Ottawa closes a recognition table on an evidentiary test, while Nations put their own capital to work — a port at Stewart, wind at Hope Bay, land at Knight Inlet
The one thing
Ottawa ends the NunatuKavut rights-recognition table, and the council says it will go to court
Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty wrote to the NunatuKavut Community Council on September 4, terminating the Recognition of Indigenous Rights and Self-Determination negotiations and the 2019 memorandum of understanding that had opened them. A department spokesperson confirmed the decision publicly on September 9, saying a review — updated submissions, internal historical and legal analysis, expert reviews — concluded the evidence did not meet court-established tests for Indigenous rights and title. The 2019 MOU had recognised the council as an Indigenous collective capable of holding section 35 Aboriginal rights.
The council, which says it represents about 6,000 Inuit in southern and central Labrador, said it was given "no substantive reasons or explanation for this decision." It pointed to the Laurier Group Report — an independent report commissioned by Canada that the council says affirmed NunatuKavut Inuit rights — and said it will "pursue all avenues, including legal action." It also objected that confidential information about the decision reached the Nunatsiavut Government before the council had reviewed its own letter.
The decision landed with support from the Inuit organisations that have opposed the table for years: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami called the council a "fraudulent collective," Nunatsiavut Government President Johannes Lampe said Inuit identity "is not something that can be self-declared," and Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated backed the federal position. A forum built to keep rights questions out of court now appears headed there — the council's stated route is litigation, and the department says it has offered to meet to explain its findings.
Sources 1, 2
Economic Sovereignty
Nisg̱a'a and Tahltan Nations open BC's first majority Indigenous-owned deep-sea port at Stewart
The Nisg̱a'a Nation, the Tahltan Nation Development Corporation and Arrow Transportation Systems officially opened the Portland Canal Marine Terminal at Stewart on September 9, about a year after acquiring it. Held through Portland Canal Holdings Limited Partnership, with the two Nations holding the majority interest, the fully permitted deep-sea terminal moves copper concentrate and other critical minerals — including volumes from Newmont's Brucejack and Red Chris mines, both within Nisg̱a'a and Tahltan territories. The Province supported the 2025 acquisition with a $5-million grant under its northwest strategy; PacifiCan has added $672,134 for modernisation and expansion. Tahltan Central Government President Kerry Carlick called the port "an economic engine for the future of our region."
Why it matters
A terminal earns on every tonne that moves through it, from any producer, for the life of the mining district — a different position in the value chain than a stake in a single mine. Majority ownership of a deep-sea outlet on the Golden Triangle's doorstep gives the two Nations a commercial seat in future critical-minerals projects that need tidewater.
Sources 3, 4
Canada Infrastructure Bank closes a $20-million loan to an Inuit-led partnership for the Hope Bay wind project
The Canada Infrastructure Bank announced a $20-million loan on September 9 to Kitikmeot Tugliq Limited Partnership — the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, through its business arm Kitikmeot Corp., with Montreal-based Tugliq Energy — for a 4.2-megawatt wind turbine and a four-megawatt battery system beside Agnico Eagle's Hope Bay gold mine, about 125 kilometres southwest of Cambridge Bay. Natural Resources Canada is contributing a further $25 million through the Smart Renewables and Electrification Pathways program. The CIB says the project will cut diesel use by up to three million litres and emissions by roughly 13,000 tonnes a year, with long-term revenue flowing to Kitikmeot Inuit through a profit-sharing model. The turbine reached the site in early September and is expected to generate power next year; Agnico Eagle says it plans four more.
Why it matters
An Inuit birthright organisation's business arm sits on the supply side of an industrial customer — contracted power sales rather than a royalty — which converts a resource project on Inuit-owned land into a recurring cash flow that does not track the gold price. The pairing of CIB debt with an NRCan grant also shows how Indigenous proponents are stacking federal instruments to reach commercial close, and the four additional turbines suggest the structure is built to scale.
