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“And the undersigned Chiefs on their own behalf and on behalf of all other Indians inhabiting the tract within ceded, do hereby solemnly promise and engage to strictly observe this treaty, and also to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen”. -Indigenous land surrender and Crown loyalty treaty covenants (Treaty 6)
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Modernity, urbanization and globalism have destroyed pre-contact Indigenous cultures and pre-contact Indigenous independent self government.
As an ironic, counter-intuitive consequence, these universal, historical, irreversible change-agents have led to entirelyilliberal, fantasy-based claims of present-day Indigenous pre-contact cultural preservation and authenticity, allegedly resulting in genuine cultural “difference” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians, and, more importantly, have led to claims of Indigenous independent nation-state sovereignty and independence within the sovereign nation-state of Canada.
The more obvious it is that pre-contact Indigenous cultures and sovereign independence have vanished, the more it is that present Indigenous leaders claim that they are alive and thriving! It’s truly an “Emperor has no clothes” phenomenon, which is tragic for Indigenous peoples, and is typified by UNDRIP, which is supported by Canada’s non-Indigenous elites, now seemingly including our new Prime Minister, Mark Carney.
Unprecedented, illiberal and radical Indigenous political/legal demands are now being routinely made against Canada and Canadians– demands rooted in Western capitalism, Western political theory and materialism– for legal recognition of their alleged, purely race-based, sovereign nation-based, “inherent rights” to independent self government, in addition to their existing Canadian citizenship rights arising from Canadian law.
Demands are being regularly made for quasi- separatist, Quebec-like, political “nation-to-nation” de facto nation-state status within Canada, and, based on that status, for legal veto powers over all federal and provincial laws and undertakings possibly affecting their allegedly sovereign, nation-state based “aboriginal rights”.
These demands are clear breaches of the “sacred” land surrender and loyalty covenants given by the Indigenous Chiefs who signed the numbered treaties, by which treaties whatever Indigenous title the Indigenous peoples previously had to the lands was ceded and surrendered to Canada. For example, in Treaty 6 the signing Chiefs covenanted:
“And the undersigned Chiefs on their own behalf and on behalf of all other Indians inhabiting the tract within ceded, do hereby solemnly promise and engage to strictly observe this treaty, and also to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.”
Demands based on these alleged inherent sovereign rights are being made for ownership stakes in proposed resource projects as a condition to agreeing not to attempt to legally block them- a form of danegeld- and for co-management with the Crowns of Canada of all public lands and natural resources.
But First Nations bands are not legitimate nation-states and never can be.
Legitimate nation-states have hierarchical, coherent governing structures and rules-based orders developed organically over centuries. They are capable of providing and maintaining law and order. They are supported by independent institutions and organized bureaucratic systems interacting with each other on an impersonal, secular basis. They have a functioning economy and a large, educated population to maintain it.
None of these basic state characteristics are present on First Nations reserves or self-governing territories, so those illiberal, fantasy-based demands can never be fulfilled.
And, to the specific point herein, legitimate nation states tax their citizens in order to raise the necessary revenues tofund their usual national activities and undertakings and to take care of themselves in emergency situations, something that Canadian First Nations “nations” do not do.
Thus, on their own, they cannot carry out any of the normal functions of a nation or a nation-state, and in emergencies, they definitely cannot take care of themselves. In all these situations they are totally dependent upon Canada and Canadian taxpayers to sustain them, and, in emergency situations, to bail them out.
There is a law-and-order crisis on Canada’s First Nations’ socially chaotic reserves and self-governing territories, with which First Nations lack the institutional resources to cope. Accordingly, Indigenous people are vastly overrepresented in Canada’ criminal justice system.
Rates of domestic violence are 16 times higher on reserves than off. Indigenous women have an overall rate of violent victimization that is double that of Indigenous men and close to triple that of non-Indigenous women.
There’s a child welfare crisis on reserves.
Alcohol, and the child neglect that results from it, and the opioid crisis, are devastating Indigenous communities, which find themselves helpless against the bootleggers and drug dealers.
The James Smith Cree Nation tragedy epitomizes the profound social dysfunction and dangers of First Nations reserve life, where ten people were stabbed to death by a drug-crazed reserve resident who, with a publicly known, outstanding arrest warrant against him, had been harboured on the reserve for days before the tragic event.
But for First Nations elites, preserving their power and all the government money that comes with it, and preserving and augmenting the purported independence, self-determination and sovereignty of their faux “nations”, which will only guarantee more of such tragic, reserve-based Indigenous suffering, always takes precedence over preserving and enhancing the well-being of their people.
(Only eliminating the reserve system itself can ever accomplish the preservation and enhancement of the well-being of Indigenous peoples.)
And so, respecting and following the sovereignty-devolving letter and spirit of UNDRIP, and consistent with First Nation elites’ assertions of Indigenous “national” and independent sovereignty, which ostensibly includes having their own, long-standing Indigenous legal orders, Canadian police services legislation, both federal (RCMP) and Provincial, excludes the enforcementof First Nations laws and by-laws, which are not deemed to be “laws of Canada or laws in force in any province”.
In accordance with the wishes of Indigenous elites, First Nations laws and bylaws are treated as the laws of separate nations i.e. “nations” separate from the nation of Canada and not part of Canadian law.
In this regard, the uncontrollable social chaos on reserves only partially detailed above, and recent Indigenous lawsuits relating to it, illustrate the emptiness of the Indigenous “separate nation” concept, and the hypocrisy of Indigenous elites who advance it as a serious idea.
