A small group of us were returning from a guided tour through the grasslands on a sunny October afternoon when I picked up on the familiar scent of burning wood. Curious, I made my way toward the small peak overlooking the prairie, where a bonfire was lit and a young woman stood in a large metal bucket. It almost looked like she was dancing. A few people were smiling and laughing around her, as she continued her gentle footwork — the traditional Anishinaabe way of processing wild rice. Also known as threshing or jigging, it requires someone to gently trample the wild rice to separate the edible grain from the outer husk. 

The demonstration was part of Prairie Day at the Alderville Black Oak Savanna — a hub of conservation and restoration — where individuals from both within and outside of Alderville First Nation are invited to spend the day.

According to one estimate, only one per cent of the tallgrass prairie ecosystems remain intact around the world, and preserving them is critical to ensuring the survival of rare traditional medicines and rare species at risk. These types of grasslands also serve as a highly effective carbon sink, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that would otherwise contribute to global warming. And grasslands store the majority of that carbon in the soil, rather than above ground, meaning it’s less at risk of being released by fire or drought.

Wild rice doesn’t grow in the savanna, but it does just down the road in Rice Lake, and it was once found in waterways across southern Ontario. In Ojibwe civil rights activist Eddie Benton-Banai’s retelling of the oral history surrounding the western migration of the Anishinaabe to the Great Lakes, he wrote that they followed a prophecy about “a land where the food grows on the water.”  However, many of the wild rice beds in southern Ontario, including Rice Lake, were destroyed or damaged by shoreline development, dredging, introduced species and damming. 

Some people, like Alderville community Elder Jeff Beaver, are trying to bring back the practice of harvesting wild rice, or manoomin, which translates to “good seed” and is recognized as a gift from the Creator. Beaver’s research and work to help restore wild rice beds in the Williams Treaties region began decades ago. On Prairie Day, he guided the visitors through wild rice processing.  

From her bucket beside the bonfire, Rageous May-Vokes lifted one moccasin after another, dancing on the rice, separating the husk from the grain that had sustained her ancestors for centuries. She is from Alderville First Nation, but never had the chance to try manoomin from Rice Lake before today. “This experience makes me feel connected back to my community, our teachings and where we originally come from,” May-Vokes says.

In the 1830s, some Michi Saagiig Anishinabeg migrated to the south shore of Rice Lake, about two hours east of Toronto, after being forced by British settlers to surrender their traditional lands around the Bay of Quinte. Upon arrival they noticed that sections of the land had been burned for the cultivation of corn, beans and squash by the Haudenosaunee community that previously lived on the land. The presence of fire on these lands shaped the biodiverse conditions of the ecosystem and gave the land its name: “Pamitaashkodeyong” which means “where it burns and where it travels” or “lake of the burning plains.” That practice was continued by the Michi Saagiig Anishinabeg of Alderville First Nation.

For centuries, under the care of the Haudenosaunee and then the Anishinaabe, the tallgrass prairie thrived due to the traditional practice of burning. But at some point, that practice stopped. Rick Beaver, one of the founders of the Black Oak Savanna, points to colonial expansion, infrastructure development and the Indian Act. “It came into being and we no longer had control over our territories, ” he says. “With that comes the suppression and extinction, in some cases, of traditional practices like burning, language and other customs that are appropriate to harmonize with living on the land, loving the land and acknowledging the connection between all things.” 

Like harvesting and processing wild rice, cultural burns that give way to prairie ecosystems were nearly extinguished.

In a speech at the Prairie Day event, former Alderville Chief Dave Mowat said the Indian Act wasn’t concerned with the environment. “It was just concerned with undermining traditional government systems.”

In 1999, Alderville First Nation was in need of more housing on its reserve land to accommodate a growing population. At the time, the land now known as the Black Oak Savanna was proposed for a new housing development. But Mowat and Rick Beaver, both of whom had grown up on Alderville First Nation, knew the environmental significance of these lands. As children, they ran through these fields. The land carried the Elders’ teachings and stories — and they were determined to protect it. 

Mowat, who held a position in the economic development department of Chief and Council at the time,  supported a preliminary biological survey of the area. Along with a few community members, Beaver, a biologist by training, spent a season surveying the area and sent the findings to the federal department then called Environment Canada. A biologist there agreed the area had ecological value. The land was then registered under the habitat stewardship program for species at risk, which halted construction plans. “It was strange, it was almost like Environment Canada was waiting for us,” Mowat says.

With support from the band council and Environment Canada, the Alderville Black Oak Savanna was founded later that year. When Beaver was hired to lead the restoration efforts as the savanna’s first natural heritage coordinator, he recalled, “the land was a patchwork of savanna prairie.” Parts of the land that were historically prairie had been plowed into agricultural fields. “The band was leasing them out to local farmers to produce hay, corn, oats, soybeans, various grains, wheat, oats, rye,” Beaver says.  

