Grassroots Indigenous resistance on Parliament Hill, Canada Day, 2017. Photo by Jonathan Reed.

In the fear and fury generated by the Trump administration’s thuggish treatment of Canada and other allies and trade partners, Canadian political elites and current contenders for public office have donned the Captain Canada mantle. Virtually all political parties and think tanks are asserting Canadian sovereignty, and making commitments to jobs and incomes by proposing new mechanisms to ensure expedited approvals of priority infrastructure and industrial projects.

In this melee, Indigenous nations, and our rights and interests, are not discussed: we remain marginal. Our rights attract attention only when political elites and indeed, most Canadians, think the political agenda is relaxed enough to tolerate it or there is something to gain through our inclusion.

Indigenous peoples’ rights have a legal basis and some Constitutional recognition domestically, and more robust recognition in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the gold standard for these rights. Any national policy that ignores these realities will be expensive, and vulnerable to both litigation and civil society opposition, as evidenced by the pipeline fights in British Columbia and the fishing wars in Mi’kmaw territory. Further, Ontario’s “Ring of Fire,” invoked by some politicians as an immediate source of state-approved projects for its untapped mineral wealth, is situated on unceded Treaty 9 Indigenous territory.

Ignoring Indigenous nations and rights as Canada enters a new economic chapter would shred Canada’s reputation, much as ignoring the Canada-United........

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