Photo by The Canadian Press/Michelle Siu

After decades of self-advocacy by Indigenous people, parts of Canada’s painful colonial legacy, such as residential schools, have finally been publicly acknowledged by the government. But the same government has yet to apologize for the Sixties Scoop, an era where thousands of Indigenous children were “scooped” from their communities to be fostered and adopted by white families. Since 2009, Ontario Scoop survivors have been battling the federal government to acknowledge the hardships they endured, and the government resisted. In February, survivors in the province were finally promised financial compensation. But other provinces across Canada continue to demand justice. Here’s a look at Ontario Scoop survivors’ arduous path toward reparation.

1965–1984

About 20,000 children, mostly from Ontario, are taken from their homes and placed with white families. They are given new names and stripped of their languages and cultural practices—a psychologically traumatic event for many survivors.

February 2009

Ontario survivors launch a class-action lawsuit against Ottawa, resting on whether it was the Canadian government’s inherent responsibility to ensure these children were not deprived of their culture.

January 25, 2012

The federal government wins an appeal against conditional certification for the class-action lawsuit in divisional court. The ruling forces lead plaintiffs Marcia Brown Martel and Robert Commanda to pay $25,000 in costs.

July 16, 2013

Despite that setback, the case is approved as a class-action lawsuit.

December 3, 2014

The Court dismisses Ottawa’s appeal to scrap the lawsuit without a hearing.

August 23, 2016

Survivors are finally heard in front of a Superior Court judge.

November 2016

Ottawa maintains that “while things might be done differently now, the government argues, no legal reason exists to apply modern standards to an approach taken decades ago.”

December 1, 2016

A lawyer for the government says the feds had no legal duty to prevent children from reserves from losing connection to their Indigenous cultures at the time. Another lawyer adds that even if the government was obligated to ensure the children remained connected to their cultures, Indigenous identity is too abstract to mandate this.

February 1, 2017

The federal government says it wants to settle the case out of court. The request is denied.

February 14, 2017

Superior Court Justice Edward Belobaba rules in favour of the Ontario survivors. He rules that the Canadian government “had a common law duty of care” to ensure children taken from the reserve maintained their Indigenous identities.

March 2017

A new class action lawsuit begins for survivors afflicted by the Sixties Scoop in other regions across Canada.

How did the legal system come about?

The civil court has always been the elected council, falling under the Indian Act. But the people said: well what about Akwesasne laws? We have 33 laws on the books that include the needs of the community. The community said they want a court law to fall back on but more particular to what our practices are here, so the Council decided to use Mohawk values along with Canadian ideals in order to create the laws.

What makes it different than in the past?

It was ratified by the community itself. It is not under any Canadian statute. The people appointed to the court, the justices especially, aren’t through any statute or law of the Canadian government, making it very unique. The Council used their customary rules and created the court so that it meets the needs of the community.

What kinds of things does the court deal with? 

Often traffic law or peace bonds: we’re calling them skén:nen orders (skén:nen means peace). It also deals with tobacco regulations, sanitation, property, and wildlife conservation laws. Criminal matters are still settled in federal or provincial courts.

Do you have any stories from court you can share that illustrate the council’s way of handling violations?

One person was coming in for a traffic violation because he was driving without a licence. Instead of giving him a fine, the court worked with him and ordered him to get his driver’s licence, which is a solution I don’t think anyone else can say they would give. But here, you get your licence and if everything’s well then that violation will be lifted and things are put back in balance with the community, because then you have somebody who can legally drive and follow the rules of the road.

How were disputes handled beforehand?

Well it stems back from how we used to resolve disputes before. You would make sure there was a balance in the community. If somebody did something wrong, you ask: what would it take to rectify the situation? In Canadian law, you have your list of offences and your list of penalties. There’s hardly any room to maneuver, to say: you know, we need to send this person to rehabilitation. For example, if you’re caught shoplifting you pay a fine, but here if you’re caught shoplifting, we ask: what’s behind it? Is it an addiction problem? Is it you need food for your family? The court can inspect these things and see what we can do to make this person better.

How did these types of resolutions work traditionally?

In the community we always had a way of resolving disputes. You didn’t need a judge to tell you how to fix things. In our community, you would talk to the neighbours and see what they can do to resolve it. If they have to come to court, then how can we resolve it for the community? It all follows restorative justice practices, and I think that’s a better practice than somebody just getting a fine and you’re on your merry way until you get caught again.