In the absence of fire, and the practice of managing grasslands for traditional food, medicine and wildlife, the prairie and savanna were slowly fading away. The woods were expanding their roots and non-native species were creeping across the farm fields of the dying savanna.

Over the last two decades, fire has been reintroduced to the lands as a way of managing the environment. If you visit the Alderville Black Oak Savanna today, you will witness a thriving tallgrass prairie: heath aster and New Jersey tea, big bluestem and a scattering of black oak trees at the northernmost stretch of their range. As a fire-dependent ecosystem in a place where fire is otherwise immediately suppressed, tallgrass prairie and black oak savanna would not be able to thrive without human stewardship.

The Alderville prairie is the “antithesis of that narrative that people are bad for the environment,” Radek Odolczyk, stewardship and restoration coordinator at the Alderville Black Oak Savanna, says. “It’s a cultural legacy on the land that’s telling you that we can actually improve biodiversity and resilience.”

Work on the Alderville Black Oak Savanna happens all year. When the snow melts and the land begins to thaw, the team starts preparing. First, they designate the areas that are in need of a burn by looking at the health of the plants and data on how much seed they’re producing. “You never get as good of a yield, in terms of seed in a tallgrass prairie, as you do the year after it was burned,” Odolczyk explains. “The thatch that’s accumulated is preventing water from penetrating the grain and getting down to the soil. When you burn, all those nutrients that are captured in dead plant material are released back into the soil.” 

Early in the spring, once the areas in need of burning are identified, Odolczyk goes over the logistics and conditions that will affect the burn. “You’re doing everything leading up to that burn to make sure that it goes the way that you intend for it to go,” he says. Burns take place in the different areas throughout the rest of the spring season, but they never burn more than a quarter of each type of habitat, leaving refuge for various species. After a burn, the team might reseed the grass to help nature along, and they’ll monitor as animals return to the land after a long winter.

As the days get warmer, the focus shifts to managing the presence of invasive, or non-native, species, which “are one of the biggest threats to biodiversity, especially in southern Ontario,” Odolczyk says. European buckthorn, dog-strangling vine, spotted knapweed and Canada thistle are some of the more common non-native species found in the Black Oak Savanna. Burning is the main control method used at the savanna, because many of the non-native species do not have the same historical relationship with fire as tallgrass prairie. However, dog-strangling vine, which has no natural checks and balances in southern Ontario, is adapted to fire, and much harder to control. The team physically removes it or turns to herbicides. 

Spring blooms into summer and plants begin to yield their seeds. The team collects some of the seeds to spread to areas that need propagating, they store some for the next growing season and in other areas let nature take its course. “They’ve been pretty dang successful so far, several million years along,” Odolczyk says.

The Mitigomin Native Plant Nursery was established at the Alderville Black Oak Savanna in 2019, and up and running by 2023. Its coordinator, Gillian di Petta, has focused on experimenting with plant growth to learn what conditions allow the plants to thrive, such as whether plants that have been recently burned produce more viable seeds.

Many of the plants grown in the nursery are contributed to local restoration efforts within the Rice Lake Plains Partnership — a stewardship project involving Alderville First Nation, private landowners, conservation groups and government agencies — or to other local programs. “We have a partnership with Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board, which is the local school board in our area, and we work with them to put in native plant gardens at specific schools,” di Petta says. Community members are also given access to traditional medicines grown in the nursery.

As the days get shorter and colder, the team begins the process of suppression and succession: to keep the woods from encroaching on the prairie, the team either cuts down certain parts of the forest or girdles the trees — making shallow cuts to the bark, leading trees to die slowly while remaining upright. 

Most of this takes place in the winter because it has less of a negative impact on the ecosystem. “If we were to do this during the growing season, we’d potentially run [over] areas with ATVs. Or if we have to drop a tree, there might be birds nesting in that tree,” Odolczyk says. “The advantage of doing this through the winter is that everything’s dormant and the ground is frozen.” 

The work being done to manage the woods in the winter shapes how the area will thrive in the seasons ahead.

This past summer, the staff of Alderville Black Oak Savanna discovered a red-headed woodpecker at the edge of the grassland restoration area in one of those dead-standing trees. Red-headed woodpeckers are on the list of endangered species in Ontario. They have a high death rate from traffic collisions and development has clawed away at their habitat and food resources. Pesticides have diminished their ability to reproduce. 

Over the years, these birds have made pit stops in Alderville First Nation on their migration journey. But this was the first time Beaver remembers seeing one nesting on these lands. 