In British Columbia all First Nations there are supporting the Heiltsuk First Nation Charter challenge lawsuit against Canada and the RCMP, claiming the RCMP’s ongoing failure to enforce Heiltsuk trespass bylaws on Heiltsuk reserve lands, duly enacted under the Indian Act, amounts to unequal and discriminatory treatment that infringes their alleged section 15 Charter rights to receive equal protection and benefit of the law without discrimination.
In Ontario the “Chiefs of Ontario”, expressly admitting that First Nations laws “generally do not function in Ontario”, have launched a similar lawsuit against Ontario and Canada, for “failing to keep First Nations safe”.
If First Nations are separate, independent, sovereign nations, what right to they have to be claiming rights and benefits under the laws of Canada- a different, separate nation? Generally, only citizens of a nation-state can claim rights against it.
If Indigenous people, as their leaders say, are citizens of separate, independent, sovereign nations, shouldn’t it be the sole responsibility of those “national” leaders and of those separate “nations” to enforce their own laws and keep their people safe?
Why should that be the responsibility of the presumably separate, different nation of Canada?
Canada is not expected to be called upon to enforce American laws. If First Nations bands are separate, independent nations, why should the situation be any different with them?
First Nations’ elites want the benefits of claiming “independence” from Canada, but hypocritically they eschew the natural, corresponding burdens of independence, which in these situations, involves, amongst many other things, taxing their own “citizens” in order to establish and maintain their own institutions to enforce and prosecute their own “Indigenous legal order” laws.
But no, they unreasonably and hypocritically expect Canada and Canadian taxpayers to pay for this.
Their hypocrisy and demanding-their-cake-and-eating-it-too attitude is shown even more by the fact that in these lawsuits they are claiming that they are being denied equal treatment under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the same law the same Chiefs recently convinced the Supreme Court of Canada in the Vuntut Gwitchen case should not apply in First Nations “nations”, which, as a result of this decision, are Charter-free zones!
Imagine: These arrogant, entitled, elitist, hypocritical Indigenous litigants are basing their lawsuits on a law – the Charter of Rights- the validity and enforceability of which they deny applies to themselves!
If these B.C. and Ontario First Nations were successful in their lawsuits Canadian police and justice officials could be faced with the absurd situation of having to enforce and prosecute an Indigenous non-Canadian Charter compliant law, which law, by definition, would be illegal and unconstitutional under Canada’s laws and contrary to Canadian values. Canadian police in this situation would be duty-bound to act illegally!
First Nations elites tout their own “Indigenous legal orders” and their right to make their own laws, but, bottom line, a nation that lacks the ability to enforce its own laws is no real nation at all.
It’s not just in the area of law enforcement that First Nations bands show that they are not legitimate nations.
In 2023 138 First Nation bands started a class action lawsuit against Canada claiming that Canada has been negligent in its duty of ensure safe reserve housing for Indigenous reserve residents. The suit is ongoing.
If First Nations are separate nations, why does Canada owe them any such duty?
Canada only owes duties to its own citizens.
Such a duty is not contained in any treaty with First Nations.
If such a duty could ever exist on the part of any government to its citizens, shouldn’t the duty in this case be on the shoulders of First Nations’ “national” governments?
It should.
And again, they should tax their own “citizens” in order to raise the revenues to carry out this duty. They should not demand that the taxpayers of Canada- a separate nation according to Indigenous elites- carry out this duty.
The hypocrisy never ends, and the examples of it are legion.
One more: northern Canada First Nations, while being evacuated by Canada and the affected Provinces- usually by airplanes- from dangerous, northern wildfire areas, and then housed in Southern Canadians hotels, mostly at the expense of Canadian taxpayers, are at the same time telling Canadians that no Canadian resource development in the same area- their “traditional territories”- can occur- even in the national “emergency” situation created by the American government- without them being extensively consulted, (for which they demand to be paid), and without their free, prior and informed consent.
The hypocrisy and the lack of appreciation for the financial burdens that the Canadian taxpayer shoulders on their behaves is stunning.
First Nations should not be able to have it both ways.
If, as they say, (in complete breach of their treaty obligations to be loyal to the Canadian Crown), they are independent, self-governing nations, they should stop asking Canada and Canadian taxpayers to pay for everything for them.
They should “take care of themselves”.
Like the independent nation of Canada, which is being asked by its allies to pull its own weight in terms of paying more for its own national self-defence, so should the self-professed independent, self-governing First “Nations” of Canada be told to either stop claiming “independence” from Canada whenever its to their financial advantage to do so, (while always eschewing the natural burdens of such independence), or alternatively, be told to pull their own weight as independent nations – take care of themselves– without always running to Canada and Canadians to sustain them or bail them out.
Of course, the core problem with this latter option is that their claims of independent, separate nationhood are in fact ludicrous and are in fact, weightless.
The only “weight” they have is that which is benevolently given to them by non-Indigenous judicial and political elites and by the Canadian taxpayer.
They have none of their own self-created “weight” to pull.
Everyone knows this, and for Canadian Indigenous and non-Indigenous elites to falsely pretend and claim and behave otherwise is hypocrisy of the rankest sort and a betrayal of, not only the Indigenous sacred covenants given in the numbered treaties, but of the best interests of Canada and of all Canadians.
The plain fact is that the “emperors” of Indigenous “nations” have no clothes.
For the sake of all Canadians, including the vast majority of powerless and marginalized Indigenous Canadians, Canada’s laws, policies and attitudes regarding First Nations must change to reflect this naked truth.
Peter Best
June 13, 2025
