That 150 years after Confederation a prime minister’s promise to respect the rights of Indigenous peoples could be seen as a historic landmark says a lot about how deep the rot runs in the relationship between Canada and First Nations.

In a sweeping speech in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Justin Trudeau said his government would develop a legal framework to guarantee the rights of Indigenous peoples in all government decision-making. He said Ottawa will finally put an end to its long-standing antagonism toward the treaties that enabled the creation of this country. And he promised to work “to get to a place where Indigenous peoples in Canada are in control of their own destiny, making their own decisions about their future.”

The speech was light on details. But, if fulfilled, it would be an important step toward establishing a long-promised new relationship.

The treaties signed between European colonial powers and the First Nations in Canada, which date back as far as the early 18th century, set out Indigenous rights to shared lands and resources. Yet rather than respect these treaties, policy-makers beginning in the 19th century sought to “civilize” First Nations in ways that clearly infringed on those rights, cruelly forcing them onto reserves and eventually into the infamous residential schools system.

Even after the Charter entrenched “existing Aboriginal and treaty rights,” governments continued to ignore these agreements or to fight them in court. “Indigenous peoples were forced to prove, time and time again, through costly and drawn-out court challenges, that their rights existed,” Trudeau said in his speech. In most cases, these court challenges succeeded. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the force of treaties and the rights they enumerate. It’s past time the federal government tried to find the answers in negotiation, not litigation.

The longer the view, the starker the injustice. The trampling of treaty rights and policies of forced assimilation that uprooted Indigenous peoples from their communities, languages and cultures amounts not only to a terrible betrayal, but also to what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called a “cultural genocide.”

The legacy of this process is the suffering and diminished opportunity in Indigenous communities across the country, a national shame and a definitive national challenge. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples wrote in 1996 that “there can be no peace or harmony unless there is justice.” In the aftermath of the confrontation at Oka, the commission warned that if Canada failed to find fair and lasting terms of coexistence with Indigenous peoples, more violence would surely erupt.

Twenty years later, we have yet to find those fair and lasting terms. The uproar over the verdict in the case of Colten Boushie has exposed yet again that we have neither justice nor harmony. Meanwhile, the federal government continues to violate treaties, ignoring constitutionally entrenched Indigenous rights or fighting to deny them in court. The result has indeed been violence, though not in the form the commissioners likely imagined. Instead, we have seen in remote communities, where poverty and addiction are rampant but help and hope scarce, epidemics of suicide among children and young adults.

Trudeau said on Wednesday that a rights-based approach to Indigenous issues, and in particular the upholding of the right of Indigenous peoples to self-government, would finally provide those fair and lasting terms. It would allow a way out of the shameful history and costly constraints of the Indian Act. And it would thereby hopefully enable sustainable solutions to the chronic problems facing these communities: the youth suicides and addiction, unsafe water, poverty and overcrowding.

This was the ultimate recommendation of the Royal Commission, too, which concluded that “Aboriginal Peoples have preserved their identities under adverse conditions. They have safeguarded their traditions ... They are entitled to control matters important to their nations without instructive interference.”

But make no mistake: the promise to respect Indigenous rights is only the very beginning of what is bound to be a long — indeed, unending — process, one fraught with tensions and conflicting values. The questions of how exactly these Indigenous rights are defined and of what implications they hold for Canada — for instance, in the area of resource development — will undoubtedly be the subjects of heated, ongoing and sometimes painful debate. As will questions over what will be required, in terms of legislation and investments, to uphold these rights and create the conditions for self-government to succeed.

The government must not be derailed in this effort by the formidable difficulty ahead. It has too often failed to live up to its lofty rhetoric on reconciliation, feeding the cynicism and hopelessness it promised to address. Nor can it use this ambitious project of systemic change as a smokescreen to avoid taking immediate action on the acute challenges facing Indigenous communities. On water, child welfare and criminal justice, for instance, help is needed now.

Still, Trudeau’s promise is about 150 years overdue. If he delivers, he will have written a needed new chapter in Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples. Now the words must lead to action. Broken promises, after all, are how we got into this mess in the first place.

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