Sources 5, 6
Da̱'naxda'x̱w / Awa'etłala First Nation buys more than 700 acres at Knight Inlet with its own revenues
The Da̱'naxda'x̱w / Awa'etłala First Nation announced it is acquiring roughly 300 hectares — more than 700 acres — of privately held land at Knight Inlet from Interfor, bordering the Nation's Dzawadi reserve (Tsawwati IR 1) within its traditional territory. The purchase brings more than 1,000 contiguous acres under Da̱'naxda'x̱w ownership, and the Nation intends to begin the Additions to Reserve process to bring the lands into the reserve. "This is about building from the strength of our people," Nation administrator Robert Duncan said. "We are using the resources we have generated and putting them to work for our Nation." The purchase price was not disclosed.
Why it matters
Land bought outright with own-source revenue moves at the speed of a commercial transaction rather than a treaty table, and carries no settlement conditions. Routing it through Additions to Reserve — the same federal policy whose redesign is open for public comment until September 22 — would fold the purchase into the Nation's permanent land base and jurisdiction.
Sources 7
Seven-Nation company on the Waasigan transmission build takes the 2026 Indigenous Business Award
Chi Mino Ozhitoowin LP — "Everyone Building (Anything) in a Real Good Way" in Anishinaabemowin — received the 2026 Indigenous Business Award from Mining Life & Exploration News on September 8 in Thunder Bay. The company is owned jointly by Eagle Lake First Nation, Fort William First Nation, Gakijiwanong Anishinaabe Nation, Lac Seul First Nation, Nigigoonsiminikaaning First Nation, Ojibway Nation of Saugeen and Seine River First Nation. It is a key subcontractor on the Waasigan Transmission Line Project, which adds roughly 350 megawatts of transfer capacity through two new 230-kilovolt segments linking Shuniah, Atikokan and Dryden; nine First Nations hold agreements to share in 50 per cent equity ownership of the completed line.
Why it matters
Waasigan pairs the construction contract during the build with half the equity for the life of the line — two economic positions on one asset. A jointly held company across seven Nations also answers a persistent constraint: individual communities rarely carry the bonding capacity or workforce depth for transmission-scale work, but pooled vehicles do, and once built they can bid the next project.
Sources 8
Land, Water & Rights
Deninu Kųę́ First Nation suspends support for two N.W.T. megaprojects; Łutsel K'e says it was never consulted
In a press release sent to CBC News on September 10, Deninu Kųę́ First Nation said it has suspended its support for the Taltson Hydro Expansion and the Arctic Economic and Security Corridor, saying it has been repeatedly left out of consultations. The suspension holds until governments formally recognise that the Nation suffered the most severe legacy impacts from the original Taltson facility, built in 1965 about 140 kilometres from Fort Resolution to power the now-defunct Pine Point mine; the release added that no one should assume the Nation's free, prior and informed consent. Łutsel K'e Dene First Nation Chief James Marlowe said his Nation "has not been consulted on anything on the arctic road," citing caribou migration routes. The trigger was an August announcement by the Tłı̨chǫ Government and Yellowknives Dene First Nation of a consensus corridor route. Deputy Premier Caroline Wawzonek said the two announcing governments "are the most impacted" and that "the doors are not closed."
Why it matters
Both Nations told CBC they are not against development — this is a consent dispute over overlapping asserted territory, not over the projects. Deninu Kųę́'s argument runs opposite to the territory's: that the 1965 dam's unremediated legacy raises, rather than lowers, what is owed now, and that a consensus reached with some Nations does not answer the Crown's obligations to others whose territory the route crosses.
Sources 9
Ottawa drops its plan to let cabinet exempt major projects from the Species at Risk Act's jeopardy test
The federal government is abandoning a proposal to give cabinet "limited" power to exempt certain major projects from the jeopardy test under the Species at Risk Act, after an overwhelmingly negative response to a summer of consultations. The Toronto Star first reported the reversal; a senior government source confirmed it to The Canadian Press. A federal report published September 9, summarising more than 26,000 submissions, recorded Indigenous participants' concern that cabinet approval of activities deemed in the public interest "could raise questions of potential precedents for legislative overrides of rights-based and environmental protections and infringe on Indigenous rights," and a consistent view that "streamlining must not become deregulation." Major-projects legislation is still planned for the fall, and the Building Canada Act passed in 2025 already lets projects with a national-interest designation skirt a dozen laws, the Species at Risk Act among them.
Why it matters
The objection Indigenous participants put on the record is a precedent objection: once a cabinet override is written into one statute, the same architecture is available for any protection that rests on legislation, including the statutory triggers through which section 35 rights are often protected in practice. Removing one pathway from the fall bill does not close the one Bill C-5 opened, a point Environmental Defence's Julia Levin made directly.