“Like any species, if you take the time to understand them carefully, you will understand that they are speaking about the conditions of the earth in very specific terminology and language,” Beaver says of the red-headed woodpeckers. “What does that mean with respect to the land? Well, it means it’s suitable for them.” 

The sighting was a testament to their two and a half decades of environmental stewardship.

When the Black Oak Savanna started out in 1999, Mowat recalls there being very little funding. Beaver was working out of the trunk of his car. “We had no equipment. It was a skeleton operation, but we knew it was important,” Mowat says. “When I reflect back 25 years, what it’s become is quite remarkable.” 

Alderville First Nation is to thank, Mowat says, for the savanna’s expansion from about 37 hectares of land to more than double that today, at 81 hectares.  Over the years, Alderville members would come to the Black Oak Savanna to sell their neighbouring CP land — which refers to Certificate of Possession, a specific type of land tenure that recognizes the lawful possession of the land, and the right to occupy and develop it, but the legal title is still held by the Government of Canada.

The acquisition of land over the years was a slow process, Mowat says, but it gained traction when summer students would come work at the savanna, and then go home and tell their parents about it. “What we really had to rely on was education,” he says. Gradually, the community was convinced of the savanna’s value, and more and more land was added. “We’re lucky that it happened that way because we could have had someone sell five acres and a big shop gets put in right next to the savanna, but that never happened,” Mowat says.

As the natural heritage site continued to expand, so did the need for staff to manage it. Over the years, stewardship efforts have evolved to include a reptile and amphibian stewardship program. Alderville First Nation’s location on the south shore of Rice Lake makes it a hotspot for nesting turtles each year. But as their prime nesting locations are in close proximity to roadsides or farms, many turtles are killed or injured each year.

Sisters Grace and Kassie McKeown have led turtle stewardship efforts across Alderville First Nation for years. Grace is now the herptile technician for the savanna, after first starting out as a summer student nearly a decade ago. Kassie is currently a band councillor.

Every spring, there’s a two- to three-week-long period where turtles come up on the shore to lay their eggs, which hatch in August. Grace and Kassie monitor where the turtles make their nests and deploy nest protector boxes —  square wood frames with chicken wire stapled to the top and semi-circle doors cut into the sides. “If you orient it so that the slots of wood that have the holes face the water, the turtles are encouraged to go in a safe direction.”

This year they were able to protect 50 turtle nests. “Not all turtles are going to be saved or able to reach the age of maturity. It just helps their numbers, helps the odds,” Grace explains. 

Like the early days of bringing summer students to work at the savanna, part of the turtle stewardship effort also involves community outreach and education. “Last season, we held a turtle nest protector workshop. Community members got to build their own turtle nest boxes and take them home. We stayed in contact, so they would let me know if they saw a turtle,” Grace says. The hope is that an increase in education will also increase community participation. 

“The more community involvement, the better this program will be.” 

Having a space that cultivates and fosters the connection that humans have with nature and the rest of creation is a part of Alderville First Nation’s pride: “It’s one of our gems,” Mowat says.

Beaver talks to Elders who miss hearing the sounds of eastern meadowlarks, a bird species threatened by the loss of its grassland habitat and in steep decline as a result. He tells them to come and visit the savanna, where the meadowlarks’ song can still be heard.

“It puts a smile on their faces,” he says.

For Beaver, the Black Oak Savanna is a place where people can find joy in nature. “The Earth is not a resource,” he says. “The Earth is a companion, a parent, a teacher, a consoler and I’m convinced that it loves us innately and deeply.”

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The voices of the singers and the rhythmic beat of the drum fill the powwow arena, as the children dance in the sun on this August afternoon. Looking around the crowded wooden bleachers, I see a smile resting on most faces. All of us are sharing in a moment of pure joy, as we watch the next generation of knowledge holders dance with pride around the circle. 

Overhead, an eagle hovers above the young dancers. As a member of the Eagle Clan from the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, I don’t take this sight for granted — especially since I live in Toronto, where you don’t see many birds other than pigeons. But this weekend, I am far away from the condos, the traffic and the sirens. My friends and I have taken a road trip to Wiikwemkoong on Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario, to camp out on the powwow grounds for the Annual Cultural Festival. 

In the Anishinaabe worldview and cosmology teachings that I have received, the Eagle is respected as a great being in Creation. Because the Eagle soars at high altitudes, it is believed these beings fly the closest to Creator. As such, they are one of our connections to the spirit world, carrying prayers and messages from the physical world.

After the eagle floats above the circle for a few minutes, it soars into the clouds, slowly becoming a dark speck in the sky. I wonder if it’s carrying a message to the spirit world today: letting our ancestors know how many people from different communities across Turtle Island (the land now known as North America), have gathered together today to celebrate. To watch our people dance in their sacred clothing, to listen to our songs and to eat some good powwow grub. 

