This is an excerpt from the very first edition of Temperature Check, a weekly newsletter about what’s hot, and what’s not, when it comes to energy and the environment in Canada. Subscribe now to receive next week’s edition in your inbox — or you’ll be left in the cold!
What’s 150 years old and still making headlines?
The Indian Act, which Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew suggested abolishing this week. The deeply flawed law enshrines Indigenous disenfranchisement in Canada, dictating who does and does not get status rights and limiting many of those rights to reserves. But it also enshrines Canada’s obligations to First Nations and gives them limited but real power — one reason previous attempts to end it by multiple prime ministers failed.
“We do not want the Indian Act retained because it is a good piece of legislation,” Cree lawyer Harold Cardinal wrote in 1969. “It is discriminatory from start to finish. But it is a lever in our hands.” That was during fierce opposition to Pierre Trudeau’s mid-century effort to terminate treaties and convert reserves into real estate. The pushback fuelled a long-lasting movement that eventually drove Section 35 — which recognizes Indigenous people’s inherent rights to not just reserve lands, but wider territories — into the Constitution.
Mark Carney lightly cosigned Kinew’s statement on Monday, then walked back the word “abolish” Tuesday. Whatever the Prime Minister’s appetite to tweak or transform the act, the backdrop is ongoing criticisms of his lack of meaningful engagement with First Nations, as his government pumps billions into resource projects on their territories. History shows that when Indigenous Peoples aren’t adequately consulted, Canada’s courts tend to rule in their favour — pipelines have died on this hill before.
It’s 2026 and for everyone’s sake, politicians’ calls to “abolish the Indian Act” need to include the fine print.
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