Sources 10
Governance & Policy
Nishnawbe Aski Nation and the Sioux Lookout health authority demand an independent investigation into Miranda Mamakwa's death
Miranda Mamakwa, a mother of three from Fort Severn First Nation, died September 8 at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre after her family removed her from life support. In a September 10 joint statement, the Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority and Nishnawbe Aski Nation said she had open-heart surgery on April 23 and that the federal Non-Insured Health Benefits program denied her travel to four follow-up appointments described as "mandatory for her recovery and survival" — May 28, June 11, July 2 and August 6. On August 19 she posted the missed dates publicly and wrote, "If I die, please go after them." The organisations demand an immediate independent investigation, a public accounting from Indigenous Services Canada, a direct meeting with Minister Mandy Gull-Masty, and funded fixes to medical travel for the 33 First Nations SLFNHA serves and the 49 First Nations of NAN. Through her press secretary, Gull-Masty said she has instructed officials to urgently establish the facts and will meet the organisations at the earliest opportunity.
Why it matters
NIHB medical travel is the mechanism by which First Nations and Inuit in remote communities physically reach specialist care, and NAN has raised its administration for years. A named, documented case — a patient who recorded her own missed appointments before dying — converts a long-standing administrative complaint into a specific accountability demand aimed at identifiable decisions, covering 82 First Nations between the two organisations.
Sources 11, 12
AFN research puts the on-reserve school infrastructure gap at $19 billion over 20 years
Two reports commissioned by the Assembly of First Nations, released in early September, estimate $19 billion is needed over 20 years to bring on-reserve school infrastructure to Canadian standards — $16.8 billion in school capital and $2.2 billion for teacherages. Of 395 schools examined, 227 need additions and 77 need immediate replacement. Saskatchewan carries the sharpest numbers: 73 of its 81 on-reserve schools are projected to need replacement, at an estimated $4.53 billion, with Manitoba at 41 of 57 and Ontario at 52 of 65. A companion report found First Nations bus fleets will need $1.52 billion over five years. Indigenous Services Canada told CBC it invested more than $3.8 billion in on-reserve school infrastructure between 2016 and March 2026, and committed $257.4 million as of fiscal 2026-27.
Why it matters
The reports set a costed, province-by-province benchmark against a federal capital line currently running near $257 million a year. The figures also feed a live legal track: Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation is pursuing a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal complaint over education funding in Ontario, and Chief Margaret Sault says her community waited 15 years for funding for its current school.
Sources 13
ITK allocates $218 million in federal funding at its Kuujjuaq annual general meeting
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami's board met September 9 and its annual general meeting followed September 10 in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, where directors allocated $218 million in federal funding across Inuit Treaty Organizations. The total comprises roughly $88 million in environment and nature funding — $51 million for the Inuit Guardians program, about $33.3 million in Indigenous Partnerships for Nature funding and about $4 million for the Inuit-Canada Nature Table — plus $130 million in Urban, Rural and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy funding, Inuit's share of a $780-million federal top-up split among Inuit, First Nations and Métis, supplementing the $197 million over seven years allocated in 2025. The meeting marked ten years since the National Inuit Suicide Prevention Strategy, reviewed the Inuit Nunangat Poverty Reduction Strategy launched in June, and set the 2027 AGM for Nain, Nunatsiavut.
Why it matters
This is distinctions-based federal funding divided by Inuit leadership rather than by a federal department — the Inuit Nunangat Policy operating as designed. The split between Guardians money and housing money also shows where the current federal envelope is concentrated across the four regions.
Sources 14
Closer to Home
Chinook arriving blind on the Salmon River as the syilx watershed emergency enters its fifth month
Chinook returning up the Salmon River, in Secwepemcúl'ecw, are arriving with clouded eyes — some lost entirely — as the river runs thin and warm, with flows lower than in any previous year. Blinded salmon rarely survive to spawn. The Province issued a fish-protection order limiting irrigation in July, rescinded it less than two weeks later citing the interests of water users irrigating crops as wildfires loomed, then reissued it on August 19, after hundreds of Chinook had already arrived. The Okanagan Nation Alliance declared a watershed emergency in May across regional rivers including the Salmon and Bessette, calling for mandatory water-use reductions and a co-governance forum between the syilx and the Province. "Water is life, and the health of our watersheds can no longer be treated as secondary to development and short-term interests," Westbank First Nation Chief Robert Louie said at the time. Researchers point past the orders to the system: about 180 of nearly 1,300 aquifers monitored, industrial water rates of $2.25 per million litres among the lowest in Canada, and watershed program funding down roughly 80 per cent in three years. "We can't be trying to fix drought in an emergency," said Rosie Simms of the POLIS Water Sustainability Project.