What does this mean for the community?

Well they’ve always wanted it. We wanted to be able to use our people we want to be able to use our practices. We want to resolve our disputes internally and and be able to work with the families and with the offender to resolve our issues rather than it go outside.

What are your hopes for the outcomes of this new legal system?

We hope things are different because we want to be able to incorporate that sense of security in the community. Meaning that when people go to court, their issues will be addressed. I’ll give you an example: Imagine a person who might have written graffiti on the wall at a school—he would be given a $50 fine. But here, the Justice can say, “I know you’re a good lacrosse player, why don’t you teach the kids that go to that school lacrosse?” So that person will start building a relationship with the children and when he walks to the school to teach them he will see the graffiti and realize what they are seeing every day. So hopefully there’s some responsibility and the person will realize they did something wrong to those children. There are about 12,000 people in the community so we know the families here pretty well. If someone is trying to say something like, “My parents don’t care,” then the Justice will say, “I know your parents and they do care.” We’re small enough so that we know everyone and their situation and that will only make the system better.

Rick Harp is no stranger to the power of digital media to incite change. In 2015, the 48-year-old media veteran launched a crowdfunding campaign aimed at raising $10 million to build an all-weather road that would connect Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, a community near Winnipeg that’s been without access to clean water for 18 years, to the TransCanada Highway. Though Harp fell short of his financial goal, he did garner online attention for Indigenous issues, an objective he’s been fiercely pursuing since launching mediaINDIGENA in 2010.

Harp founded mediaINDIGENA to help fill the void of Indigenous news, views, and creative expression in the Canadian media landscape. Currently, the interactive multimedia publication covers a variety of topics that range from arts and culture to business, economy, politics, and more. This past March, Harp launched a mediaINDIGENA podcast that has featured several high-profile figures from the Indigenous community, including Cindy Blackstock, a child welfare advocate, and Pamela Palmater, Ryerson University’s chair in Indigenous Governance.

Harp, a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation in Saskatchewan’s north, has spent his career sharing stories from Indigenous communities across Canada, including at the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival, and CBC/Radio-Canada. He launched mediaINDIGENA to unite and amplify Indigenous voices on Indigenous issues. The product, says Harp, is content that is truer and more powerful than the mainstream media’s version.

It’s the difference, says Harp, between someone who’s known the literal and figurative community terrain for years, versus someone who parachutes into a situation and tries to quickly gather-up facts to squeeze into a 90- second news piece. “The story’s going to reflect that,” adds Harp, “especially as a narrative starts to emerge.”

To his point, Harp describes burgeoning Indigenous communities in cities like Winnipeg, Edmonton, Regina, and Saskatoon, and how this growing demographic (approximately 4 percent of the Canadian population) is often misrepresented by the media’s lens. “More [Indigenous people] are becoming recognized for their accomplishments in a variety of spheres, including the arts, government, and culture,” says Harp. “At the same time, Indigenous populations are disproportionately affected by challenges like poverty and violence, and sometimes that’s what garners our people attention in the media, which is very much fixated—because it’s cheap, easy, and sensational—on crime.”

Through mediaINGIDENA, Harp provides a platform for complex Indigenous topics to be explored in depth. By integrating interviews with historians, academics, and researchers, the site gives much-deserved analysis and attention to relevant issues like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project, and the tragically high suicide rates within Indigenous communities.

By focusing solely on Indigenous issues, Harp recognizes innate audience limitations. For example, he must assume that readers and listeners are reasonably conversant with the kinds of dynamics and challenges facing Indigenous peoples, and acknowledge that many potential audience members live in remote communities with infrastructures that cannot support stable Internet access. Still, Harp, who dropped down to part-time work as a project manager with the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases to focus on growing mediaINDIGENA, is hopeful that he will one day be able to make a living by managing and producing content for the listener-funded site.

“The challenge for creators has moved from discoverability and access, to the tools of creation and the tools of distribution, to viability in terms of making a living,” says Harp. He highlights that his primary challenge now is to find new ways to get people to compensate his work and site.

Still, Harp expects that through digital content, he will be able to create relevancy around Indigenous issues for all communities, Indigenous or not. “The one thing I rely on to know I’m doing the right thing, is the attention I receive from listeners and readers,” says Harp. “My project is to try and reach people who want to better understand.”

