Terrine Friday, National Post · Thursday, Jul. 15, 2010
The Iroquois nation should not be allowed to travel abroad on their own passports if other nations, such as the Québécois, do not have their own passports, the Bloc Québécois’ Indian affairs critic said Wednesday.
“We must all have a valid passport from a recognized country, not a nation. If that was not the case, there would be a Basque passport, a Québécois passport, a Scottish passport, a Corsican passport,” said Bloc MP Marc Lemay. “Last I heard Quebec was still part of Canada and, even if we are very, very sovereigntist, we still need a Canadian passport to travel.”
Mr. Lemay was responding to issues of nationality that have come to light as a 47-person delegation of Iroquois have been stuck for several days in New York because they were travelling to an athletic competition in Britain on passports of the Iroquois Confederacy. The group, whose members live on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, refuse passports from either country as a matter of principle.
The United States had denied a guarantee of return for a British entry visa. The United States reversed its decision on Wednesday, but will vouch only for American Iroquois travelling with the group. The Canadian government has yet to confirm whether it will intervene on behalf of the Canadians on the team, 11 of whom hold Iroquois — or “Haudenosaunee” — passports and are set to compete later this week. The Department of Foreign Affairs has said it is aware of the situation.
“The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act specifies that Canadian citizens and registered Indians under the Indian Act have a right to enter Canada,” Immigration spokeswoman Karen Shadd said in a statement.
“Furthermore, these persons are also exempt from the requirement to hold a document to enter Canada.”
According to Passport Canada, the Canadian passport issued by Ottawa is the only “official” document for travel abroad.
It is considered the “only reliable and universally accepted” piece of identification for the purpose of international travel, spokeswoman Veronique Robitaille said on Wednesday. “For this reason, we strongly encourage Canadians to apply for a passport before travelling abroad.”
Gavin Taylor, a native history professor at Concordia University in Montreal, said the Canadian government has avoided dealing fully with the native mobility issue for centuries and is now facing the consequences.
“If they explicitly allow the Iroquois to travel on their own passport, it does open up a Pandora’s box of problems because other groups might also claim their own passports ... and the Canadian government does claim to have jurisdiction over these people even if they deny that jurisdiction.”
The first known person to have travelled with a native passport overseas was Desakaheh, himself an Iroquois, in 1923. He travelled to the League of Nations to make his case that the Canadian government had infringed upon the rights of the Six Nations to self-determination.
While Iroquois travellers have been regularly able to cross the boundary with confederacy-issued passports since the mid 1970s — apparently as a courtesy by host countries — tighter security in a post 9/11 world has prompted the change.
Canadian Cree Chief Willie Littlechild told the National Post the Canadian government would be in violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples if they did not recognize an Iroquois passport as equal to a Canadian passport. However, the cited article, 36, does not explicitly state Indigenous peoples can cross international borders without a state-issued passport.
“The state’s position is understandable because if there’s a problem, it would be the country that would bail them out, not their nation,” said Indiana University of Southbend assistant professor Timothy Willig. He said it would be reasonable for Iroquois to hold both a national passport and state-certified passport.
Jessica Shenandoah, secretary of the Iroquois Confederacy which includes Mohawks, Seneca and other native groups whose territory stretches across parts of Quebec, Ontario and New York State, said the Iroquois’ refusal to travel on Canadian or U.S. passports is legitimate.
“It’s more than an issue of pride. It’s an issue of our existence. Who we are,” she said. “We’re indigenous people that have always been there and we have to live with these imposed governments on us. We’ve never confused our citizenship to our own confederacy.”
She said talks are underway to bring the confederacy passport up to security standards.
The delegation travelling from New York City to London postponed their flight again to today just to make sure the visas come through, Ms. Shenandoah said.
Mr. Lemay said the Iroquois are just one of several native — and non-native — nations living in Canada.
National Post, with files from Postmedia News