Indigenizing parliament: time to re-start a conversation.

• Author: Morden, Michael
• Position: Essay

While acknowledging the deep ambivalence on the part of the Indigenous political class about the desirability of greater representation in Parliament, based on a long history of settler colonialism and formal political exclusion, the author posits that it would be a mistake to leave parliamentary reform out of the broader exploration of reconciliation that is currently underway. Without prejudicing outcomes by advocating for particular reforms, the author outlines some historic models from Canada and aboard and some of the challenges that participants will face when restarting this conversation.

Indigenous peoples play an ever more central role in political life in Canada. Episodes like the Idle No More movement, or ongoing contention over resource extraction attract a new kind of attention and intellectual investment on the part of non-Indigenous peoples. The challenge of building a more consensual political community in the aftermath of settler colonialism is an entirely mainstream preoccupation, more now than ever before. But curiously, the question of reforming political institutions has rather receded from view. In particular, parliamentary reform and "decolonization" have existed in separate intellectual universes.

In previous decades, when confronted with earlier waves of Indigenous mobilization, Canadian elites had begun to explore the potential for reform of the political system to improve the representation of Indigenous peoples. "Self-government" entered common settler parlance in the 1980s, and echoed through later phases of constitutional upheaval--in the Aboriginal rights constitutional conferences of the mid-80s, and later in the Charlottetown Accord. This was largely a conversation about strengthening band governments, but reform of political institutions at the centre was also contemplated. Most notable, from a parliamentary perspective, was the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Published in 1996, its call for the creation of an Indigenous third house of parliament--the House of First Peoples--reads as no less dramatic and startling a prescription to emerge from a quasi-state voice 20 years later. This is certainly an indication of how little movement in this direction, or any direction, there has been since.

There are several possible explanations for why this is the case. In the first place, Indigenous peoples in Canada have not made reform of central political institutions a priority. They have overwhelmingly focussed on their own nation-building and it is not difficult to understand why. Actually, it goes much further than that. There is broad skepticism and, in many instances, specific opposition to any project which seeks to envelop Indigenous peoples more fully in Canadian institutions. This types of projects are often seen as diminishing the nationhood of Indigenous peoples and advancing the assimilationist project which has pursued the "objective ... to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic" (in the words of Duncan Campbell Scott, premier Indian Affairs bureaucrat of the early 20th century). Second, we have become deeply accustomed to Indigenous political expression happening--in large part--outside of formal political institutions. Setting band governance aside, the strongest articulations of Indigenous political representation at the national level come through direct action, such as Idle No More, and lobbying from peak advocacy organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations. Indigenous representation outside of Canadian institutions is the convention.

But it is not clear that any of this alone absolves the Canadian political community from examining seriously how to make our institutions more inclusive, representative, and reflective of the Indigenous presence. It remains the case that the policy decisions which have the largest impact on Indigenous communities are made by Canadian politicians in legislatures across the country. In very simple terms, this makes the relative absence of Indigenous peoples from federal Parliament and the provincial legislatures a live issue, and one which cannot be ignored in the broader conversation about reconciliation.

What--if anything--does "we are all treaty people" mean for parliamentary democracy? This paper addresses the question by first, providing some historical context and examining older reform proposals, focussing particularly on that which was advanced in the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 20 years ago; second, placing Canada in its comparative context by exploring other models for parliamentary institutional innovation in settler states with Indigenous populations; and third, offering some preliminary considerations on a possible reform agenda. I will argue that building Indigenous representation at the centre need not diminish the treaty relationship, or interfere with the project of seeking true autonomy for Indigenous governments. But there remain several critical intellectual and design challenges, which need to be accounted for to ensure that reform does not become an act of misrecognition.

The unhappy history of inclusion

Long before institutional reform was contemplated, the question of Indigenous participation rested on citizenship--inclusion of the individual Indigenous person through enfranchisement. In the 19th century, this was exclusively and explicitly an instrument of assimilation. When enfranchisement provisions were created in the Gradual Civilization Act, 1857, they were the product of a shift in policy aims, from creating "civilized" and self-sustaining Indigenous communities, to erasing the Indigenous presence through absorption, one individual at a time. (1) Enfranchisement permitted an educated and debt-free Indigenous man to apply to surrender his Indian status and become a full British subject. Exactly one person took advantage of this opportunity in the following two decades, which convinced Indian Affairs policymakers to develop a more forceful tool. Various other schemes were contemplated, including Macdonald's Franchise Act of 1885, which extended the franchise to property-owning Indigenous males living east of Manitoba. The Act was fiercely opposed and later revoked by a Liberal government. Later, the Indian Act was amended to permit involuntary enfranchisement of individuals deemed suitable by Indian Affairs bureaucrats. This extraordinary power was wielded as a weapon. For example, Indian Affairs officials conspired to enfranchise Frank Loft, the founder of the League of Indians, after he proved himself a powerful critic and effective organizer in opposition to the Department. He fiercely denounced the measure, which would have stripped him of his Indian status--describing it as "denationalization." It is no wonder, then, that when Status Indians were granted the unconditional right to vote in Canadian elections in 1960, many viewed the move with supreme skepticism, and demanded to know whether this was intended to diminish their treaty relationship with the Canadian state.

Rates of Indigenous electoral participation in central institutions are routinely low and turnout amongst Indigenous voters is generally lower on average than that of non-Indigenous voters. (2) This is likely attributable in some part to principled opposition to participation in Canadian institutions, though there is also evidence to suggest that Indigenous participation is suppressed by same structural factors (education levels, political resources, age distribution, etc.) which reduce participation amongst some segments of the non-Indigenous population. (3) Anecdotally, the "to vote or not vote" question provokes a powerful and complex debate in the Indigenous public sphere. This was on display during the 2015 federal election when, for example, National Chief Perry Bellegarde of the Assembly of First Nations publicly equivocated about whether or not he would vote, while encouraging other First Nations to do so. (4) Indigenous peoples are also reliably underrepresented amongst parliamentarians. According to the Library of Parliament, prior to 2015 there had been just 34 Indigenous MPs since Confederation, along with 15 senators. (5) Indigenous representation in the current Parliament is at an historic high-water mark, with ten MPs--about 3 per cent of the House of Commons, when Indigenous peoples represent closer to 5 per cent of the population.

The history of Canada's central representative institutions vis-a-vis indigenous peoples, in sum, blends...