After months of consultation about how to stop 'pretend Indians” from taking jobs and scholarships meant for genuine Indigenous people, the University of Saskatchewan has decided to rely on Indigenous governments to verify identity.
Status cards are one of the pieces of identification that will be accepted as proof of Indigenous ancestry under the University of Saskatchewan's new policy.
However, U of S president Peter Stoicheff said in an interview it has become clear that "self identification is no longer adequate" and going forward, "documentation and verification will be required." "The main feature is it's not up to us as a university community to determine," he said. Stoicheff added that on the advice of the task force, the university will be looking to Indigenous governments including First Nations band councils and the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan "to determine what that documentation looks like."
He says those cards prove that someone has a First Nations mother or father and is a legitimate heir of the treaties Canada signed with Indian people. University of Manitoba Prof. Réal Carrière and his sister, Michela, grew up on the family trap line in northern Saskatchewan's Cumberland Delta. He says he wanted to come to the University of Saskatchewan, but administrators made excessive demands for documents to prove he's Indigenous.
What I'm pleased about with the University of Saskatchewan is they relied on the Indigenous people to actually come together and say, 'Here's what the expectation is when you're applying for a position at the university.'"He says it was even worse because a U of S committee of mostly Indigenous faculty interviewed him and concluded he is Indigenous.
Despite the troubled history of the status card, he said it is a good indicator of who really is Indigenous because "it verifies where people are tied to a First Nation."He says most First Nations people have no problem showing their status card when there are benefits to be gained, such as saving the tax on a gasoline purchase or a vehicle purchase.
"You do have to provide genealogy research proof and things like birth certificates and marriage certificates and death certificates and show exactly who you are," he said. Jaime says that by agreement between the university and the MN-S, a Métis person applying for an Indigenous-specific job or scholarship has two options: They can show their Métis citizenship card or they can go through the Métis citizenship verification process and receive a letter of authentication from the MN-S registrar.
Métis Nation-Saskatchewan president Glen McCallum gives a speech at a legislative assembly event in 2019.
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