Though powwows originated in the 19th century, Indigenous people have had ceremonial dances and gatherings for centuries. This included gatherings of different nations. Michael Doxtater, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University who comes from Six Nations of the Grand River, says the gatherings originated as trading events. “They would gather in Detroit, Manhattan, Toronto and Montreal. Where there was a confluence of water ways, where a bunch of the Nations would get together and trade. But they would also have social dances, races, gambling and other things going on there,” Doxtater says. Doxtater is also head of Saagajiwe, a home for participation, action and research in Indigenous creative practices and knowledge that is part of The Creative School of the university. I also work under Doxtater at Saagajiwe as a research assistant and events coordinator. 

Trading is still an essential part of powwow culture, but it has also evolved to become a celebration of Indigenous cultural traditions and ways of being. Many elements of the gathering are grounded in our connections with the land, the natural world, our ancestors and our history. 

Our revered Eagle relative is present in many forms at Anishinaabe powwows. One or more Eagle staffs lead the grand entry of the powwow, each with its own design but always dressed in sacred feathers. These staffs are often used at ceremonies such as spirit naming ceremonies and seasonal feasts — in powwows they lead the way because they honour community, culture and history, including inviting the ones from the spirit world into the powwow circle. The Eagle is also represented in many dancers’ individual regalia, and each feather holds meaning and significance.

The styles of social dances and traditional dances performed at powwows, vary across Indigenous Nations. This summer, travelling from the GTA, to Walpole, to Six Nations, to Wiikwemkoong, just a small part of the powwow trail, I have seen the Hoop Dance and the Smoke Dance, which are only performed at certain powwows or in certain communities. Each dance has a different origin story and carries different teachings. But all of the dancers that step into the circle dance to the big drum, known as Mother Earth’s heartbeat. 

‘We’re not just dancing for our physical self, we’re dancing for our spiritual self’

As dances carry cultural meaning and generational history, the dancers carry a responsibility to their communities. 

DJ White, a fancy feather dancer from the Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibwe nations, has travelled across Canada to dance at powwows. 

“We’re not just dancing for our physical self, we’re dancing for our spiritual self,” White says. “We’re dancing for our families, our Elders and our babies, who came to be in the present with us, but they don’t get to partake in the dancing [because of] physical limitations. I also dance for the ones who can’t dance, the ones who are yet to come from the spirit world. And for those who have passed on, like some of my friends and my ancestors.” 

In the 20 years White has been fancy dancing, the designs and elements of his regalia have evolved he has had to remake all of it twice: once because he outgrew the set he was given when he was younger, then again after his regalia was destroyed in a house fire. Each time, it took him around five years to remake all of the pieces. 

White sees regalia as a representation of growth throughout one’s lifetime. “It’s almost like a tree when they add a new layer of bark in their lives,” White says. Some of the original beadwork designs belonged to his big brother, while the beadwork on his cuffs was added later, reflecting something that appeared to him in dreams. “I kind of think of it as a rainbow from the spirit world,” White says. 

The colours in his design — black, white, red, yellow — are used in the Ojibwe medicine wheel, a visual representation of many complex cultural and cosmological teachings. Across Indigenous Nations, there are many variations of the medicine wheel and its teachings. 

In Ojibwe culture, the four colours each symbolize a sacred direction, a cardinal points on the medicine wheel. But each quadrant also stands for a time of day, a season, one of four sacred medicines, an animal, one of four states of being, and four stages of life. Each element of the different quadrants carries teachings and meanings.

The teachings carry through other elements of a powwow. The wheel’s circular form references the cultural belief that everything and everyone in Creation are connected and valued as equals within the community. Some Indigenous communities gather in a circle for meetings and ceremonies to honour this belief. At powwows, the dancers’ arena is always a circle. 

Two spots in the circle that are left open: the eastern doorway and the western doorway, invoking two of the sacred directions in the medicine wheel. Dancers enter the powwow circle through the eastern doorway and exit through the western doorway, to pay homage to the sun. 

Once outlawed, the resurgence of Indigenous powwows is a cause for celebration and a sign of resilience 

Indigenous cultural practices and ways of being are intertwined with the natural world. In the Anishinaabe teachings I have received, our people have been the caretakers and protectors of their ancestral lands for time immemorial, following teachings passed down for generations that allowed us to live in harmony with the land and nature spirits. 

Land-based knowledge has also shaped the teachings and cultural practices of powwows, including dances. Dances like the men’s prairie chicken dance imitates the rooster’s efforts to attract a hen in mating season. The women’s fancy shawl dance evokes the graceful movements of a butterfly. 

