The National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations said “pretendians” twice on CPAC’s cameras on Monday, once with the Prime Minister beside her. The fight is over fish, moose and cards, and it is older than Canada.
On Monday in Ottawa, after the First Nations-First Ministers’ Meeting, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak told CPAC’s camera:
“First Nations should be able to develop and design their own laws and their own ways of being. And that includes with the membership. ... there’s a lot of confused people out there who are claiming to be Indigenous, a lot of pretendians, and then a whole group of everybody else who says, you know, I’m Métis. Like, and yet a lot of them, like, you know, well, can you trace yourself back to a First Nation? ... they’re creating these issues of ... the depletion of fish because all these people are just using cards to, to fish and hunt ... I come from a place where we don’t even have much moose anymore because of it.”
Earlier, beside Prime Minister Mark Carney at the closing news conference, she said “the federal government has been telling us who we are and who we aren’t for a long time. And it’s creating a group in this country of ... pretendians that don’t know who they are because ... the government ends up saying, oh, no, you don’t belong to that band, when in fact many of them do.” The result, she said, was “this big group of Métis people across this country that probably have First Nations roots and are not some new group that are being created in this country.” She added that “First Nations were the only group, along with the Inuit in this country, to begin with.”
By Tuesday five Métis governments had answered. Manitoba Métis Federation President David Chartrand: “Our Red River Métis identity, our existence, and our history in this country are not up for debate, nor are they up for dismissal by any other Indigenous group in this country, especially a non-rights holding organization.” Métis Nation-Saskatchewan President Glen McCallum: “No government or national organization defines who we are.” The Métis Nation of Ontario: “No Indigenous leader should seek to advance the rights of their own people by denying the identity, history or constitutionally protected rights of another.”
Section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982, says the aboriginal peoples of Canada “includes the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada.” In R. v. Powley, 2003, the Supreme Court of Canada set out the test of Métis identity for a claim to Métis rights under section 35: “self-identification, ancestral connection, and community acceptance,” the ancestral connection being “to a historic Métis community,” not a First Nation.
In the first breath, First Nations must be free to decide who belongs, and Ottawa has no business “telling us who we are and who we aren’t.” In the next, she hands many who call themselves Métis a test the Supreme Court did not set. She said “pretendians” beside the head of the government bound by that ruling, and he did not take it up before the news conference ended. If a premier had said “pretendians” about any Indigenous people on a CPAC camera he would be apologizing by supper.
Look at the word. “Pretendian” is a blend of “pretend” and “Indian,” the name Europeans hung on the peoples of this continent by mistake and the one the Indian Act and section 35 still carry. It is racist twice over: at the people it is aimed at, and at the people whose name it borrows. In 2023 India became the most populous country on earth and landed on the Moon; in 2024 SIPRI counted it among nine nuclear-armed states. About 1.3 million people in Canada gave “Indian (from India)” as an ethnic or cultural origin in the 2021 census. A national leader used their name as a byword for fakery on a CPAC camera. Those Canadians should file a human rights complaint and make the Canadian Human Rights Commission put in writing what the law now says: the Act reaches jobs, services and housing, Parliament repealed its hate-messages section, section 13, by an Act passed in 2013, and a slur from a podium is outside it on its face. That answer will say more about this country than the word did.
The Assembly of First Nations describes itself as “an advocacy organization”; it holds no section 35 rights of its own, and nothing gives its National Chief a say over who is Métis.
Why she said it is in her own words: fish, moose, cards. It is a fight over who takes what from the land, and who sits at Ottawa’s table when recognition and money are handed out. In April the AFN demanded that Ottawa withdraw Bill C-21, the Red River Métis treaty bill, saying it “threatens to create a hierarchy of rights.” In 2024 the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan walked out of the Métis National Council in part over doubts that some Métis Nation of Ontario citizens are Métis at all. Métis against Métis, First Nations against Métis, over the same cards and the same money.
In the seventeenth century the Haudenosaunee fought the Wendat and others in a series of wars whose origins, in The Canadian Encyclopedia’s words, “lay in the competitive fur trade.” Depleted beaver then. Depleted fish and moose now, she says.
Canada negotiates as if there were one Indigenous voice. There is not. There are nations, and they fight each other over resources the way nations always have. On Monday the National Chief said it herself on CPAC, the day she stood beside the Prime Minister. The country now has a face to put on it.
The National Chief should withdraw the word. The Prime Minister should say whether Canada accepts her test for the Métis. And the press should carry her words as spoken; as of 3:22 this morning, the written outcome reports NFNM checked, from CBC News, APTN News and ICT, did not mention them.
