Knowra Indigenous peoples in Canada Indigenous peoples in Canada Indigenous peoples in Canada are the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, whose distinct communities and cultures have longstanding roots in the lands now called Canada.
First Nations : First Nations are Indigenous peoples in Canada distinct from Inuit and Métis, with diverse nations, languages, and communities. They comprise one of the three peoples named in this collective designation.
Louis Riel : Louis Riel was a Métis political leader who led the Red River Resistance and North-West Resistance. His leadership helped establish Métis political claims and shaped the history of Manitoba.
Indigenous identity : Indigenous identity concerns personal, communal, and political belonging among Indigenous peoples, shaped by history, kinship, culture, and law. The collective term covers distinct identities rather than a single shared status.
Canadian residential school system : The Canadian residential school system forcibly separated many Indigenous children from their families and communities to pursue assimilation. Its harms transformed families, languages, and communities across generations.
Numbered Treaties : The Numbered Treaties are eleven agreements made between the Crown and First Nations from 1871 to 1921 across much of Canada. They illustrate how treaty making extended Crown authority while creating continuing obligations and contested meanings.
Inuit : Inuit are an Indigenous people of the Arctic, with communities across Inuit Nunangat and other regions. Their Arctic homelands and distinct identity set them apart within the broader collective.
Mary Two-Axe Earley : Mary Two-Axe Earley was a Mohawk activist who campaigned against sex discrimination in the Indian Act. Her advocacy helped end the loss of legal Indian status imposed on many First Nations women through marriage.
Indian Act : The Indian Act is a Canadian federal law governing many aspects of First Nations status, governance, and reserve lands. It has profoundly shaped federal relations with First Nations, but does not govern Inuit or Métis in the same way.
Sixties Scoop : The Sixties Scoop was the large-scale removal of Indigenous children from their families into child-welfare care, often outside their communities. It extended family separation through child-welfare systems after the residential school era.
Calder v British Columbia (Attorney General) : Calder v British Columbia was a 1973 Supreme Court of Canada case addressing the survival of Aboriginal title. The ruling helped prompt federal land-claims policy by recognizing title’s legal significance.
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