Morgan Martel - VP of Research, CUWLN
January 2023
This month, the long standing battle for Indigenous membership in Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation picks up as plaintiffs head to court to dispute the controversial enrollment processes. On Monday January 23rd, plaintiffs from The Friends of Qalipu Advocacy Association took to the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador to challenge the 2013 supplemental agreement made between the federal government and the Federation of Newfoundland Indians- the organization that founded Qalipu First Nation (Power, 2023).
The 2013 supplemental agreement created a points based system for determining membership in Qalipu First Nation. Under the points system, applicants are required to fulfill a certain number of criteria in five categories including, controversially, the maintenance of Mi’kmaw culture and way of life (Power, 2023). Since their imposition, these retroactively imposed membership criteria have led to the rejection of over 80,000 applicants- 10,500 of which were founding members of Qalipu First Nation (Power, 2023; Meloney, 2018).
Six of these rejected members, who were all founding members of Qalipu, now act as plaintiffs in the legal battle to represent the thousands of ex-members whose memberships were likewise rescinded.
In an earlier decision by the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador, the same six plaintiffs of the 2023 Qalipu court case were ordered to have their membership reinstated (Meloney, 2018). However, at this time, it remained to be seen if the remaining 10,500 founding members would have their membership status restored. This decision had been left to subsequent court cases and negotiations between Canada and Qalipu First Nation to determine the validity of the 2013 supplemental agreement. Now, those same six plaintiffs square off again against Newfoundland and Labrador’s Supreme Court in an attempt to remove the 2013 supplemental agreement’s criteria and restore the membership of Qalipu’s founding members.
The legal struggles that Qalipu First Nation members face is by no means an isolated incident. Since the creation of the Indian Act, the Status system, which does not include Métis or Inuit people, has been used as a tool of assimilation and cultural destruction against First Nation Peoples (Parrott, 2022). Until 1985, the Indian Act still mandated that any First Nation woman who married a non-Status person would lose her Status and even if she married an Indigenous man, her Status would be entirely linked to his as she would become a member of his band and no longer her own (Parrott, 2022).
Although such overtly oppressive measures are no-longer a part of Canadian law, they are forever inscribed in its history and their culturally distancing effects are still felt by Indigenous peoples across the nation. Even those excluded by the Indian Act, such as Qalipu First Nation, are by no means exempt from oppressive membership systems that are being battled even to this day.
References
Meloney, N. (June 27, 2018). Court ruling puts more scrutiny on Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation
enrolment process. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/qalipu-mi-kmaq-first-nation-enrolment-court-decision-1.4722530v.
Parrott, Z. (2022). Indian Act. The Canadian Encyclopedia.
Power, L.A. (January 16, 2023). Qalipu First Nation enrolment controversy reaches 'pivotal
point' as court challenge begins. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/qalipu-membership-court-challenge-1.6713649.
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