BC Conservative leader tells MLAs to start using the term 'Indian'
The leader of the BC Conservatives has directed MLAs to change how they speak about First Nations.
According to a report from Business in Vancouver (BIV), Kerry-Lynne Findlay, who was elected as leader of the BC Conservatives in May, has started to tell MLAs to stop using the term ‘First Nations,’ and instead use the terms Indigenous, Aboriginal, or Indian.
The term Indian is widely considered outdated and often offensive. While it is a legal term for someone registered under the Indian Act and used in that context, it has a “complex, often idiosyncratic colonial use in governing identity through this legislation,” according to the University of British Columbia’s Indigenous Foundations.
The BIV report states that Findlay’s team “pointed to the federal Indian Act as justification.”
It also wrote that the directive “is apparently in response to the term First Nations being viewed as a woke description and language from the left.”
Aboriginal is a term used for the first inhabitants of Canada, and includes First Nations, Inuit, and Métis.
Inuit are groups of people who live in the far north, and, under Canadian law, are not considered “Indians.” Métis is ” a collective of cultures and ethnic identities that resulted from unions between Aboriginal and European people in what is now Canada,” according to UBC.
Meanwhile, First Nations is used to describe Indigenous people in Canada who are not Métis nor Inuit.
Daily Hive reached out to the BC Conservatives and will update the story with their response when we hear back.
While Findlay was running for party leadership, she faced scrutiny from critics over past positions on Indigenous issues, including when she questioned another candidate’s objectivity on Indigenous issues because his wife is Indigenous.
With files from Kenneth Chan