First Nations assert their right to self-determination

Exasperated by the lack of listening from the Legault government, the chiefs of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador (AFNQL) announced Thursday the launch of a “Strategy for the affirmation of their rights to self-determination”.

Vincent Larin
The Press

Meeting at the Sheraton Hotel in Montreal in assembly, the chiefs decided after two days of deliberation to create the Office of Self-Determination and Self-Government.

“I would like to remind Premier François Legault that no, we are very much alive, the First Nations are very much alive and committed to their future,” declared AFNQL Chief Ghislain Picard, closing the event. . He was then referring to a joke by the leader of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) launched the day before against Liberal MP Pierre Arcand.

Except that Ghislain Picard, he was in no mood to laugh. Since the beginning of the CAQ’s mandate in 2018, the First Nations “have lent themselves to consultation exercises, [ont entrepris] to propose solutions, to propose amendments to key bills”, but “we feel that the door is far from open”.

Many complaints

A few months before the next general election in Quebec, the AFNQL intends to make its demands heard.

Among the many recriminations of the AFNQL: the absence of its recommendations in Bill 15 aimed at reforming the Youth Protection Act and the decline of Quebec on the inclusion of the notion of cultural security in the modification of the Health and Social Services Act.

As another example of the lack of consideration given by Premier François Legault to the issues of concern to First Nations, Chief Ghislain Picard remembers his visit to the Grand Cercle Economique des Peuples Indiens et du Québec last November.

The Strategy for the affirmation of the right to self-determination adopted during the AFNQL assembly provides for the creation of an “Office of self-determination and self-government”. This new mechanism must allow, among other things, the AFNQL:

• to increase the capacities of First Nations to develop their own laws adapted to their realities;
• to pool resources on self-government, legislative powers and the right to self-determination;
• to conduct research in areas of interest to self-determination.

Concerns over the reform of Bill 101

Alongside Ghislain Picard, the grand chief of the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, Kahsennenhawe Sky-Deer, said she was relieved by the decision of the Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, to finally reject an amendment proposed by the Liberal Party of Quebec to its reform of Bill 101.

This amendment, if it had been included in the final version of Bill 96, would have required students in English-speaking CEGEPs, including rights holders (i.e. those who studied in English in elementary and secondary ), to take three courses of their college education in French in order to obtain their diploma.

However, members of the Kahnawake community, whose first two languages ​​are Mohawk and English, have been unfairly affected, according to Grand Chief Sky-Deer. The fact that all CEGEP students in the province will have to take at least three French courses according to the proposed reform – in the absence of three courses in French – continues to worry him.

“What is most important for indigenous communities is that we can first speak our own languages, above all. […] Our priority must be to be able to speak indigenous languages, not foreign languages,” she says.