Why it matters
This is Interior water — the connected systems that Secwépemc, syilx Okanagan and Nlaka'pamux fisheries depend on. The Okanagan Nation Alliance is not asking for consultation on a project; it is asking for a standing co-governance table over an entire watershed, and the on-again-off-again orders of July and August are what the current arrangement produces without one.
Sources 15
BC's First Nations Leadership Council presses Ottawa to pass Bill S-2 and end the second-generation cut-off
On September 8 the First Nations Leadership Council — the First Nations Summit, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and the BC Assembly of First Nations — published an open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney and Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty calling for Bill S-2 to be passed as amended by the Senate, without further delay. The bill would remove the Indian Act's second-generation cut-off, replacing it with a one-parent rule for transmitting status. The letter says the bill has now been delayed more than 460 days — set against Bill C-5's passage in 20 days — and that more than 500 First Nations support eliminating the cut-off. It also urges Ottawa to stop folding the status question into separate membership and citizenship discussions: Canada "cannot weaponize the duty to consult or our rights to self-determination to evade its human rights and fiduciary obligations under the Indian Act." Signatories include Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, Chief Marilyn Slett and Chief Councillor Linda Innes for UBCIC, Robert Phillips, Hugh Braker and Huy'wu'qw Shana Thomas for the First Nations Summit, and Regional Chief Terry Teegee for the BCAFN.
Why it matters
All three BC leadership bodies signing one letter is the province's political centre of gravity moving together, which does not happen often. The stakes are local and concrete: status determines who appears on membership rolls, how federal per-capita funding flows, and who is counted in treaty, self-government and benefit-sharing processes — and the cut-off, left in place, shrinks registered populations community by community over time.
Sources 16
Grey whale research in Ahousaht Ha-hulthi runs on the consent of the Ha'wiih, with Ahousaht Guardians collecting the data
Ha-Shilth-Sa reported on September 9 on research in Ahousaht Ha-hulthi documenting malnutrition among grey whales. The work is run by the Ocean Wise Whales Initiative, with researcher Dr. Chloe Robinson, together with the Maaqutusiis Hahoulthee Stewardship Society and Hanna Meyer — Ahousaht Guardians collect seawater immediately after a whale feeds, alongside the NGO Whales of Clayoquot and Barkley Sounds. The project runs under the informed consent of Ahousaht's Ha'wiih, who set the terms for what happens in their territory and how results get interpreted. Roughly 60 grey whales from the endangered Pacific Coast Feeding Group use Ahousaht territory; more than 145 mortalities were documented along western North American coasts this spring and summer, and the eastern grey whale population has fallen from about 27,000 in 2016 to about 13,000 in 2025. Paul Cottrell, marine mammal coordinator with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, described "very skinny animals, a bag of bones" against a daily feeding requirement of roughly 1,100 to 1,300 kilograms.
Why it matters
The governance shape matters as much as the science: the Ha'wiih set the research terms, the Nation's stewardship society co-leads, and Guardians do the fieldwork, so data about the territory stays anchored in the territory. It also means Ahousaht holds its own evidence when management decisions about Clayoquot and Barkley Sounds come up.
