Cindy Styles is the author of 3 or 4 Years an Indian.
My father, in the spirit of Leo DiCaprio's character in The Revenant, and my butterfly-spirited indigenous mother fell in love and had three children. In 2011, I became a founding member of the newly acknowledged Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation Band. I honoured the heritage of my mother, her parents, my grandparents, their parents, my great-grandparents, and my great-great-grandparents and signed up.
Former premier Joey Smallwood once said there were no Indians on the island of Newfoundland, but he was wrong. It was estimated that 25,000 people would enroll for membership in the Qalipu band, but more than 100,000 stepped forward to claim their rightful heritage. As a result, the federal government did some quick manoeuvring and sent everyone a letter with revised requirements, giving us "the opportunity to provide additional documentation to meet the criteria of self-identification and group acceptance."
Similarly, former governor-general Adrienne Clarkson recently wrote in The Globe and Mail, in an article titled "All Canadians must tell their stories," that all indigenous people must learn indigenous languages. With all due respect to Ms. Clarkson, I have only a small desire to learn Mi'kmaq. It would be better for me to learn French, as her parents suggested for her. As a matter of fact, learning French seems very important to me right now because my six-year-old nephew is in French immersion and is quickly speaking it better than I do.
For those who want to keep the 60 indigenous languages alive, please carry on. But it's 2016 – and this would be somewhat akin to learning Latin. It should be my choice what to do with my free time. Learning an indigenous language should not be allowed to be mandated to me by the federal government.
As a result of another bungling by former prime minister Stephen Harper, the government is requiring that we do certain things to be an Indian. In brief, it has developed a point system whereby it requires us to have at least 13 points in order to be deemed an Indian. Points for making dream catchers, points for subscribing to an Indian magazine, points for living in certain geographic locations.
Do people have to join hockey teams to be deemed Canadian citizens? Submit private family communications, photos, phone bills and credit-card history to prove engagement with their culture, whatever that culture may be?
Or how about having to provide detailed accounts of picking berries? Or being told where to live? Because if this is not complicated enough, the Qalipu First Nation is a landless band, and no reserve land is involved. At the end of the day, some of my family will be Indians and some will not be Indians, based on what they do and where they live.
What the government is requiring of the Qalipu Mi'kmaq is ludicrous, not right, to the moon and back, and Canadians need to know. Ultimately, it needs to give the same rights to all the rightful members of the Qalipu band that they give to other First Nations.
If you ask me, the indigenous community would be better served by highly skilled negotiators, not linguists. The facts are that my forebears were here first.
While I absolutely like the essential and esoteric ideas espoused by pluralism, in this instance, English works for me. We all know the word powwow, but it's the truth that my generation did not grow up attending them. Our culture has evolved and kept pace with our multicultural world.
I am modern Mi'kmaq. And I am Canadian and this is part of my story.