However, colonization across Turtle Island led to the oppression of Indigenous Peoples and their cultural practices. Efforts to assimilate Indigenous Peoples began before the Dominion of Canada was even established in 1867. The first church-operated residential school opened in 1831, aiming to replace Indigenous knowledge with colonial and Christian education. In 1857, the Gradual Civilization Act encouraged Indigenous people to give up their Indian Status — including many land-based rights — through a process called enfranchisement. However, not many people were keen on voluntarily assimilating into colonial society. 

In an effort to separate Indigenous Peoples from their cultures and remove them from their ancestral lands, colonial legislation became increasingly oppressive and restrictive of First Nations, Mėtis and Inuit Rights. The 1876 Indian Act built upon the Gradual Civilization Act, and made the existing provisions even harsher. This included outlawing Indigenous Ceremonies and traditional dancing. Indigenous Peoples were also restricted from leaving the small lands “reserved” for them by the Crown, while their vast homelands were plundered for valuable natural resources. 

Under colonial law and legislation, gatherings like powwows and Potlatch ceremonies that celebrated Indigenous ways of life and strong community relationships were almost always outlawed unless sanctioned by the colonial government. Doxtater tells me that Indigenous Peoples were only permitted to wear their regalia in pageants or Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows, primarily to entertain settlers. In 1887, after Canada began funding residential schools nationwide, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald said “The great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are fit to change.” Weakening community relationships and destroying the pride that Indigenous Peoples had for their culture and identity was seen as necessary for “successful” assimilation. 

By the 1920s, the Indian Act enforced mandatory attendance at residential schools for the children of First Nations, Métis and Inuit families, separating them from their homelands, languages and ceremonies. But while colonial family separation has had devastating impacts on individuals and communities that still continue today, the resilience of Indigenous Peoples has kept many cultural practices alive. The resurgence of powwows and ceremonies began again after the ban was removed from the Indian Act in 1951. In the decades since, Indigenous Peoples have been reclaiming their ancestral spiritual practices, clothing, dances and ceremonies, and every summer, there are thousands of powwows across Turtle Island.

“I like to work on the land and show hunting stories when I dance,” Mary Ann Manatch, a woodland traditional dancer from Wiikwemkoong and Rapid Lake First Nations, says. Their unique dance style also incorporates elements from men’s traditional dance. Manatch said telling stories of animals through dance, connects them to the spirit of those animals.

As I travelled the powwow trail this summer Manatch was one of many of the dancers I spoke to who felt like they were connecting to the land that they dance on. This connection can be very healing for both, as the dancer and the land imbue each other’s beings with spirit. 

“When I dance, I feel very emotional. I have always gotten through my emotions through dance,” Alex Jackman, a Mohawk and Algonquin jingle dress dancer, says. Jackman, who is also Bajan, did not find out about her Indigenous ancestry until later in life, and said she finds healing and liberation in dance as she reconnects with her culture. 

The modern powwow is a celebration of Indigenous cultures and community. But it is also a space for healing the generational wounds caused by forced oppression and assimilation. The revitalization of these ceremonies sparks hope — not just for the future generations of Indigenous Peoples, but for the future of Turtle Island. 

In the Hopi Nation, the hoop dance is known as a medicine dance or a healing dance. “So the idea is that as we pass these hoops around our body we are giving out medicine to the people around us,” River Christie-White, who has been practicing the hoop dance for around 11 years, says. 

Dancers tell stories by using their entire bodies to create flowing movements and designs with the hoops, some of which come from their individual creative expression and others from working with the spirits of Creation. 

Christie-White’s regalia is another creative and cultural way to honour parts of their being. “I have Asperger’s syndrome, which is a form of autism. And a lot of the colours here, the green, the red, the yellow, all of those are different colours used to represent autism,” Christie-White says. Ten years ago, Christie-White started Hoops for Hope, which educates people about autism, neurodiversity and other intellectual differences.

The colours of their regalia also express part of Christie-White’s identity as a queer individual, evoking the pride flag and the idea of unity. 

“The hoop dance is about unity and bringing things together. So I think about how those traditional practices come together in everyday life.” 

The history of Indigenous fashion is embedded in regalia

Clothing, blankets and beadwork have transmitted information for a long time, Doxtater says. Hand-signing was a method of cross-cultural communication that allowed Indigenous people from many nations to communicate with others who spoke different languages. 

“They couldn’t understand each other’s languages but they could understand the hand signing,” Doxtater says. He explains that physical items, including some floral and geometric designs featured in Anishinaabe beadwork, built upon and used the hand-signing symbols understood by speakers of many languages. “They would tell a story and you would be able to sign it.” 