Sources 17
The sweep
Law & courts
Plaintiffs in the 1994 Northwest Land Claim — 34 original Métis plaintiffs, Métis Nation–Saskatchewan and the Métis National Council — have applied to lift a stay in place since 2005; original plaintiff Gerald Morin expects the matter before Saskatchewan's Court of King's Bench in October. The claim seeks declarations of Aboriginal title and rights over roughly 120,000 square kilometres of northern Saskatchewan and Alberta. Windspeaker.com
Amendments to New Brunswick's Provincial Offences Procedure Act, passed in June, give provincial policing agencies clear legislative authority to enforce laws made by First Nations — housing, animal-control and exclusion bylaws among them — following the model Saskatchewan adopted in 2023. Prince Albert Daily Herald
Politics & policy
At the Treaty 6 150th-anniversary gathering hosted by Onion Lake Cree Nation at Fort Pitt, Chief Dale Steinhauer and Dr. James Makokis announced that Saddle Lake Cree Nation will invoke the Treaty 6 medicine chest clause to establish a safe haven for gender-affirming care on its reserve lands, asserting inherent and federal jurisdiction over Alberta's Bills 26, 27 and 29; later coverage indicates the care is intended for all Albertans. Alberta Native News
Health & education
Kativik Ilisarniliriniq opened the 2026-27 school year with 41 teaching vacancies across Nunavik, down from 59 at the same point last year and the lowest since 2021 — the board says three years of numbers may be pointing to a trend. Nunatsiaq News
Culture, language & arts
Gyetk: Coastal Fusion and Ancestral Knowledge from a Ts'msyen Kitchen, by Rachel and Spencer Greening, gathers 60 seasonal recipes built on traditional Pacific Northwest coastal foods; it releases September 22, framed by the authors around re-empowering Indigenous palates. IndigiNews
International Indigenous
As developers court tribal lands for data centres, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma enacted a complete moratorium in March, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma's Business Committee declared its opposition in July, and the Cherokee Nation announced in August it would ban hyperscale development on tribally owned and trust lands. ICT News
An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare analysis commissioned by the Healing Foundation found Stolen Generations survivors 2.7 times more likely to live with severe or profound disability than other First Nations people — and that only 6 per cent of the 1997 Bringing Them Home report's recommendations have been clearly implemented. Te Ao News
The bright spot
War canoe racing gets a national broadcast window as Snuneymuxw's Island Brave chase a fifth title
Racing Waters, a nine-episode documentary series on Coast Salish war canoe and outrigger racing, lands on APTN Sunday, September 13 at 8 p.m. — with a second season already commissioned. It follows Snuneymuxw First Nation's Island Brave Canoe Club in Nanaimo, founded in 2002 and four-time Canadian outrigger national champions in the men's division, centred on coach and co-founder Chief Mike Wyse (Xum'silum) and his nephew Eli Wyse, a councillor, mentor and puller. The broadcast arrives mid-season: Island Brave race for a fifth national title at the CORA National Championships in Fort Langley on September 19-20, then head to the Molokaʻi Hoe world championship in Hawai'i in October. "This is our people's sport," Wyse said — and the series is framed the way he frames the racing, around teachings and legacy moving to the next generation of pullers.
Sources 18
Still watching
NunatuKavut Community Council says it will pursue "all avenues, including legal action" over the terminated recognition process; Crown-Indigenous Relations says it has offered to meet the council to explain its findings. Where and when the litigation lands will set the first judicial marker on how Canada enters and exits these tables.
Two accountability processes are open with no timelines attached: Indigenous Services Canada has been instructed to "urgently establish the facts" of Miranda Mamakwa's death, with SLFNHA and NAN's demand for an independent investigation and public accounting on the table; and the SIRT-NL investigation into the Sheshatshiu arrest remains open, with Newfoundland and Labrador legislation still offering no path to an Innu-led police service.
The courts-and-policy calendar carried forward: public comment on the redesigned Additions to Reserve Policy closes September 22 — with Tseshaht's Bell Road purchase and now Da̱'naxda'x̱w / Awa'etłala's Knight Inlet lands in the queue behind it; Saugeen Ojibway Nation's Treaty 45½ hearing is October 2; the KSM "substantial start" reconsideration and Friends of the Attawapiskat River's judicial review of the Webequie road proceed; and the Métis Northwest Land Claim stay application is expected before Saskatchewan's Court of King's Bench in October.
In Parliament and around it: the FNLC is pressing for Bill S-2 to pass as amended after more than 460 days; Bill C-21, the Red River Métis self-government treaty legislation, remains short of second reading; no federal response has surfaced to the August coalition letter on lapsing MMIWG2S+ funding; the West Coast pipeline national-interest decision is expected October 1; and the First Nations-First Ministers' Meeting follows October 26, where AFN's now fully costed $19-billion school infrastructure ask lands.