The Indian Registry

Topics to be covered…

• The Indian Registry

• Indian Act

• Blood Quantum

• The Indian Registry is the list of all status Indians in Canada.

• This gives them certain benefits such as granting of land reserves, less government interference and taxes that non-status Indians, Metis and Inuit don’t have.

• The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development maintains the registry.

According to the Indian Act

• There are several criteria for being part of the Indian registry:– You must be a member of a group of people that

have been declared by the Governor in Council on or after April 17th 1985 a band.

– Both your parents are or were at the time of death entitled to be on the register.

Status Indians

• Are entitled to land reserves, such as Kahnawake, Akwesasne, etc. that are solely reserved for the use of the band members for which they were meant for.

• Do not pay provincial or federal taxes on real or personal property on a reserve.

• Education is also covered for all status Indians in Quebec, by the provincial government.

Blood Quantum

• This is a way of measuring one’s “nativeness”.

• It has been used for hundreds of years in our history as a method of determining who is and who isn’t native.

• It is based on the how far back your native ancestry goes as well as any marriages outside of native communities.

Club Native

• Due to the Indian Register there is much pressure for Native people to marry within their culture, otherwise they must move off the reserve. This is often times also related to the ever shrinking land reserves.

• http://www.nfb.ca/film/club_native_excerpt/

• http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779182&ts=2008-04-24+05:00:00.0