What Does "Nation to Nation" Mean?

On Tuesday October 17, 2017 the Standing Committee of Indigenous and Northern Affairs discussed the specific claims and the comprehensive land claims process.  In this short video clip conservative MP Kevin Waugh asks Senior Assistant Deputy Minister of Treaties and Governance and Joe Wild of Indian Affairs and Northern Development the question, “What is nation to nation anyway?”  Wild’s response is telling.  Wild explains that Canada defines nation to nation only in terms of the Indigenous people sitting at the table with Canada.  He offers no discussion at all in terms of it meaning sharing the land and resources with Indigenous nations on a more equal basis which is what genuine nation to nation has to mean.

Watch the entire meeting at this link:
http://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/XRender/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20171017/-1/28107?Language=English&Stream=Video&useragent=Mozilla%2F5.0%20(Windows%20NT%2010.0%3B%20Win64%3B%20x64)%20AppleWebKit%2F537.36%20(KHTML%2C%20like%20Gecko)%20Chrome%2F62.0.3202.94%20Safari%2F537.36

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​​Lynn Gehl, Ph.D. is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe from the Ottawa River Valley. In 2017 she won an Ontario Court of Appeal case on sex discrimination in The Indian Act, and is an outspoken critic of the Algonquin land claims process. Recently she published Claiming Anishinaabe: Decolonizing the Human Spirit.  You can reach her through, and see more of her work, at www.lynngehl.com.

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