Minister of Indigenous Services Mandy Gull-Masty (centre left) holds six-month-old Annora Crowe on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, during a Cree ceremony welcoming the arrival of a new child.
After striking down parts of the Indian Act relating to status recognition as unconstitutional, the Supreme Court of British Columbia gave the federal government until April 30 to amend the 1876 statute. The deadline will not be met. Why draw out the delay, ask the signatories of this letter.
We dream of a free identity: one we choose, but also one that connects us. It is shaped both by our own decisions and by transmission across generations, at the heart of families and nations. Identity is an encounter: with oneself, with the other, a living bond that transforms and elevates us. But this way of remaining free and sovereign is not guaranteed to everyone.
Did you know that in Canada, a federal statute determines who is recognized as an "Indian" and who may pass that status on to their children? This status confers rights and recognizes a legal tie to a community.
An outdated law
In 1876, the federal government adopted the Indian Act, thereby claiming for itself the right to decide who is Indigenous and who is not.
Let us first clarify that "Indians in Canada" are not from India. The newcomers of the colonial era candidly believed themselves to be in India, hence the term "Indian," which remains embedded in the Act to this day. Outdated in every sense.
The Indian Act applies to only one of the three groups recognized as "Indigenous peoples" in Canada, namely First Nations. The other two groups, Inuit and Métis, have nonetheless been subject to other policies that produced effects of assimilation and marginalization.
The second-generation cut-off
In 1985, the regime governing "Indian status" was restructured to correct, in part, the discrimination denounced most notably by many Indigenous women who had lost their status through marriage to a non-Indigenous man. Section 6 of the Indian Act then established categories of status by setting rules that still govern its transmission from one generation to the next.
As things now stand, after two generations of parents without status, that status may cease to be transmitted, even when the children speak their ancestral language, live in their community and identify fully with their culture. This is what is known as the "second-generation cut-off," a situation that raises serious concerns about discrimination.
For years, various United Nations rights committees have called on Canada to eliminate the discrimination generated by its Indian Act, particularly toward Indigenous women and their descendants.
In October 2024, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) issued its concluding observations, recommending among other things that Canada amend the Indian Act to remove any "legal provision that does not recognize the equal right of women and men to transmit their Indian status to their children" and "eliminate all other categories or classes of Indian status, including differences in eligibility arising from dates of birth and marriage before and after 1985."
In March 2026, the UN Human Rights Committee issued its concluding observations on Canada's compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Canada in 1976. In essence, it found that Canada should step up efforts to eliminate the discrimination in the Indian Act against Indigenous women and their descendants, notably by reforming the second-generation rule and ensuring full equality of rights.
Why this national status quo despite international pressure?
To begin with, Indigenous peoples do not all hold the same position: some want major amendments to the Indian Act to restore status to those who have been excluded, while others seek its outright abolition; still others refuse an "Indian" status imposed by the federal government without consultation or referendum, even to redress a historical wrong.
How, then, should this be settled? And above all, who should settle it? The federal government? The courts? Parliament? Indigenous peoples themselves, by referendum? The Indigenous women who were excluded from their nation and their lands? Their descendants?
To ask these questions is to touch the essence of a sharp and palpable tension currently tearing at not only Canada's Parliament, but also a number of First Nations communities.
The April 30, 2026 deadline was set by the Supreme Court of British Columbia, which found the Indian Act unconstitutional in the Nicholas case.
There is a sense of urgency.
And, paradoxically, a difficulty in deciding.
The federal government is asking for more time. Why draw out the delay?
How do we resolve this crisis of legitimacy?
At the crossroads of worlds demanding justice and reparation, one must sometimes have the courage to choose an interpretation of the law that allows for inclusion while refusing discrimination.
