The Indian Act and the future of Aboriginal governance in Canada : Loi sur les indiens et l'avenir de la gouvernance autochtone au Canada

Ken Coates The Indian Act and the Future of Aboriginal Governance in Canada Research Paper for the National Centre for First Nations Governance May, 2008 1 The Indian Act and the Future of Aboriginal Governance in Canada The Indian Act is no longer an uncontestable part of the Aboriginal landscape in Canada. [...] The Indian Act was, and is, a powerful tool in the hands of the federal government, giving federal civil servants the authority to manage band affairs, supervise Indigenous lands and trust funds, direct the personal and family lives of individual Aboriginal people, and deny basic Canadian civil and personal rights to hundreds of thousands of “wards” of the federal state.2 Through the Indian Act, t [...] The Government of Canada backed down, although they moved very slowly away from the underlying belief that the Indian Act and the reserves created under the legislation contributed to the separation of Indigenous and other Canadians and thereby slowed their economic and social integration. [...] It is the prime example of the intrusiveness of the Canadian state into the lives of Aboriginal people in this country and is generally held to be responsible for the serious social and cultural disruptions experienced by Indigenous peoples over the past century and a half. [...] It’s a process, a piece of legislation that turns control over by-law making powers, local governance laws to the community, removes the role of the Minister in the day to day lives of the government and the community members.