Citizenship
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs has hosted a First Nations Citizenship Workshop for First Nations band membership managers, clerks, and portfolio councillors. The workshop aimed to identify the support needed by First Nations to determine their citizenship outside of the Indian Act and identify a Manitoba First Nations approach to the First Nations-Crown collaborative process on Indian registration, Band membership, and First Nations citizenship.
The identity of First Nations people has come to be comprised of kinship, membership and citizenship, each with its own eligibility, rights and responsibilities, and implications for future generations. The most urgent and significant of these implications is the decreasing number of First Nations people and their descendants entitled to registration under the Indian Act.
The AMC Chiefs Committee on Citizenship approved the workshop approach to utilize the federal “collaborative approach” as a means to implement Manitoba First Nations leadership direction per AMC resolution OCT-11.07, Manitoba First Nations Citizenship Recognition Legislation.
The “collaborative process” is understood as involving two components:
(1) Transitional Plan – involving (a) development of federal “First Nations Recognition Act” (i.e. AMC resolution); and (b) supporting First Nations in what they need to transition towards First Nations Citizenship Laws [regardless of proposed legislation].
(2) First Nations Citizenship Laws – developed by individual First Nations.
