National Treaty Gathering in Onion Lake Cree Nation, SK July 17, 2013

Statement from the Assembly of Manitoba Grand Chief Derek Nepinak regarding the Certificate of Indian Status
On Monday, July 15th, 2013, I threw my Certificate of Indian Status in the garbage during a presentation I was making to my indigenous relatives at the Onion Lake First Nation during our National Treaty Gathering. My gesture demonstrates my commitment to move towards emancipation and my effort to begin the transition from prescriptive identification under the Indian Act, to an empowered identity as a sovereign Indigenous Anishinaabe from my ancestral lands in modern day Manitoba. "The Indian Act" and the "Certificate of Indian Status", are products of a highly controlled bureaucratic infrastructure that is designed to manage and limit the potential of indigenous people living in the Canadian nation state. The Certificate itself is designed to create and prescribe a legal fiction known as the 'status indian', which is defined under the Indian Act of Canada. The acquisiton of the Certificate is an arbitrary and prescriptive process tied to historically racist policies that were developed to create social and family divisions amongst indigenous people and to limit the scope of obligations of federal governments with respect to historical land agreements, including land provisions tied to the creation of the province of Manitoba. The certificate is a form of prescriptive identity, which has nothing to do with being indigenous and everything to do with being controlled and manipulated by federal policies and laws that are intent on limiting the potential of free indigenous peoples. There are no 'rights' attached to the card in either treaty agreements, nor in any other forms of agreements made between the Crown and indigenous peoples. Status Indians under the prescriptive identity process will become extinct on paper under the current provisions of the Indian Act. This extinction on paper is a mathematical certainty and some communities already have a generation of young people who are not being born with eligibility to become 'Status Indians' and acquire a certificate of indian status. As indigenous peoples, we must decolonize our experience and reclaim our identities. This necessarily involves a retreat from our current position of allowing government bureaucracies to apply racist policies in determining our eligibility to belong to our communities. More importantly, we must come to the realization and understanding that our treaty agreements have nothing to do with the administration of the Indian Act. If we are ever planning to decolonize our communities, our political organizations and re-establish our nationhood and sovereignty, we

must begin by decolonizing ourselves and emancipating ourselves from the Indian Act, one sovereign indigenous person at a time. Considering the certainty of our extinction on paper under the Indian Act, we must make the move now from the 'Indians' under the Indian Act, to a decolonized empowered existence and identity grounded in our sovereignty and jurisdiction. We must begin to show the rest of the world who we were at treaty and who we will be again to implement treaties in the spirit and intent of our ancestors. Meegwetch. -30 For more information please contact: Sheila North Wilson 204-805-1759 snorthwilson@manitobachiefs.com