Aboriginal peoples in Canada in Encyclopedia

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Aboriginal peoples in Canada

An Aboriginal leader at the 13th Annual Canadian Aboriginal Festival.

Aboriginal people in Canada, also known as Canadian Aboriginal citizens,^[1] are people who belong to recognized indigenous groups in the Canadian Constitution Act, 1982, sections 25 and 35, respectively as Indians, Métis, and Inuit.

As of the 2006 Canadian Census there are over 1,172,790 Aboriginal people in Canada, 3.8% of the country's total population.^[2] This comprises 698,025 people of First Nations descent, 389,785 Métis, and 50,485 Inuit. National representative bodies of Aboriginal people in Canada include the Assembly of First Nations, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Métis National Council, the Native Women's Association of Canada, the National Association of Friendship Centres and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples. These bodies however are not recognized by some indigenous people in Canada as representing their interests. Some such indigenous people prefer to rely upon their traditional laws and governance and pick their representation accordingly.

Some indigenous people assert that their sovereign rights have not been extinguished, and point to the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which is mentioned in the Canadian Constitution Act, 1982, Section 25, as well as to the British North America Act and the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties to which Canada and Great Britain are signatories, in support of this claim.

The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was an important commission undertaken by the Government of Canada in the 1990s. It assessed past government policies towards Aboriginal peoples, such as residential schools, and provided many policy recommendations to the government. However, many recommendations made by RCAP have not been implemented by the federal government to date.

Under the Employment Equity Act, Aboriginal peoples are a designated group along with women, visible minorities, and persons with disabilities.^[3] They are not considered a visible minority under the Act and in the view of Statistics Canada.^[4]

Native languages
Name controversy

Capitalization

See also
Notes
References
External links

Native languages

Main articles: Indigenous languages of the Americas and Canadian Aboriginal languages

Today, there are over thirty different languages spoken by indigenous people, most of which are spoken only in Canada and are in decline. Among those with the most speakers include Ojibwe and Cree, together totalling up to 150,000 speakers; Inuktitut, with about 29,000 speakers in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik (Northern Quebec), and Nunatsiavut (Northern Labrador); and Mi'kmaq, with around 8,500 speakers, mostly in Eastern Canada.

Two of Canada's territories give official status to native languages. In Nunavut, Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun are official languages alongside English and French, and Inuktitut is a common vehicular language in government. In the Northwest Territories, the Official Languages Act That there are over fifty different languages: Dene Suline, Cree, English, French, Gwich?in, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktan, North Slavey, South Slavey and Tåîchô. However besides English and French, these languages are not vehicular in government; official status entitles citizens to receive services in them on request and to deal with the government in them.

Name controversy

Although "Indian" remains in place as the legal term used in the Canadian Constitution, its usage outside such situations can be considered offensive. The confusion can likely trace its lineage to the European explorer Christopher Columbus who was thoroughly convinced that he had discovered a new route to India. It also refers to self-identification of Aboriginal people who live within Canada, but who have not chosen to accept the extinction of their rights of Sovereignty or Aboriginal Title of their lands.

The terms "First Peoples" and "First Nations" have also been used synonymously, and are occasionally used as descriptive terms by U.S. Native Americans in solidarity with their Canadian relatives.

Capitalization

Policies regarding the capitalization of Aboriginal differ from organization to organization. The Government of Canada's Department of Indian and Northern Affairs advises that the term should always be capitalized and only used as an adjective, not a noun,^[5] and it is capitalized in the Canadian Hansard, the transcript of parliamentary debates which is considered to reflect good Canadian English style.^[6] Canadian Oxford Dictionary gives capitalized "Aboriginal" as a headword entry?signifying that it "represents the most common form in Canadian usage"?and provides "aboriginal" as a variant spelling.^[7]