Chiefs question motives after Indian Act debate during Ottawa meeting with Carney and premiers

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First Nations chiefs who attended a closed-door meeting in Ottawa with Prime Minister Mark Carney and most provincial premiers in late October say Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew’s call to abolish the Indian Act dominated the discussion, leaving little focus on the issues the chiefs said they came to raise.

Treaty 8 First Nations Grand Chief Matthew Mercredi said it raised the question of whether Kinew and the prime minister coordinated the shift in focus. “We have to ask ourselves if this was a co-ordinated effort between Wab Kinew and the prime minister,” he said.

Chief Sheila North of Bunibonibee Cree Nation in northern Manitoba said she is now concerned the outcome could have been pre-determined. “I hope that wasn't the case because that would mean they were disingenuous in what they wanted the outcomes [of the meeting] to be,” North said. “It was a complete waste of time if that's the only outcome that they were hoping for.”

The chiefs said they had spent months preparing for the meeting, including drawing on former Indigenous Services deputy minister Gina Wilson to help tailor their messages to government. They said they wanted to discuss federal major projects legislation, health services, policing and public safety, along with the Natural Resources Transfer Acts (NRTAs).

According to the chiefs, the NRTAs remain a key concern because they were negotiated in 1930 between the federal and prairie provinces without First Nations participation and at a time when First Nations were barred under the Indian Act from hiring their own legal representation. They said the agreements should be abolished or changed so resource development projects meaningfully benefit their communities.

While chiefs said they expected debate about those resource transfers, they said Kinew’s sudden call to abolish the Indian Act became the main topic. They also pointed to Kinew’s acknowledgement that he did not consult chiefs beforehand before raising the issue.

In an audio recording of the closed-door meeting, Kinew told Carney, chiefs and premiers that he would keep using his status card until he dies or the Indian Act is abolished. “The idea that we have a race-based identification in our country in 2026 is inconsistent, at the very least, with Canada being a leader for human rights and democracy around the world,” Kinew said. In the recording, he added that he would be back in the future if it was not put on the agenda during Carney’s time in office.

Carney said he was “very open” to abolishing the Indian Act at a closing press conference following the session with chiefs. He later clarified the next day, saying the Indian Act could be reformed instead of abolished.

North said she found it inappropriate for Kinew to divert attention from the agenda chiefs wanted to discuss. “He may be Anishinaabe, he may have a status card, but that was not his place as a sitting premier to be calling for that,” she said.

North also said Kinew left his seat when the NRTAs were brought up and did not return until the subject changed. The day before the meeting, North said Kinew told chiefs he was not open to moving past those agreements.

Another chief, Rodger Redman of Standing Buffalo Dakota Nation in Saskatchewan, said he took issue with Carney’s response after Redman told him that Indigenous people in the United States are generally left alone to govern their nations. Redman said he told Carney that he thought Indigenous people have a better relationship with their governments in the United States.

Redman said Carney interrupted his remarks during the meeting and asked whether Redman was “seriously making that point,” adding that the discussion would not enter the thinking “under a Democratic administration [or] a Republican administration.” Redman said the exchange shifted into a confrontation and that the wider push to accelerate major project development in Canada is tied to pressure in the Canada-U.S. trade relationship.

A federal spokesperson for Indigenous Services Canada said the ministers were in the meeting when the Indian Act was raised, and a spokesperson for the Crown-Indigenous Relations Department said Carney has made it clear First Nations must have a direct stake in Canada’s economic future and that the NRTAs do not prevent negotiating new resource revenue-sharing agreements.

Mercredi said conversation about moving away from the Indian Act is not new, but that it felt off-track to raise it at a gathering where chiefs wanted discussion of the NRTAs. “There was no real discussion around the issues that we're facing,” he said. “There was really no positive outcome when it came to this meeting.”