Before settler contact, Indigenous Peoples mostly made clothing out of the materials found in nature: buckskin, deer hide, sea beads, sinew and porcupine quills. Colours came from dyes that were similarly obtained from natural resources. During the fur trade period, Indigenous Peoples were introduced to new materials from European settlers. 

“Throughout the fur trade, Indigenous textile artists are introduced to a whole new set of materials that they find fascinating,” Cory Willmott, a professor of anthropology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, says. “One of those things was colours.” She emphasises that the incorporation of these elements was deliberate. “They are choosing what resonates with their worldview, their traditional values and their aesthetic traditions.”. 

Dyes and coloured ribbons were adapted into Indigenous fashions. Because of the cultural teachings that everything in creation has a colour, including our individual spirits, it became a pattern for colours featured in the designs on clothing and beadwork to be an expression of identity and oral history. 

“It is indigenizing European materials into their own Indigenous fashions,” Willmott says. 

Though traditional elements like deer hide, sinew and quills are still used in some pieces on regalia, ribbons and other pieces of clothing are now usually made out of woven materials and sewn with thread. Faux feathers are also used alongside genuine feathers. Still, traditions are being passed down through regalia, which continue to be used to express history and personal identity. 

“It’s very healing for me”: dancers connect to generations of meaning and culture through powwow 

Just over two years ago, I attended my first powwow. I didn’t grow up connected to my Anishinaabe community or cultural practices, and I was just a few years into my reconnection journey. I had so many questions about the different dances, the different styles of regalia. 

As I have continued building my relationship with my community and my culture, I have had the privilege of receiving teachings about powwows, many of which have come from travelling on the trail. But I also challenged myself to learn while doing work in and with the community. For the last two summers, I have worked on the powwow planning committee at Toronto Metropolitan University. 

While attending powwows, I’ve noticed a pattern. Often dancers are bombarded by people who take pictures of them in their regalia — a few told me this feels tokenizing, especially when picture-takers don’t even ask first. I’ve often wondered if people understood or even cared to understand what they were taking a picture of: if they miss the significance, value and respect that Indigenous people have for their regalia, and the layers of meaning and significance they carry. 

“Generations of regalia can be on a dancer,” Madison Noon, a member of Thunderchild Cree First Nation, who has been dancing the jingle style since she was a tiny tot, says. “My yellow beadwork is so important to me because it helped me understand the generation of my aunty and my late mushum. I am wearing my family’s legacy on me, without even knowing the depths of it.” 

Traditional dancing has been an important part of Noon’s journey to becoming a professional dancer. She recently graduated with a bachelor degree in performance dance from Toronto Metropolitan University, and works as a dancer for the Toronto Raptors. “Powwow was my first dance world, so I always consider myself a jingle dress dancer and a powwow dancer first.”

Many Ojibwe communities have their own origin stories for the jingle dress dance. In the teachings that I have received, the dance appeared to a Medicine Man in his dreams, to help heal his ailing granddaughter. Some powwows include jingle dance specials that honour the stolen life of a missing or murdered Indigenous woman, or the children that attended residential schools. 

“It’s very healing for me and for everyone else at the ceremony because the jingle dress dance is a healing dance,” Lauren Porter, a member of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and the female head dancer at the 2024 Na-Me-Res powwow in Toronto, says. 

The distinctive jingle dress style was introduced after colonial contact, and uses new metals imported into Turtle Island by settlers. It features rows of cones that are typically made from the lids of Copenhagen brand snuff tobacco. As the dancer moves, the cones imitate the sound of rain. It’s one of the most beautiful sounds at the powwows — only war cries or moose calling competitions might top it. 

Noon has trained in classical ballet, jazz, hip hop, contemporary, modern and street styles and around age eight, took a break from powwow dancing to focus on her passion for competitive dance. 

But despite other connections to her culture and identity, and doing well in both school and in dance, Noon felt incomplete. “When you’re in a world like my classical dance world it’s demanding. And it’s hard on your spirit as an Indigenous person,” she says. “I realised it was powwow that I was missing.” 

Before long, Noon was to get back in the circle. “When I dance jingle it heals my spirit. Because you’re dancing among your people and you’re in a space where you feel safe, and you’re celebrating culture.”

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In 1876, Canada adopted the Indian Act. The legislation established which Indigenous people were legally recognized through the Indian status system and implemented colonial structures like the reserve system, which restricted First Nations people to lands “reserved” for them to live on, a fraction of their ancestral territories. 

The Indian Act still dictates much of Indigenous people’s lives, including many land rights. Only a status “Indian” has the constitutionally protected right to hunt, fish, harvest and live on reserve lands, the last of which is no longer mandatory.

