One of the surest ways for a First Nations person to get themselves uninvited to a dinner event or any future functions, is to respond to questions about why it is that Native people don’t have to pay taxes. Especially if you respond with fact rather than begging forgiveness that you are also largely ignorant of such issues.
The safest thing you can do is to proclaim that you entrust such issues with the powers that be, because they got us this far, did they not?
You can’t point out true facts (though you want to show receipts) that on your way over to dinner you filled your tank with gasoline at the local Shell station and got soaked by the government of Canada just like everyone else, and you even paid the taxes on your gasoline purchase. You can’t tell them that you were feeling a bit peckish and thought to purchase a chocolate bar along with the gas and paid the taxes on that as well.
Pretty much every transaction you make while not on a First Nation community is taxable and you have few exemptions. Even your grocery bill from Loblaws and other fine establishments display the taxes you paid on all of your purchases.
You don’t want to burden them with the long story about how you have a special card, an Indian status card, issued by the federal government of Canada that when shown to merchants entitles you to not have to pay the provincial sales tax on items purchased in Ontario.
You don’t want to regale them with stories about all of the times you were subject to verbal abuse from store clerks and even customers standing in line behind you because they thought you shouldn’t be entitled to the privilege of not paying your taxes.
You don’t want to have to share these tales because frankly, educating the masses is exhausting and furthermore, they should know these things!
I know that from a certain perspective, it looks like a huge windfall that First Nations people are exempt from certain taxes. But when examined closer, that windfall is not self imposed, it is a treaty promise. And it has been dwindling down to a trickle since it first showed up as a treaty promise dating back to the year of our benevolent lord, 1794.
That was the year of the Jay Treaty.
This was when all of First Nations people Indigenous to North America were promised, in writing, that they would forever be exempt from paying taxes on goods purchased in the U.S.A. or Canada. It was also declared that we could move freely across the borders of these infant nations and that we were not subject to customs declarations on either side.
The rights granted in the Jay Treaty are not there today. The treaty was broken so quickly it would have caused a 'pretendian' to turn pale in a mere instant.
Canada fails to honour this treaty. And although the promise of tax exemption for Indians was mentioned in subsequent treaties following the Jay Treaty, Canada has never lived up to those obligations either.
By this point in our shared history, it would have been well established that the Europeans had no intention of ever honouring their treaties with us. A scant 31 years prior to the Jay Treaty the British had previously made a royal proclamation in which they had declared that First Nations would live freely in their own lands forever, unmolested (their word).
In 2024, First Nations have been reduced to occupying just 6.3 per cent of their original lands. And only 40 per cent of Canada was ever surrendered under treaty. The remaining 60 per cent was just taken — including the land where Canada’s Parliament buildings sit. That land was never surrendered under treaty either. Ironically, that is where the decision to renege on tax exemptions for First Nations people was first made.
According to the last census (2021), there are 1.27 million First Nations people in Canada who are considered “status” under the Indian Act. Only about 48 per cent of that number qualify for tax exemption in Canada. That exemption only applies to provincial sales tax. Everyone pays the GST (even those exempted under treaty). And that exemption only applies to goods and services being acquired for use or consumption on an Indian Reserve. Not beyond that boundary.
So, we have gone from being granted full tax exemption to being granted partial tax exemption in less time than it takes to say GST. That is why when I hear the muffled cursing behind me in a store checkout line each time I take out my status card to try to exercise my right to tax exemption, I often want to educate. But I don’t have time. I’m tired now.
I pay taxes on my income and I file annually. I even pay taxes on land in Simcoe County — land that was to be shared under treaty in 1815, just three years after my ancestors helped repel the Americans at Niagara. Land that the Anishinaabeg have never been compensated for. Would you as a taxpayer continue to pay taxes on land that you were never paid for in the first place?
“Taxpayers” will often tell me how unfair it is that a certain group in Canada is tax exempt. I often want to counter with, “I’ll gladly relinquish this exemption in exchange for the land that was stolen from us.”
But that also happens to be the land from which Canada’s tax base was built. I ask again, would you as a taxpayer continue to pay taxes on land that you were never paid for in the first place?
But I digress. In Canada, promising tax exemption and reneging on that promise is as old as Samuel de Champlain’s rusted and redundant spurs.
This story has always been far too long to have to explain to a curious non-Native at an otherwise pleasant dinner. And if you did have the time to try to explain it in any great detail, I believe that they’d find the whole thing to be quite taxing. As do I, and I’m supposed to be exempt.
Jeff Monague is a former Chief of the Beausoleil First Nation on Christian Island, former Treaty Research Director with the Anishnabek (Union of Ontario Indians), and veteran of the Canadian Forces. Monague, who taught the Ojibwe language with the Simcoe County District School Board and Georgian College, is currently the manager of Springwater Provincial Park.
