A recent Canadian Supreme Court judgment makes clear the country’s wealth was built on the exploitation of Indigenous people – with repercussions that continue to this day.

The court ruled on a case relating to the Robinson Treaties, two agreements signed in 1850 between Anishinaabe chiefs and the colonial government. Anishinaabe people, who live in the Great Lakes region, are one of Canada’s First Nations, recognised as one of the country’s three Indigenous identities.

Under the treaties, the Anishinaabe ceded their rights to some 92,400 square kilometres of land and waters to the British Crown in return for an annual payment. The payment was subject to what was called ‘an augmentation clause’: it would increase as colonial companies generated more wealth. But in 1874, the authorities capped the payment at CA$4 (approx. US$2.95) per person. It has stayed there ever since.

While the companies thrived, Anishinaabe people were impoverished. The fate of Canada’s First Nations is a common one of Indigenous groups in colonised countries: exclusion in all spheres, with higher unemployment, much poorer public services, lower levels of education and worse health than everyone else. Some Indigenous communities still don’t have clean drinking water.

It has been incredibly hard for First Nations people to fight back. Confined to reservations, they were long banned from engaging lawyers. The court case began in 1998, and it took 20 years for the superior court of Ontario province to rule that the government hadn’t honoured the treaties. The Ontario provincial government, which had received substantial tax revenues from companies that exploited the land and waters, instead tried to claim it had borne the financial burden of settlement and development.

It isn’t quite game over. The Supreme Court’s July 2024 ruling, while scathing in its condemnation of the authorities’ failings, doesn’t put a figure on the financial settlement to be paid. First Nations leaders argue they’re owed as much as CA$126 billion (approx. US$93 billion) in back payments. But the court has given the Ontario government six months to propose a settlement. Since it has consistently evaded its responsibilities, campaigners fear a derisory offer, which will lead to further legal wrangling.

Meanwhile another community in the region is fighting a different battle. The authorities claim that the ancestors of the Ojibways of the Pic River Nation signed one of the Robinson treaties – but their descendants maintain they didn’t. This would mean they never agreed to cede their land, potentially entitling them to even greater compensation. But it’s possible no one will receive any compensation until this claim is settled.

Legal battles like these are long and challenging. But they can ultimately lead to redress. Last year, the national and British Columbia governments admitted they hadn’t honoured an 1899 treaty that should have allowed a group of First Nations people to retain their right to hunt on and make money from their lands. It took a court case arguing that fossil fuel extraction harmed their ability to live off the land to secure an admission of wrongdoing – and a US$600 million settlement.

Systemic exclusion

These are just a few of the treaties First Nations leaders signed with colonisers in the 19^th century. But the colonisers immediately did everything they could to renege on their side of the bargain. In 1876, Canada passed the Indian Act, forcing people from First Nations to live on reserves and imposing strict controls on their everyday lives. Unlike the treaties, this law wasn’t negotiated: it was imposed by a government in which First Nations people had no say.

Under the Indian Act, First Nations people weren’t citizens but wards of the state, on a par with minors. Since they weren’t considered full human beings, they couldn’t claim rights. They weren’t allowed to vote until 1960. An amended version of the Indian Act is still in force, despite numerous attempts by campaigners to have it repealed.

The intergenerational trauma is enormous. Historical injustices shape today’s reality. In 2015, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission recognised as ‘cultural genocide’ the practice of taking children from their families, giving them western names, banning them from speaking their languages and forcing them to convert to Christianity. Over 150,000 children across several generations were forcibly assimilated in this way, channelled through residential schools, many run by the Catholic Church. In 2021, a wave of anger was unleashed by the discovery of over 1,300 child graves at these schools, victims of abuse and neglect that the authorities simply pretended didn’t happen. That same year, a court upheld a ruling ordering the government to pay up to US$31 billion in compensation for another scandal, involving discrimination against First Nations children in foster care.

