How the Metis confront the challenges of the Canadian legal system – Canadian Lawyer
Canadian Lawyer recently named Jason Madden to its list of Top 25 influential figures in Canadian law for his work on behalf of the Métis people. The Métis are a distinct cultural group of native peoples who are descendants of mixed First Nation and European heritage.
As the chief editor of the Conference of Western Attorneys General’s American Indian Law Deskbook, I wanted to learn about the challenges the Métis faced in using the legal system in Canada to gain recognition and the differences between how the United States and Canadian governments treat indigenous peoples. I asked Madden to speak with me about his work on behalf of the Métis people, and he graciously agreed.
One challenge to gaining legal rights for the Métis was to have a legal definition of who is a Métis, according to Madden. In R. v. Powley, in which Madden was counsel for the interveners Métis National Council and the Métis Nation of Ontario, the Supreme Court of Canada described the term Métis as “distinctive peoples who, in addition to their mixed ancestry, developed their own customs, and recognizable group identity separate from their Indian or Inuit and European forebears. A Métis community is a group of Métis with a distinctive collective identity, living together in the same geographical area and sharing a common way of life.”
