居者殖民主义的形成。

Este artículo documenta el modo como la Ley Indígena [Indian Act], un histórico régimen legal que estructura el colonialismo con pobladores en Canadá, está siendo desplazada por una nueva legislación estatutaria, en cuanto cerca de cincuenta estatutos federales que fueron aprobados por gobiernos sucesivos entre 2005 y 2020 reescriben los regímenes de gobernanza, tierras, tributación y recursos de las Primeras Naciones. Centro mi atención en estas nuevas leyes, preguntando cómo difieren en términos instrumentales e ideológicos de la Ley Indígena. En particular, exploro cómo responde la nueva legislación a la afirmación (involuntaria) de la Ley Indígena sobre el estatus político único de los pueblos indígenas y cómo maneja las diferencias reguladoras y de antigua base legal entre la reserva y las jurisdicciones canadienses. Al transferir nuestra atención desde la Ley Indígena a sitios reales de actividad legislativa, estamos mejor posicionados para percibir, criticar y retar la formación cambiante del colonialismo con pobladores en el Canadá de hoy.

Key Words:

• Canada
• Indian Act
• settler colonialism
• standardization
• statutory law

关键词:

• 加拿大
• 印第安法案
• 定居者殖民主义
• 标准化
• 成文法。

Palabras clave:

• Canadá
• colonialismo con pobladores
• estandarización
• ley estatutaria
• Ley Indígena

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Beverley Mullings and Shiri Pasternak for their insightful critiques on numerous drafts of this article. I would like to gratefully acknowledge the extremely thoughtful and constructive comments I received from the anonymous reviewer.

Notes

1 Commonly referred to as the Indian Act, this statute was formally enacted as An Act to Amend and Consolidate the Laws Respecting Indians [Indian Act of 1876], S.C. 1876, c. 18 (39 Vict.).

2 The term First Nations is used herein to reference units of Indigenous identity, land, and governance modulated by government legislation, including individual, reserve, self-government, and modern treaty status. The term Indigenous exceeds state designations to refer to the original peoples of the lands on which this study rests. The terms Indian and Aboriginal are used in historical context.

3 The White Paper served as a template for Bill C-79, the Indian Act Optional Modification Act (2nd sess., 35th Parliament, 1996) and Bill C-7, the First Nations Governance Act (2nd sess., 37th Parliament, 2002). Indigenous opposition also rendered these statutory projects nonstarters.

4 Scholars note, however, that the comparatist’s international focus might require revision, as “customary law, religious law, or unofficial lawmaking” by nonstate entities should be considered (Van Hoecke 2015; see also Eberle 2009, 486). Additionally, comparative legal studies using alternative frames of analysis are not without precedent. For instance, for Zedner (2003, 153), comparative analysis of the various meanings of security, such as “public good or private service,” can be explored on a domestic scale.

5 Friedland (2012, 3) observed that Indigenous law is generally “invisible or … incomprehensible” to non-Indigenous people, whereas Borrows (2010) stressed the distinctiveness of Indigenous legal orders, not only from Canadian law, but also from each other.

6 For instance, the principle of sovereignty (in an international legal sense) in the Two Row Wampum informed agreements between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch (1645), the French (1701), and the English (1763–64), which continues to influence Haudenosaunee–state relations today (Borrows 2010, 76).

7 Existing jurisprudence suggests that provincial law applies in the absence of comparable Indian Act legislation, but viewing themselves as beyond provincial jurisdiction, many First Nations have a history of noncompliance and “assumption of control” in relation to provincial law (Sanders 1984, 121).

8 Between 1984 and 1993, the government ratified two international trade agreements and legislated the privatization of twenty-five Crown corporations (Barlow and Campbell 1995, 77). During the same time frame, the most significant legislative amendment relating to the Indian Act was the partial redress of its in-built gender discrimination (Bill C-31, An Act to Amend the Indian Act, S.C. 1985, c. 27, was enacted as Indian Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. I-5). Additionally, the Sechelt Indian Band Self-Government Act (S.C. 1986, c. 27) was passed in 1986, according the Sechelt First Nation quasi-municipal status, but this agreement was not supported by other First Nations and was not generative of replication (Etkin 1988). Finally, First Nations taxation powers were enhanced in 1988 in legislation known as the Kamloops Amendments. However, it would be sixteen years before this legislation was revised and expanded.

9 The adoption of the Constitution Act, 1982 and attendant “class of [Aboriginal] constitutional rights” further complicated Canada’s rapidly morphing settler colonial legal formation (Turner 2006, 4).

10 Such bills are not listed in Table 1.

11 Oddly, the French language version of the 2019 Act continues to reference “consommation personnelle” (personal consumption) and “à des fins sociales ou cérémoniales” (for social or ceremonial purposes) in the definition of Indigenous fisheries (see Loi modifiant la Loi sur les pêches et d'autres lois en conséquence, S.C. 2019, c. 68, s. 7.2(1); my translation).

12 The Act was renamed First Nations Fiscal Management Act in April 2013.

13 Indigenous involvement in the modern treaty process, contingent on the conversion of vast expanses of Indigenous land to fee simple tenure, is often offered as evidence of Indigenous support for land privatization, but accounts from inside treaty communities reveal apprehension of, and aversion to, land privatization (Mack 2007; Blomley 2015).

Additional information

Funding

Financial support was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes on contributors

Susan Collis

SUSAN COLLIS is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include the intersections between law, geography, racial capitalism, and (settler) colonialism.