Will we all be Indians?

Indian status can now be passed on by both men and women regardless when they marry a non-indian. So far the B.C. ruling seems to make sense, inasmuch as a jus sanguini law makes sense. As I am unfamiliar with the details of the Indian Act I won't dwell into the technicalities, but one question remains unanswered: if Indian status should be passed by blood without quantum or residency requirements, one can easily predict a future Canada where most registered Indians have little or no link to their heritage, culture or land.

Unless I am grandly mistaken, in which case I will stand corrected, such provisions will grant Indian status to people whose First Nations ancestry is lost to history and who have had no Indian upbringing. This then begs the question of what we want from the Indian Act.

If we want to recognize ancestry and descendance, then this ruling is exactly what we need. The associated costs (increasing free schooling entitlements, etc) will have to be factored in, but it is not a bad law and not a bad provision. If we, on the other hand, wish to preserve the culture, heritage and society of the First Nations then this ruling is a mixed blessing.

Introducing new blood and new members into Indian families is, of course, welcome (gene pools don't do isolation very well). Without the threat of losing Indian status these unions will become more common and will probably be an excellent cultural bridge. However we risk thus diluting Indian heritage, conferring Indian status, over time, to individuals who trace their Indian ancestry to the fifth generation and who had little or no experience of Indian culture.

Preserving First Nations and recognizing them as such is a tough task. Blood quantum requirements would, over time, cause registered Indians to become extinct. Residency clauses such as a requirement to reside in a reservation for X years would isolate First Nations, throwing years of integration into the bin. Requiring those seeking Indian status to prove cultural heritage and ancestry awareness will, instead, heavily dilute the Indian self-identification and possibly cause a slow extinction of the culture itself, since merely descending from it and just knowing its customs will be sufficient to define one an Indian.

This is tough and I am ignorant on the topic, so this is where my ramblings end.