Anniversary of 'Red Paper' highlights First Nations' fight against assimilation

A grassroots group in Edmonton honoured those who stood up for First Nations rights back in 1970 when the Canadian government was proposing to erase legal distinctions between First Nations and other citizens, at an event Wednesday. 

The gathering on June 4 honoured the work that went into creating the document called Citizens Plus (also known as the Red Paper) which argued against the Canadian government's proposal to abolish the Indian Act and end treaties. 

Lewis Cardinal from Sucker Creek First Nation in Alberta is the senior advisor for Indigenous Knowledge and Wisdom Centre where the event was held. 

Cardinal said the Red Paper was a watershed moment that deserves to be remembered. 

"A lot of people don't know the significance of it… [because] the context and the significance of it just hasn't been told enough," he said. 

Cardinal also has a personal connection to the history — his father Don Cardinal was a vice-president of the Indian Association of Alberta and part of the group that helped create the paper. 

In June 1969, Jean Chretien, then minister of Indian Affairs, presented the Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, also known as the White Paper, to Parliament. The paper proposed abolishing the Indian Act and ending Indian status purportedly as a way to improve outcomes for First Nations people and achieve "full and equal participation" in Canadian society. 

First Nations leaders were outraged by the paper's push toward assimilation and spent the next year organizing before publishing their own paper emphasizing the importance of treaties and the distinct rights of First Nations.  

Cardinal said Joe Couture was the person responsible for giving the paper its colloquial name.

"Of course they always had a sense of humour. 'There's a White Paper, let's have a Red Paper,'" Cardinal said. 

The Red Paper begins by emphasizing the importance of treaties and says that "the government has devised a scheme whereby… our people would be left with no land and consequently the future generation would be condemned to the despair and ugly spectre of urban poverty."

It also criticizes the paternalism of the Indian Act but adds that "it is neither possible nor desirable to eliminate the Indian Act."

The Indian Act remains controversial but Cardinal says it's still important to preserve Citizens Plus's point: that as the first people of the land, First Nations people are more than just regular citizens. 

"We all agree that the Indian Act has to go, but we don't just get rid of that and not have it replaced with something," he said.