In the tariff war, is Canada forgetting about Indigenous nations?

National Observer

23-05-2025

In the fear and fury generated by the US administration's thuggish treatment of Canada and other allies and trade partners, Canadian political elites have donned the Captain Canada mantle. Virtually all political parties and think tanks are asserting Canadian sovereignty and making commitments to jobs and incomes by proposing new mechanisms to ensure expedited approvals of priority infrastructure and industrial projects.
In this melee, Indigenous nations, and our rights and interests, are not discussed — we remain marginalized. Our rights attract attention only when political elites and indeed, most Canadians, think the political agenda is relaxed enough to tolerate it, or there is something to gain through our inclusion.
Indigenous Peoples' rights have a legal basis and some Constitutional recognition domestically, and more robust recognition in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, the gold standard for these rights. Any national policy that ignores these realities will be expensive and vulnerable to litigation and civil society opposition, as evidenced by the pipeline fights in BC and the fishing wars in Mi'kmaw territory. Further, Ontario's 'Ring of Fire' region, invoked by some politicians as an immediate source of state-approved projects for its untapped mineral wealth, is on unceded Treaty 9 Indigenous territory.
Ignoring Indigenous nations and rights, as Canada enters a new economic chapter, would shred Canada's reputation, much as ignoring the Canada-USA-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) shreds America's. Ignoring us is contrary to the last decade of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation work and is a serious risk to both the legitimacy of political elites and the profitability of Canadian industries.
Regulatory streamlining anticipated for pre-approved or quickly approved projects benefiting corporate stakeholders with government approvals for pipelines, mines and such, runs right through Indigenous lands, waters and rights. This is true despite the involvement in some projects of a few Indigenous communities or capitalists.
Cutting 'red tape' and eliminating regulatory barriers, proposed by a number of politicians and corporate actors, facilitates the fast-forward, consequence-free kinds of approaches beloved by investment capitalists and the governments that service them. However, one critic's 'red tape' is another's regulatory regime ensuring transparency, accountability and compliance with safety codes, environmental standards, and fundamental human rights. Indigenous rights require state recognition and regulatory support.
Moreover, Canadians face another existential crisis unrelated to US President Donald Trump's reckless trade war: the breakdown of our climate and natural environment collapse as a direct result of political, corporate and consumer activity. That catastrophe looms at least as large as present economic threats. Indigenous rights and priorities are linked to climate and environmental matters in profoundly important ways. Most of us come from cultures that privilege relationships with everything in our territorial environments. Maintaining these relationships is a primary obligation.
Ignoring Indigenous Peoples' rights is contrary to Canada's Truth and Reconciliation work and is a serious risk to the legitimacy of political elites and the profitability of Canadian industries, write Joyce Green and Christine Sy
While sharing our fellow citizens' fears about the Trump-induced economic perils, we have fears too, about the trampling of Indigenous rights and interests, seen as impediments to the prime directive of protecting economic growth and the jobs it sustains. We are not entirely hostile to these priorities, but surely, we can expect the elite political class to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Canadian governments and citizens must focus on the very serious threats to the state's sovereignty and economic order, while still advancing its ethical relations with Indigenous nations, protecting Indigenous rights and enacting legislation to meet the challenges of the imminent and evident threat of more catastrophic climate change and environmental collapse.
Given the erasure of Indigenous nations in public discourse about Canada's future, we wonder if a next iteration of the Idle No More movement is needed to bring these matters into the public eye and get them on the political agenda?
Canada wishes to defend its sovereignty in the face of threatening rhetoric from the Trump administration, but it cannot simultaneously ignore the sovereignty of the many Indigenous nations with whom it is in relationship. The colonial rampage has never stopped for us, even if the language framing it has changed. We are still trying to recover from colonialism in a context where it is still unfolding. Some of us are still seeking either negotiation or implementation of treaties. Many treaties that exist are coerced agreements created in contexts manipulated to cause duress, somewhat like the mystifying, ever-changing shifts in trade relationships instigated by the US that Canada faces now.
Indeed, Canadians are about to empathize much more personally with the politics of imperialism, the disparity of power relations, and the implications of being subjected to external dominance and exploitation. Might this lend itself to an appreciation of what Indigenous Peoples have and continue to endure?
With American imperialism at the door, will Canada reflect on its relationships with Indigenous nations, and recognize that its honour is only as good as its commitment to reconciling its relationship with the Indigenous nations upon whose lands it calls home?
Joyce Green is professor emerita of political science at the University of Regina. Her research interests focus on Aboriginal-settler relations and the possibility of decolonization in Canada.