The more status “Indians” there are, in other words, the more people for whom Canada is legally obligated to uphold treaty promises, including to share lands and resources. Which is why, from the beginning, “Canada was very clear that the goal of the [Indian Act] was ultimately to assimilate all First Nations individuals,” Vancouver lawyer Ryan Beaton says.

To expedite assimilation, Indigenous people were pushed to accept enfranchisement, which meant renouncing Indian status in order to gain Canadian citizenship. Although enfranchisement was framed as voluntary, coercive policies outlined in the Indian Act would suggest otherwise. Status holders couldn’t own property off reserve, buy alcohol or vote. Indigenous men were automatically enfranchised if they got a university degree or became priests.

And enfranchised Indigenous people — usually men — had a choice in whether or not to send their children to residential schools. These institutions were designed for “Indian” children; there was no need for a non-status child to attend. 

Indigenous women had even less choice regarding assimilation, because of gender discrimination in the Indian Act. If an Indigenous woman married a non-status or a non-Indigenous man, she lost her own status and was no longer recognized as a member of her First Nation. If she married an Indigenous man with status in a nation other than her own, she lost her own status number and band membership, becoming legally recognized through her husband’s First Nation and seen as an entity attached to his status number. And if an Indigenous man was enfranchised, his wife and children lost their status too. 

And very rarely could women make individual applications to enfranchise and renounce their status to become Canadian citizens. This means, Beaton says, that many women were cut out of a decision that affected their descendants’ access to land and rights forever. 

Now, Beaton is representing three families taking legal action against the federal government, framing Indigenous women’s loss of rights through their male relatives’ enfranchisement as an act of gender discrimination that violates the constitution. The group launched its constitutional challenge, Nicholas v. Canada, in 2021, then put it on pause in 2022, when it looked like the federal government might deal with the issue through Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu’s introduction of Indian Act amendments in Bill C-38.

This year, frustrated with the slow pace of change, the plaintiffs decided to relaunch their challenge. 

One of them is Kathryn Fournier, whose grandmother first lost her status when she married and was forced to move off her natal lands, St. Peters Reserve in the Red River Valley (which no longer exists because the local government argued settlers could make better use of the natural resources). Then, Fournier’s grandfather, Maurice Sanderson, renounced his membership in Pinaymootang First Nation in Manitoba in 1922, choosing enfranchisement to obtain the right to own property and vote. Sanderson’s decision stripped his wife and all of their children of their status too; Kathryn’s mother, Edith Fournier grew up without status. 

In 1985, amendments to the Indian Act allowed some people with a familial history of enfranchisement to apply for Indian Status — Edith was approved, but granted a category of status that could only be passed down for one generation. This means her grandchildren, including Kathryn’s children, are not entitled to status.  

“We just thought that was how the Indian Act worked,” Kathryn says, of her inability to pass status and all the rights it entails on to her children. Then, in 2020, the Fourniers learned about a family who had pushed to regain status rights lost to enfranchisement and won. 

“That notion that you might begin to say, that there’s a way we can actually challenge that Indian Act, is a very powerful notion. And I’ve always known that it’s a battle every inch of the way,” says Fournier, who says her mother fought for her grandchildren’s status until her passing in 2021. 

Here’s what you need to know about the gender discrimination Fournier and the other plaintiffs are fighting, and what it has to do with land-based rights and residential schools. 

What is the goal of Bill C-38?

In simple terms, the part of Bill C-38 Beaton’s clients are focused on would restore status to approximately 3,500 individuals with a family history of enfranchisement. 

When Beaton and the plaintiffs launched their constitutional challenge in 2021, they based their legal argument on two sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: section 7, which deals with life, liberty and security, and section 15, which covers equality. Beaton explains that the Indian Act continues to enforce historical gender-based discrimination today by denying status to the descendants of a woman who was enfranchised alongside her husband. He also argues that denying an individual status because of a family history of enfranchisement should be recognized by the Charter as a prohibited basis for discrimination. 

After these Charter violations were first brought to the attention of the federal government, Beaton says, there was a consensus among all political parties that they needed to be remedied. This led to Hajdu introducing Bill C-38 in Parliament in December 2022. The bill primarily deals with ongoing discrimination towards those with a family history of enfranchisement, but also seeks to address or amend other sections of the Indian Act. 

When the bill was introduced, Beaton and the plaintiffs put their constitutional challenge on hold. But despite the political support for Bill C-38, it has been stalled for almost two years, which is why the challenge is on again. 

Why is Bill C-38 stalled?

“The federal government just has not had the political will and has not made this a priority,” Beaton says, despite his assurances from Hajdu’s office that the government wants Bill C-38 to move forward. 