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

In 2017 Canada will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation. Canada’s origin story will be revisited—the story of the British North America (BNA) Act, the Fathers of Confederation, and the British/French duality that together formed the bedrock of the free, equal, diverse democracy we believe ourselves to be.

But here’s the problem: our origin story is false. In 1996, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples observed, “A country cannot be built on a living lie.” Coming to terms with our true origin story is long overdue. Recognition that Indigenous peoples were founders of the nation must be acknowledged in a formal, legal way. Only then will there be a solid foundation for Canada to reconcile its past and lay the foundation for a new relationship with its first peoples.

The accepted story of Canada’s origin tells us the nation came into being on July 1, 1867. Thirty-six “Fathers of Confederation,” representing the British and the French colonial powers, signed the BNA, setting out the governance structure for the new country. Significantly, it protected the English and French languages, cultures, and civil rights. Indigenous Canadians are invisible—even though they were present on the land for thousands of years prior to Confederation and without their contributions Canada would not be the country it was then or now.

Take, for example, the vast tracts of land acquired through treaty negotiations with the Indigenous peoples—lands that have produced immense riches, making Canada one of the wealthiest nations in the world.

Indigenous people have received neither recognition for their nation-building contributions, nor a fair share of the ensuing wealth. Instead, they were classified as non-citizens and subjected to unequal treatment based on racist philosophical and legal justifications—namely, the discovery doctrine and the formal equality principle.

The discovery doctrine was the self-serving legal principle whereby Europeans claimed rights of sovereignty and ownership of regions they “discovered.” Under this doctrine, Indigenous peoples could not claim ownership of their lands, but only the right to occupy and use the land.

The formal equality principle dates back to Plato and Aristotle, whose definition of equality was that likes were to be treated alike. As such, discrimination against slaves, women, and Indigenous peoples was not considered unequal treatment.

Together, the two principles assured the perpetual dominance of the British and the French founders over the land and the permanent subordination of the Indigenous peoples who occupied it. The Supreme Court of Canada finally rejected the formal equality principle in 1989, saying it could justify Hitler’s Nuremberg laws. The discovery doctrine, too, has been widely discredited as racist and in violation of fundamental human rights. Yet these doctrines have underpinned Canada’s origin story and left Indigenous Canadians marginalized, dispossessed, and unrecognized. The 150th anniversary of Confederation is an opportunity to set the record straight. Parliamentarians, after discussions with Indigenous leaders, provincial governments, and civil society, pass a statute to formally recognize Indigenous peoples as equal founders of Canada. This will allow all Canadians—Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike—to celebrate the possibilities for lasting reconciliation and set the stage for a genuine nation-to-nation relationship of equality and respect.

Later, in 2010, Harper’s position softened, but only slightly. Amidst public pressure, particularly from aboriginal leaders, Canada signed a letter of support for the declaration— even though the government remained wary of its contents. This fact was reiterated in 2014 when Canada was the only country to raise objections over the declaration’s outcome document, meant to provide a framework for countries to follow and set minimum rights standards. The feds said they worried the document could provide “veto” power to aboriginal groups, despite the fact that the word veto isn’t even used in the document. Equally disappointing, it also called the agreement an “aspirational” document, suggesting it wasn’t achievable—or, at least, that the government had no concrete plans to do so.

Perhaps such sentiments shouldn’t come as a surprise. Under Harper, the federal government has also consistently chosen industry over aboriginal interest (see: the much-protested Northern Gateway Pipeline, for example); eliminated First Nation Band and Tribal Council funding for advisory services, limiting the ability of councils to assess and analyze government legislation; drastically cut funding for First Nation political organizations; completely ignored pressing aboriginal issues such as the emergency state of Canada’s murdered and missing women; and missed meaningful opportunities for change, such as it did with its bungled communications (or rather lack thereof) with members of Idle No More, one of the most significant protest movements in Canada’s history.

No wonder, then, that in 2013 when James Anaya, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Aboriginal Peoples, visited Canada, he declared that we are facing a “crisis” when it comes to aboriginal rights. “Amidst this wealth and prosperity,” he said, “Aboriginal people live in conditions akin to those in countries that rank much lower and in which poverty abounds.” Not much has changed since—but, by now, such a change is long overdue.