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FIRST READING: Everyone hates the Indian Act. So why does it refuse to die?

Progressives say it's racist, conservatives say it encourages government dependency

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FIRST READING: Everyone hates the Indian Act. So why does it refuse to die? Back to video

On Monday, following a summit between first ministers and First Nations leaders, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew brandished his Indian status card in front of reporters, called it a “race-based form of identification” and appealed for the end of the law that made such a thing possible.

That would be the Indian Act. Passed into law 150 years ago, it sets out the basic legal frameworks under which First Nations exist in Canada: How band councils are elected, who qualifies as an “Indian,” and why reserve land can’t be sold or traded without Crown approval. Earlier iterations of the Act even barred Status Indians from voting in federal elections or possessing alcohol.

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Framers of the Indian Act at the time were open about its paternalistic goals, agreeing in House of Commons debates that Indians were “like children to a very great extent” who “required a great deal more protection than white men.”

Nowadays, it would be difficult to name a piece of Canadian federal legislation that is more disliked than the........

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