Mike Myers: Restoring traditional forms of tribal government

I just finished a road trip through Indian Country and had the chance to meet with a number of folks from five different Indigenous nations/tribes and they all had the same issue – how to reform their constitutions and get better government.

This is not just a growing phenomenon on the U.S. side but it’s a growing question on the North side as to how to get out from under the oppressive Indian Act and the Tribal elective system (IRA).

From my perspective, this is a challenge of how to restore democracy to Indigenous nations. Before the invasion we all lived within highly democratic governments and societies. And then, the Great White Fathers decided we needed to be “civilized” and “assimilated” and one of the tools they chose was to overthrow and displace our original forms and systems of governance.

In the north this began with the 1924 revision of the Indian Act. Ten years later the south adopted the “Indian Reorganization Act” (IRA). In the north the Canadian settler regime made it mandatory to opt into the Band Council system. There was heavy resistance in the Haudenosaunee territories that resulted in the assassination of one chief and the incarceration of five others.

When the IRA was passed the Bureau of Indian Affairs was charged with the task of getting Indigenous nations to opt into the new system. The historical record shows that there were some 77 nations out of 230 who refused to become part of the IRA system. Those who did join the system were initially deemed to be both federal corporations under section 17 of the act and to have a constitution under section 16. From the beginning this dual identity has caused all sorts of problems within the Indigenous nations and communities that opted in.