In the past, Canada has expressed budgetary concerns over legislative changes that would mean a sudden increase in the number of people that are entitled to register under the Indian Act. But, Beaton explains, while previous amendments would entitle hundreds of thousands of people to gain access to status, only about 3,500 individuals would be eligible under Bill C-38. 

Jenica Atwin, parliamentary secretary for Indigenous Affairs, told The Narwhal that “Oftentimes, these important pieces of legislation will get stalled because of partisan interest,” and that the bill had the “support of all except for the Conservatives.” But at the bill’s second reading last October, all federal political parties agreed Bill C-38 should be passed to address the on-going infringement of Indigenous Peoples’ rights. That includes the Conservatives, with MP Eric Melillo expressing vocal support for its passage. 

What is the constitutional challenge launched by Indigenous families about?

After multiple years without any progress on Bill C-38’s passage through Parliament, Beaton and the 16 plaintiffs in Nicholas v. Canada decided to reactivate their constitutional challenge. 

The hope is that an imminent trial will encourage Parliament to hasten the progress on moving the bill through the House of Commons. Otherwise, Beaton and the plaintiffs will try to see this issue remedied in the court system. 

When Hajdu introduced the bill, she said “This is part of the ongoing work needed and it must be sustained to eliminate outstanding concerns of gender-based discrimination and inequalities, while also addressing colonial laws and structures.”

Beaton says Hajdu has acknowledged the Charter violations as ongoing discrimination towards Indigenous Peoples, “Which is kind of unusual. Often in these cases the government will avoid conceding the legal point.” This admission provides his legal argument with a solid foundation as it moves through the court system. 

Beaton says he told the government that because there is cross-party support for the bill, the families involved are willing to approach the court on a joint basis, rather than individually. But despite that support and Hajdu’s definitive statements, in August 2024, federal lawyers responded to the challenge by denying any constitutional violations. 

Beaton says he and the legal team representing Canada are currently trying to figure out what is actually in dispute to narrow the issue as much as possible. 

What does Bill C-38 and the constitutional challenge have to do with residential schools? 

While the enfranchisement policy in the Indian Act was initially voluntary, many Indigenous Peoples did not choose to renounce their Indian status. Over the years, enfranchisement provisions became increasingly harsh and based around gender discrimination and the suppression of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights. 

“The Indian Act was designed to make being an Indian so unpleasant and so restricted, and so devoid of basic human rights, that people would want to enfranchise,” Fournier says. 

A 1920 amendment to the Indian Act made attendance at residential schools mandatory, leading to the forcible removal of children from First Nation families and creating a very strong motivation for many people to enfranchise. Sharon Nicholas, one of the lead plaintiffs in the challenge, has an ancestor who chose to enfranchise in order to keep his children out of the residential school system. 

The interlinked history between enfranchisement and the residential school system is one of the reasons that Beaton argues there is no excuse for Canada to continue to deny status to people who had ancestors that were forced to make these difficult decisions.  

What happens next? 

There is more than one way for these issues to be remedied. 

The first option is that Canada makes Bill C-38 law. Nothing is stopping Parliament from moving it forward once the House of Commons reconvenes this fall. Atwin, whose husband and children are Wolastoqiyik and hold status, says Hajdu’s team is responding to the challenge by urgently pushing to see the bill move forward. The next step would likely be a review of the bill by a standing committee, although there are a few different paths a bill can take through the House of Commons. 

The second option is a legal battle. Beaton explained that he would likely seek a summary judgement, which would mean any trial would be expedited. In this case, his team would provide the British Columbia Supreme Court with its argument that there are constitutional violations related to registry and band membership policies within the Indian Act. After evidence and opposing legal arguments are presented, a judge would decide whether or not there are constitutional violations and how they should be remedied. 

If a judge agrees there are violations, there are various ways to resolve them. Beaton explains that courts typically avoid writing detailed legislation. Instead, judges usually order Parliament to fix the issue by a given deadline — but often grant the government extensions when it doesn’t complete such orders on time. “At the end of the day if we won in court and then the court’s solution was to send it to Parliament to fix it, then we are kind of running in circles,” Beaton says. 

He’d prefer a faster, more definitive solution. Striking five or six words in the registration provisions in the Indian Act “could fix the issue,” Beaton says. This means specific words would no longer be legally recognized, registration provisions would have to be read as if those words did not exist and the descendants of those who were enfranchised would be entitled to Indian status as if their ancestor’s enfranchisement had not happened. 

Beaton explained this is a process courts are generally much more comfortable with than writing new legislation from scratch. And if a court strikes out the words causing Charter violations, Parliament does not need to act. 

Whether or not it happens quickly, the plaintiffs are determined to right this historical wrong. “I remain firmly convinced that we will prevail and that justice will prevail,” Fournier says. 

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