Quebec community looks to the Supreme Court of Canada for recognition of Mtis rights

This article is a part of ourseries, 'Exploring Identity.' We're taking a closer look at issues surrounding identity in Inuit, First Nations and Mtis communities.

It's been over a decade since Ghislain Corneau first brought his fight to the Quebec courts seeking recognition of constitutional rights-bearing Mtis to occupy hunting camps on public lands, and now he is waiting to hear if the Supreme Court of Canada will hear the case.

Corneau is a member of Communaut mtisse du Domaine du Roy et de la Seigneurie de Mingan (CMDRSM), an organization that incorporated in 2005 with the mission to defend the rights of 4,000 members living across the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec who saythey are Mtis.

The Quebec government, as well as the Mtis National Council, do not recognize the existence of Mtis communities in the province, but Corneau and other members of the community are looking to the courts to assert rights under section 35 of the Constitutionto continue using and occupying their camps in order to exercise hunting, fishing, trappingand gathering practices.

In 1999, Corneau was charged with building a hunting camp on public lands without the province's authorization under the Act Respecting Lands in the Domain of the State. A decade later, several other hunters from the community had their hunting camps on Crown land taken down or burned.

"We have more than 100 members that have to deal with the same situation," said Andr Tremblay, a member of the community's legal committee.

"It's very important that our rights be recognized by the government."

The case was brought to the Quebec Superior Court in 2007, and to the Quebec Court of Appeal in 2018. Neither decisions ruled in their favour. Since October, they've been waiting to hear from the Supreme Court of Canada on an application for leave to appeal.

Could be the first of its kind

The community was the first organization in Quebec to attempt to meet the Powley Test in a case to the Qubec Superior Court in 2007.

• For more on the PowleyTest, readExploring Identity: Who are the Mtis and what are their rights?

If successful, it will be the furthest attempt to have a court recognizes the existence of a section 35 constitutional rights-bearing Mtis community east of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

Karole Dumont-Beckett, elected chief of the Council of the First Mtis Peoples of Canada, has been watching the case closely. She submitted an affidavit in the Corneau case's application for leave to appeal.

"It's a big case. It's not just the Corneau case, it's a case of discrimination against Mtis people outside of the Mtis National Council," said Dumont-Beckett.

The Council of the First Mtis Peoples of Canada has more than 5,000 members of Eastern Mtis based primarily in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

"To be denied our birth right to continue gathering in our traditional manners is detrimental to our peoples. It's discrimination," she said.

Not recognized by Quebec or MtisNational Council

Quebec's Office of the Minister responsible for Indigenous Affairs told CBC News that there are no Mtiscommunities possessing constitutional rights in the province. The MtisNational Council also does not recognize the community.

The Mtis National Council (MNC) intervened in the Corneau case during the Quebec Court of Appeal, as did three Innu First Nations.

Clment Chartier, president of the MNC, said the organization is concerned about courts reinterpreting and altering the Powley Test.

"Our primary interest is to ensure that the courts don't do any further harm to the MtisNation by going too expansive with the term Mtisthat's contained in Section 35.2 of the Constitution Act, not to turn it into 'anybody with mixed ancestry is Mtis,'" said Chartier.

"It makes the existence of the historic MtisNation meaningless if everybody starts saying the Mtisare simply people of mixed ancestry and nothing more. It wipes out our existence as a distinct people with a homeland and a territory."

Last year, the nation issued a map defining its homeland.

"We're simply stating that there is only one MtisNation, one Mtispeople and we're based as you say primarily in Western Canada," he said.

Other Powley Test cases

Since R. v. Powley in 2003, there have been 30 organizations created to represent self-identified Mtis people in Quebec, according to research conducted by Darryl Leroux, an associate professor at Saint Mary's University in Halifax.

In addition to the Corneau case, there's been five other casesseeking recognition as Mtis under the Powley Test in Quebec courts. Leroux saidanother six are on the dockets.

Similar court cases also happening in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. None of them have passed the Powley Test.

"All of them have been rejected on the basis that they haven't been able to demonstrate that theybelonged to a historical Mtis community," he said.

Andr Tremblay said new evidence will be presented in the Corneau case to prove a historic Mtis community was in the region between the end of the 17th century and the middle of the 19th century, if heard by the Supreme Court of Canada.

"The opinion of the Quebec government that there are no Mtis communities, we strongly disagree with that," he said.

"But we're saying that today we have that strong evidence that there was a Mtis community here."

It's based on quantitative data by tienne Rivard, an assistant professor at Universitde Saint-Bonifacein Winnipeg. He sayshistoric census data demonstrates that there were more than 1,120 Mtis living in the region in 1850 in clusters.

'I am a descendantofsauvages'

The Corneau case hasn't come without criticism. Leroux examined the group's claim to a Mtisnation in Quebec in his soon-to-be published book Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity. He analyzed 31 interviews of CMDRSM leaders and members that presented a part of its expert testimony in the Corneau case, as well as 27 ancestral genealogies submitted to the court for the case.

According to his 2013 testimony, Corneau said he claimed to be Mtis based on culture he inherited from his father who showed him to hunt.

"I am a descendantofsauvages," he testified in French.

The court document said heonly started to identify as Indigenous in 1980.

"It's because before we did not need, we could always do without ... we had camps, nobody bothered us," he said to the interviewer.

Corneau and some members count an ancestor five to six generations back as thebasis of their Indigeneity, but Leroux said for other members, the Indigenous ancestor goes even further back.

"All of the ancestors that they're reclaiming are women who are more than 10 generations away and are born in the 1600s," said Leroux.

Leroux argues that the organization's incorporation in 2005 was tied directly to white, non-Indigenous opposition to the negotiation of a comprehensive land claim in the area between the federal and provincial governments and Innu First Nations in the region.

"We see a very racist, anti-Indigenous movement develop when the details of the land claim started to become public in 2000 and then again in 2002 when the agreement in principle was announced," said Leroux.

"Through my research through looking at the documents that this organization produces, I demonstrated that much of the leadership of what becomes the Mtis organization comes from that movement against the Innu."

Representatives from theCommunautmtisseduDomainedu Roy et de la Seigneurie de Mingandeclined to comment on Leroux'sallegations, but Karole Dumont-Beckettshed some light on her perspective.

"All the Mtis are seeking the same recognition, the same justice. We're not asking to take anything away from First Nations, we ask that our rights are respected," said Dumont-Beckett.

"We're not going to give up just because the government says there's no Mtis. They need to learn their history. They need to stop relying on so-called experts or professors who are working against the Eastern Mtis."