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Author: David MacDonald, Professor of Political Science and Research Leadership Chair for the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, University of Guelph

Politics is about power — who has it, who doesn’t, and what it enables people to do. Canada as a settler colonial state has had too much power for too long over Indigenous peoples and their lands and institutions.

No genuinely positive change, however defined, can succeed unless the federal and provincial governments roll back power to give the Indigenous control over their own self-determining futures and lands.

After almost two and a half years, it seems like Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is going to do something positive to address what is recognized as a “humanitarian crisis.” The identification of a crisis by Minister of Indigenous Services Jane Philpott may be news, but the crisis is hardly that.