Canada's Indian Act
Policy Perspectives from the Years Defined by Oka, Meech Lake and the Royal Commission

A time capsule from the early 1990s, this book is one-half academic analysis and one-half practical experience. It offers a learning reference for students of indigenous relations, as well as politics and administration, and serves a unique insight into a policy area that has again in recent years assumed center-stage in Canada.This publication takes two earlier works from 1992 and 1993 respectively: an academic thesis on what was at the time called Indian policy and Canada's Indian Act, and a major research study for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Both have been reworked into this new book.Chapter 1: Perspectives from Academia is a reproduction of a Master’s thesis in 1992. When originally prepared, this study represented one of few such studies in Canada that considered the politics and administration issues of Aboriginal governance in Canada.Chapter II: Perspectives from Practice is a reproduction of a final report produced collaboratively with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. This report explained how the Indian Act both protected, yet stymied, anyone with entrepreneurial drive if that person, or groups of people, were located on-reserve.Both parts of this book were prepared during a brief “moment” 30 years ago when indigenous issues became a national priority. The controversies around the Meech Lake Accord, the military-Mohawk confrontation at Oka, and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples highlighted the desperation all too characteristic of Canada’s indigenous reality. Then, as today, Canada’s Indian Act and its legacy, lie at the heart of it all – a reality that indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians alike struggle to reconcile.