Indigenous peoples in Canada are the Indigenous peoples within the boundaries of Canada. They comprise the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. Although "Indian" is a term still commonly used in legal documents, the descriptors "Indian" and "Eskimo" have fallen into disuse in Canada, and most consider them to be pejorative. "Aboriginal" as a collective noun is a specific term of art used in some legal documents, including the Constitution Act, 1982, though in some circles that word is also falling into disfavour.
The minister of Crown–Indigenous relations is a minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet, one of two ministers who administer Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC), the department of the Government of Canada which is responsible for administering the Indian Act and other legislation dealing with "Indians and lands reserved for the Indians" under subsection 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867. The minister is also more broadly responsible for overall relations between the federal government and First Nations, Métis, and Inuit.
In Canada, an Indian reserve is defined by the Indian Act as a "tract of land, the legal title to which is vested in Her Majesty, that has been set apart by Her Majesty for the use and benefit of a band." Reserves are areas set aside for First Nations, one of the major groupings of Indigenous peoples in Canada, after a contract with the Canadian state, and are not to be confused with Indigenous peoples' claims to ancestral lands under Aboriginal title.
The Canadian Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by various Christian churches. The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. Over the course of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were placed in residential schools nationally. By the 1930s, about 30 percent of Indigenous children were attending residential schools. The number of school-related deaths remains unknown due to incomplete records. Estimates range from 3,200 to over 30,000, mostly from disease.
The Métis are an Indigenous people whose historical homelands include Canada's three Prairie Provinces. They have a shared history and culture, deriving from specific mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, which became distinct through ethnogenesis by the mid-18th century, during the early years of the North American fur trade.
The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) was a Canadian royal commission established in 1991 with the aim of investigating the relationship between Indigenous peoples in Canada, the Government of Canada, and Canadian society as a whole. It was launched in response to status and rights issues brought to light following events such as the Oka Crisis and the failure of the Meech Lake Accord. The commission culminated in a final report of 4,000 pages, published in 1996 and set out a 20-year agenda for implementing recommended changes.
Indigenous police services in Canada are police forces under the control of a First Nation or Inuit government.
The association between the monarchy of Canada and Indigenous peoples in Canada stretches back to the first interactions between North American Indigenous peoples and European colonialists and, over centuries of interface, treaties were established concerning the monarch and Indigenous nations. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in Canada have a unique relationship with the reigning monarch and, like the Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand, generally view the affiliation as being not between them and the ever-changing Cabinet, but instead with the continuous Crown of Canada, as embodied in the reigning sovereign.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was a truth and reconciliation commission active in Canada from 2008 to 2015, organized by the parties of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
The following is an alphabetical list of topics related to Indigenous peoples in Canada, comprising the First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
The Sixties Scoop, also known as The Scoop, was a period in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which they would be adopted by white families. Despite its name referencing the 1960s, the Sixties Scoop began in the mid-to-late 1950s and persisted into the 1980s.
Chelsea Vowel, who often writes as âpihtawikosisân, is a Métis writer, professor, and lawyer from near Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta, whose work focuses on language, gender identity, and cultural resurgence. She has been published in the Huffington Post, The National Post, and The Globe and Mail. Co-host of the podcast Métis in Space and runner of the IndigenousXca Twitter account, Vowel has been noted as a "prominent and respected Métis blogger" and "one of the most visible of [the] new generation" of Métis intellectuals.
Indigenous peoples of Canada are culturally diverse. Each group has its own literature, language and culture. The term "Indigenous literature" therefore can be misleading. As writer Jeannette Armstrong states in one interview, "I would stay away from the idea of "Native" literature, there is no such thing. There is Mohawk literature, there is Okanagan literature, but there is no generic Native in Canada".
The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, originally and still colloquially known as Orange Shirt Day, is a Canadian holiday to recognize the legacy of the Canadian Indian residential school system.
Charlene Bearhead is an educator, author, and Indigenous education advocate. She was the first educational lead for the University of Manitoba's National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
Monique Gray Smith is a Canadian writer of children's and young adult literature. She is also an international speaker and consultant. Of Cree, Lakota and Scottish descent, Smith is based in Victoria, British Columbia.
Zoe Todd is a Métis anthropologist and scholar of Indigenous studies, human-animal studies, science and technology studies and the Anthropocene. She is an associate professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University and a Presidential Visiting Fellow at Yale University during the 2018–19 academic year.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation is the archival repository for all of the material collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, purposed to compile the complete history and legacy of Canada's residential school system.
The blanket exercise is an interactive educational program that teaches the history of colonization in Canada. The program was created in response to the 1996 report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and is used as a teaching tool across Canada.
Recognition and Implementation of Indigenous Rights Framework (RIIRF) is a legislation and policy initiative intended to be undertaken in "full partnership with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples" that was announced during a speech in the House of Commons of Canada by Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau on February 14, 2018. It was "meant to enshrine the Constitution's section 35, which affirms Aboriginal rights, in federal law, allowing First Nations to reconstitute their governance structures outside the Indian Act."
