"Aboriginal peoples have achieved considerable clarity and compromise in devising twentieth-century means of expressing their shared wishes to continue to live as Aboriginal people, with adequate political and economic arrangements."(Bickerton, p. 443) Native people have fought and struggled for a very long time to attain representative rights that are important to their survival as a collectivity. Since the implementation of the White Paper in 1969, the Aboriginal people have fought long and hard over the past thirty years to secure the interests that are important to them. This dispute has resulted in strife and disharmony within Canadian society and has not been an easy task for the Aboriginal people to overcome. It has been a continuous conflict and a long and winding road, however the Aboriginal people have made significant political gains in Canada during recent decades.
"Thirty years ago, the federal government published a White Paper on Indian Policy that assumed the irrelevance of the founding treaties and argued for an end to any distinctions between Indians and other Canadian citizens."(Abele,
The proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982, sh...
English: Monument to aboriginal war veterans in Co...
Tony Whitfordp.252) Needless to say, after this report was published the Aboriginal people were not content with its proposals and pursued it in a very negative way. The fact that the government made clear that it would not accept Aboriginal rights claims and that there should be no special relationship between Aboriginal people and the rest of Canada made them very angry. Equality was something that imposed on their existence as a distinct people and culture.
"After this White Paper was issued the National Indian Brotherhood immediately responded with a statement declaring that "...the policy proposals put forward by the Minister of Indian Affairs are not acceptable to the Indian people of Canada...We view this as a policy designed to divest us of our aboriginal, residual and statutory rights.