Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) grand chief Cody Diabo took an early exit from a high-profile intergovernmental meeting Monday, expressing frustration with the format and the approach of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN).
“They’re praising Mark Carney for meeting with First Nations people,” he said. “You know, that’s his job.”
It was the first official meeting between the country’s first ministers – premiers and the prime minister of Canada – and First Nations leaders since 2005. The purpose of the limited-attendance session, according to the AFN, was to discuss issues of national importance.
“I’m very disappointed, I’ll say, with the comments from AFN people, most of them anyway, and even from the other chiefs of communities,” Diabo said. “We’re at this meeting. The premiers are there, most of them. For me, we have issues that we need to discuss, and we should be dialoging right now on how it gets done. Instead, it just seemed like another session of First Nations complaining about situations and just move on to the next one.”
Prime minister Mark Carney, who chaired the meeting, moved from chief to chief, said Diabo, who felt this led to repetition and a lack of progress on substantive issues.
“You even had one chief who said they were proud to be a Canadian,” Diabo said. “I said that kind of just takes away the whole reason why you’re here as a First Nation representative. If you’re just a Canadian, then give up your badge and let an actual chief sit there and talk the issues.”
Diabo only secured a spot as a delegate in the observation room two days in advance. This was arranged by Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador (AFNQL) regional chief Francis Verreault-Paul, with whom Diabo said he shares a good relationship.
However, Diabo objected that the Iroquois Caucus, of which Kahnawake is part, did not have the opportunity to participate at the main table, especially after the signing of a protocol agreement with the AFN earlier this year. The Caucus made its stance clear in a letter ahead of time, he said, but received no answer.
Diabo, who walked out on a large meeting with the prime minister last summer with similar complaints, did not get to speak at the meeting on Monday. He spent much of his time in the observation room, he said, because he was sharing a badge for access to the main meeting area.
The AFN received 44 of these badges, which were distributed by regional chiefs. The meeting was not an AFN event, the organization said, but rather was hosted by the government of Canada.
Diabo said he will be broaching the community’s approach to AFN events going forward at an upcoming Council meeting.
The stated goal of the First Nations-first ministers meeting was to discuss issues of countrywide significance, and the federal government came prepared with more than $2.5 billion in new spending announcements, including for security, emergency preparedness, and economic development.
However, these programs – and the needs and concerns expressed by First Nations – were overshadowed by the day’s takeaway headline when Carney signaled his openness to abolishing the Indian Act at a press conference following the event, although he qualified this must be done alongside First Nations leaders.
He made the statement in response to a question from the media after Manitoba premier Wab Kinew, who is Anishinaabe, showed the press his status card earlier in the day and called for an end to the legislation.
The Indian Act, which dates back to 1876, is a wide-reaching law touching on membership, reserve land, band council governance, and more. It is widely deplored as discriminatory, with the recent Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal decision saying the band membership system the Indian Act imposes rises to the international crime of apartheid.
However, critics of the prime minister’s statement said it’s inappropriate to contemplate abolishing the Indian Act and redefining Canada’s relationship with First Nations before pivotal questions are settled.
“To them, we’re wards of the state. That’s their mentality of it,” said Diabo. He said the government needs to reframe how it views First Nations before embarking on any legal overhaul.
“Unfortunately, I think the Indian Act has to stay until they can get to that place,” he said.
His reaction was echoed by others from Kahnawake, including historian Taiaiake Alfred, who leads the Kahnawake Governance Project, a years-long undertaking that was initiated by the MCK and designed to reconcile different ideas of political expression in the community and prepare Kahnawake to move past the band council system envisioned by the Indian Act and restore traditional governance.
Alfred believes the prime minister’s comments on the Indian Act simply indicate a desire on the government’s part to move forward with its agenda.
“I think the general question a lot of people ask when they hear that is, ‘Well, what’s it going to be replaced with?’” he said.
