Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples : Perspectives and realities

Our terms of reference instruct us to look at the position and role of Aboriginal women under existing social conditions and legal arrangements and in the future; the position and role of Aboriginal elders; the situation of Aboriginal youth; the constitutional and legal position of Métis people and First Nations people living off-reserve; and the difficulties specific to Aboriginal people who live [...] In this volume, our goal is to give voice to the diversity of Aboriginal peoples and the diversity of the Aboriginal experience in Canada. [...] Inuit are involved in major political developments in northern Canada, such as the creation of the new territory of Nunavut in the eastern Northwest Territories, Nunavik in northern Quebec, and the implementation of self-government for the Inuvialuit in the western Arctic. [...] It continues to be the center of the tribal circle — the foundation of the whispering ideology of tribalism in this land.13 Membership was thus a function of the sense of belonging, the "common mental experience", and was determined by each nation on the basis of age- old principles derived from its own traditions of recognition, acceptance and kinship. [...] The descendants of all intermarriages who actually resided on a reserve would nonetheless still be considered Indians irrespective of the status of one of the spouses, since they would fall within that part of the definition of Indian that referred to Indian blood.16 However, it is obvious that the same rule did not apply to men and women in mixed marriages as it had under the earlier legislation.