Sources
CPAC, October 26, 2026, “AFN Chief Woodhouse Nepinak Reflects on First Nations-First Ministers’ Meeting” (13:17; the passage runs 4:56 to 5:46): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z7l7GWu5EY
CPAC, October 26, 2026, “PM Mark Carney announces First Nations funding, Sovereign Wealth Fund possibility” (34:51; the passage runs 33:55 to 34:40): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seO5dN0Yv3c ; episode page: https://www.cpac.ca/headline-politics/episode/pm-carney-and-afn-chief-woodhouse-nepinak-hold-a-news-conference?id=d2a7c683-fd1a-462d-8de2-d5fc7f8cb265
Manitoba Métis Federation, October 26, 2026, “Special Statement by President David Chartrand in response to AFN National Chief Woodhouse Nepinak’s denial of our existence”: https://www.mmf.mb.ca/news/special-statement-by-president-david-chartrand-in-response-to-afn-national-chief-woodhouse-nepinaks-denial-of-our-existence
Otipemisiwak Métis Government, October 27, 2026, “Métis History is Not Up for Debate: President Sandmaier Responds to AFN National Chief”: https://albertametis.com/news/statement-2026-10-27/
Métis Nation-Saskatchewan, October 27, 2026, “A Statement from MN-S President McCallum”: https://mns.ca/news/news-and-stories/1645/a-statement-from-mn-s-president-mccallum
Métis Nation of Ontario, October 27, 2026, “Statement: MNO Condemns AFN National Chief’s Remarks Disregarding Métis Identity and Rights”: https://www.metisnation.org/news/statement-metis-nation-of-ontario-condemns-afn-national-chiefs-remarks-disregarding-metis-identity-and-rights/
Métis Nation British Columbia, October 27, 2026, “MNBC Strongly Condemns AFN National Chief’s Remarks About Métis Belonging and Identity”: https://www.mnbc.ca/afn-chief-remarks-condemned/
Constitution Act, 1982, s. 35: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/FullText.html
R. v. Powley, 2003 SCC 43, [2003] 2 S.C.R. 207: https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/2076/index.do
Assembly of First Nations, April 23, 2026, “AFN National Chief Raises Serious Concerns About Infringement of First Nations Rights in Bill C-21”: https://afn.ca/all-news/press-releases/afn-national-chief-raises-serious-concerns-about-infringement-of-first-nations-rights-in-bill-c-21-calls-for-immediate-withdrawal-of-bill-and-first-nations-engagement/
Assembly of First Nations, “About Us”: https://afn.ca/about-us/
CBC News, September 19, 2024, Brett Forester, “Métis Nation-Saskatchewan cuts ties with Métis National Council”: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/metis-nation-saskatchewan-withdrawal-mnc-1.7328229
The Canadian Encyclopedia, “Iroquois Wars”: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/iroquois-wars
Wiktionary, “Pretendian” (etymology: “Blend of pretend + (Ind)ian”): https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Pretendian
The Canadian Encyclopedia, “Indian” (the term): https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indian-term
Indian Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. I-5: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/i-5/
United Nations, April 24, 2023, “India to overtake China as world’s most populous country in April 2023, United Nations projects”: https://www.un.org/en/desa/india-overtake-china-world-most-populous-country-april-2023-united-nations-projects
SIPRI Yearbook 2024, chapter 7, “World nuclear forces”: https://www.sipri.org/yearbook/2024/07
NASA, “Chandrayaan-3” (landed near the south pole of the Moon on Aug. 23, 2023): https://science.nasa.gov/mission/chandrayaan-3/
Statistics Canada, The Daily, October 26, 2022, 2021 Census, ethnocultural and religious diversity: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221026/dq221026b-eng.htm
Canadian Human Rights Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. H-6 (s. 5 to 14; s. 13 repealed 2013, c. 37, s. 2): https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/h-6/FullText.html ; the Act as it stood April 1 to June 25, 2014, with section 13 “Hate messages”: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/H-6/20140401/P1TT3xt3.html
An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act (protecting freedom), S.C. 2013, c. 37 (assented to June 26, 2013; s. 2 repeals section 13; in force one year after assent): https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/annualstatutes/2013_37/page-1.html
CBC News, October 26, 2026, Brett Forester, “First Nations-first ministers’ meeting brings funding announcements and mixed reviews”: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/first-nations-first-ministers-outcome-9.7396077
APTN News, October 27, 2026, Karyn Pugliese, “Nearly 200 First Nations leaders, the prime minister and premiers gathered for a historic meeting about almost everything. Now what?”: https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/nearly-200-first-nations-leaders-the-prime-minister-and-premiers-gathered-for-a-historic-meeting-about-almost-everything-now-what/
ICT, October 27, 2026, Miles Morrisseau, “First meeting in over 20 years between First Nations and First Ministers met with Divisions”: https://ictnews.org/news/first-meeting-in-over-20-years-between-first-nations-and-first-ministers-met-with-divisions/
The National Chief’s words were checked against CPAC’s two recordings, by their captions and by an independent machine transcription of CPAC’s audio; the Métis governments’ words against their own published statements; the Constitution and Powley against the Justice Canada and Supreme Court texts.