“If Carney was talking about abolishing the Indian Act in order to get to a relationship with First Nations that is completely based on the original spirit and intent of treaties, a nation-to-nation relationship in a true sense, that would be one thing, but it’s clear that’s not what they have in mind.”
In his comments, Carney called the Indian Act racist. Alfred said racism is inherent to the disregard of Indigenous systems of government, the imposition of laws, and the failure to respect the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples or to live up to commitments.
“To me, that’s what’s racist,” he said. “The Indian Act itself is just a reflection of their attitude, so they want to change the instrument by which their racism is manifested. They want to get rid of the Indian Act because it’s archaic language and it makes them look bad, but they don’t really want to change the relationship.”
He compared the prospect of a government-led repeal of the Indian Act to the 1969 White Paper, when the Liberal government under Pierre Trudeau attempted to bring about a policy of assimilation that also proposed abolishing the Indian Act.
“The main thrust of the White Paper was municipalization of our First Nations governments, elimination of Indian reserves, and the imposition of citizenship, i.e. taxation, upon our people, and everything that the Canadian government is proposing now is another updated version of those same objectives,” he said.
He characterized the Governance Project’s work as urgent, saying many observers believe the end of the Indian Act could come soon. The goal, he said, is to bring Kahnawa’kehró:non together, in an Onkwehón:we perspective, and restore traditional government as generations of community members have desired.
“As we saw over the last couple of days, there’s a very strong push by Canada to get rid of the Indian Act and to bring in their vision of what a relationship should be to us, and it’s very different than ours,” Alfred said. “Unless we have a unified perspective in the community, and unless we work together to really enliven our governance as Kahnawa’kehró:non, that system is going to be the one that we are going to be faced with.”
Following years of consultations and discussions, the Governance Project is nearly ready to put forward a proposal, Alfred said.
Kahnawa’kehró:non Russell Diabo, who is part of an advisory group for the Governance Project, spent Monday protesting the First Nations-first ministers meeting as part of a National Day of Action led by the Truth Before Reconciliation Education and Advocacy Network, for which he is the spokesperson.
“I think each community has to get out of the Indian Act on their own terms. Otherwise, they’re going to be forced into Canada’s national municipal plan,” said Russell.
He believes in Kahnawake’s case, the Governance Project is the best path forward. “That’s an internal consensus-building body about a return to traditional government. It’s not a negotiation process with the federal or provincial governments,” he said.
For Kahnawake, leaving the Indian Act also requires sorting out administrative and legal issues considering that tens of millions of dollars in federal transfer payments are used to support programs and services, he said.
“People need that, and that’s part of the history of the Indian Act,” said Russell. “It’s created poverty and dependency in most Indian bands across the country. So getting out of it, it’s kind of a complex thing to do.”
His organization is going to analyze the meeting’s outcomes, including the funding announcements and the comments about the Indian Act, and is focused on mobilizing against a selection of bills currently being considered by the federal government, including Bill C-39, the Building Canada Strong Act.
“I’m concerned about the future for First Nations people, and I think I have every right to be concerned given what’s going on,” said Russell.
According to a press release from the federal government, leaders at Monday’s meeting focused on new economic opportunities for First Nations, among other topics.
“Canada’s strength comes from what we can build and what we achieve together,” said Carney in the press release. “That means working in partnership, government to government, to ensure that First Nations not only have the opportunity to build their community and country stronger, but to share in the wealth we create – including through new revenue tools such as a First Nations Sovereign Wealth Fund.
“Today, the federal government, provinces, territories, and First Nations leaders built on our progress and raised our ambitions to build bigger and better, together.”
New Quebec premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon declined to attend the meeting in Ottawa on Monday, citing a busy transition, although he met separately with Verreault-Paul on Wednesday.
marcus@easterndoor.com
Marcus Bankuti, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Copyright 2026, The Eastern Door. All rights reserved.
Marcus Bankuti, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Eastern Door.