Indignities mark every aspect of Indigenous life. Earlier this year, representatives of the Pictou Landing First Nation filed a lawsuit against the government of Nova Scotia province alleging they’d been subjected to a secret medical experiment on liver disease without their consent. This is no ancient offence: the MRI scans in question are alleged to have taken place in 2017. There’s a grim history of non-consensual medical intervention with Indigenous people, including the coerced sterilisation of Indigenous women, currently the subject of a lawsuit in Quebec province.

Indigenous women face double discrimination and are disproportionately affected by violence. They make up 16 per cent of femicide victims and 11 per cent of missing women, despite constituting only around four per cent of the population. Thousands of Indigenous women have been murdered or disappeared over recent decades, a situation described by a 2019 national inquiry as ‘race-based genocide’. Every year, usually on 5 May, their lives are remembered on Red Dress Day, with people marching in red dresses to demand justice for them.

Even in death, Indigenous women are denied equality. When a white supremacist murdered four Indigenous women in the city of Winnipeg in 2022, it was a sign of how little their lives were valued that the police’s initial response was that they didn’t have the resources to search a landfill site for their bodies. The government of Manitoba province initially refused to provide extra funding for the search. Hundreds of people protested, including by holding a collective traditional dance in downtown Winnipeg to demand a search, which was eventually carried out.

But when Indigenous people take to the streets, there’s no guarantee their rights to protest will be respected. Indigenous activists are targeted when they speak out to defend their land from exploitation and degradation. Indigenous people are also disproportionately affected by Canada’s wildfires, which have intensified as a consequence of climate change. They’re further harmed by the local impacts of extractive industries.

In British Columbia, people from the Wet’suwet’en Nation have long mobilised resistance against the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline, which passes through their territory. They insist they never ceded land to the colonisers, and they haven’t consented to the pipeline.

The authorities have subjected them to a long campaign of arbitrary detention, criminalisation, harassment and violence. The protest movement went national in 2020 when militarised police equipped with dogs aggressively cleared a protest site; in response, people blocked major railway lines across Canada to demand climate action and respect for Indigenous rights.

Time and again, the reality is that Indigenous people haven’t been properly consulted and their concerns about land exploitation and environmental impacts haven’t been addressed. First Nations groups are now protesting in Ontario, where cobalt, copper and nickel mining is planned. Local groups have launched a legal challenge.

Time for better

Some progress has come. In 2021, after much delay, the government passed a law recognising the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which commits it to act in accordance with the declaration. But critics say little has changed.

There’s been some progress with high-level representation. In 2021, Canada appointed its first Indigenous governor general, Mary Simon, from the Inuit community. Last year, Wab Kinew was elected premier of Manitoba, the first provincial leader from the First Nations; the defeated party had ran campaign ads emphasising its unwillingness to pay for the search for the Winnipeg victims. Meanwhile, in Ontario’s provincial parliament, politicians now have the right to speak in the local Indigenous language.

Some First Nations groups have been able to strike consultation deals with developers and extractive companies. These can however be controversial, as other groups insist they cause division among Indigenous people. In British Colombia, a First Nations group has taken matters into its own hands and unilaterally declared a marine protected area. Last year, British Colombia authorities also handed over title to more than 200 islands to the Haida Nation.

But attempts to assert Indigenous rights, and the incremental progress that comes with them, risk provoking a backlash. In Australia last year, an attempt to establish a consultative body to give Indigenous people a greater say failed in a referendum, and opposition politicians have since grown more emboldened in their calls against further progress. New Zealand’s 2023 election saw a highly divisive campaign, with some of the parties that went on to form a government promising to reverse recent policies to advance Indigenous rights – pledges that are now becoming reality.

Canada is due to hold a national election by October 2025. As things stand, opinion polls suggest the right-wing Conservative Party will defeat the incumbent centrist Liberal Party. If the gap in the polls narrows, the fight could get nasty, and Indigenous rights could come under fire. Painstakingly achieved gains could be reversed. This must be avoided. Politicians must make clear that Indigenous rights will not be up for dispute. The Canadian state has a historic debt towards Canada’s Indigenous people, and this must be addressed by governments regardless of political colour.

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