Saskatchewan’s Anishinabe Nation Treaty Authority meets in Nipissing for Governance

By Kirk Titmuss

NIPISSING FIRST NATION– Self-governance progress was the topic of discussion at a meeting between visiting members of the Anishinabe Nation Treaty Authority (ANTA) from Kamsack, Saskatchewan, and Anishinabek Nation governance officials at the Anishinabek Nation’s Elders Hall on August 21, 2024.

ANTA Director Angela Roque, of Treaty 4’s seven First Nations, who had met with the Anishinabek Nation’s governance delegation last February in Toronto, said her group’s main takeaway from the gathering was the ongoing need to inform and encourage Anishinabe communities to get out from under the Indian Act.

“To focus on educating, empowering and inspiring our Anishinabe Nations to govern themselves, always with education, parenting, health—that’s what I got out of it, just to get away from the oppressed governance that we’ve been living under for 150 years.”

Anishinabek Nation Commissioner on Governance Patrick Madahbee agreed and pointed at Canada as the key reason for the division and resulting intergenerational hardships within Anishinaabe communities. He noted that when communities work individually instead of collectively, they leave a lot of untapped power on the table.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Commissioner Madahbee explained. “…The government has created confusion and division amongst our communities and we have communities involved with many different processes and we’re trying to embark on governance issues and again, there’s nothing wrong with that, but at the same time, we’re not coming from positions of strength with the collective strength that we have. I think it’s really crucial that we have more collaboration of common areas.”

Madahbee said the take-up of self-governance by communities has been “really slow”. He blamed the negative impact of social media and the spread of misinformation on the Anishinabek Nation Governance Agreement (ANGA). The Governance Agreement recognizes the Anishinabek Nation’s right to pursue self-governance and provides funding for each signatory community to implement it and is recognized as a tool to help get communities out from under governance-related statutes of the Indian Act.

He also targeted the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down community offices and prevented in-person information meetings. He added that the information packages on the Agreement distributed by the Anishinabek Nation were not easily digestible.

Prior to the pandemic, over 25 of the 39 Anishinabek Nation member First Nations expressed interest in the Agreement. To date, seven communities have ratified the Agreement. Commissioner Madahbee believes another seven may sign on by year’s end and become part of the self-governance body B’Maakonigan, which guides, supports and encourages communities that adopt the Agreement.

B’Maakonigan CEO Leslie McGregor is optimistic that more will eventually join despite their apprehension to break away from the status quo.

“It will accelerate at some point. It may not be even in the next five years because I think they talked about it in this meeting where there’s a lot of fear moving out of the Indian Act and whatever protections people perceive that’s there, or what happens.”

She’s optimistic the seven signatory communities will pave the way for others.

“As these communities advance and they start to implement different, whether it’s policies or laws or citizenship and boosting that, and these other ones are going to see that and maybe with these initial ones, the pioneers of it, so to speak, that…any of the challenges that they’re having and how we’re overcoming them, this will support these other First Nations as they look at joining in.”

Commissioner Madahbee agrees and believes communities must reach a certain “comfort level” before they sign on.

“As people see communities operating under this…they will see that the sky hasn’t fallen. All the naysayers are wrong. You’ll see more and more communities come on board, especially when they run into obstacles.”

ANTA Director Roque says Elders are playing an important role in the progression of self-governance in Saskatchewan’s First Nations by sharing their cultural knowledge and traditional experience. Revitalizing and restoring culture and language comprises one of the four key pillars set out in the Governance Agreement.

“They have strong voices, they have so much knowledge and they really help us, so they’re moving us along. You know, they’re helping us with our health, they’re helping us with our governance. They’re helping us make sure that their knowledge is not going anywhere. They’re sharing it with us and passing it on to me, our leadership, our youth, we’re putting it in the schools. We’ve actually almost done a book, the Anishinabe Nation book and its interviews from about 65 Elders of all the seven nations.”

Leadership selection, citizenship, and operations and management of communities make up the other three pillars. Commissioner Madahbee is frustrated that citizenship continues to be an unresolved challenge for the Anishinabek Nation.

“There was a lot of work done already creating something called the ‘One Parent Rule’, which talks about the lineage of a family and what should qualify as being Anishinaabe. And yet, we’ve got the government tinkering with a two-parent rule. We got other models being looked at; we’ve got to stop this confusion. We’ve got to stop this talking and talking and talking and running around in circles and make some decisions.”

Governance Agreement lead negotiator and lawyer Martin Bayer has been part of the Agreement negotiations since they started 27 years ago. He said it’s important the unsigned First Nations understand that adopting self-governance will provide measures to deal with the litany of pressing intergenerational issues plaguing their communities including housing shortages, lack of clean water, mental health, drug addiction, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and an aging population.

McGregor agrees and says B’Maakonigan’s main challenge is providing unsigned communities with information on the Agreement and how signatory communities are faring under the governing body while it goes through growing pains of its own.

“So, we’re still in that foundational period and we just don’t have the manpower to be out and doing the engagement sessions that people understand exactly what it is and what it means for them. And as these other communities who have already signed on and what they’re experiencing and how do we then translate that for the other communities?  We haven’t had the manpower to do a lot of that yet so that’s our biggest hurdle.”

It’s a hurdle that McGregor says will be cleared in good time.

“We don’t want to grow too fast. We don’t want to run into the same pitfalls and traps like other organizations when they grew too quickly.”