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And while the Metis resistances at the Red River in 1869-70 and the Battle of Batoche in 1885 are more well-known, our people were never limited to just those locations, and our history in Ontario is often untold.
That resilience drove our fight for rights recognition to the highest court in Canada. For 20 years, Ontario has been the home of R. v. Powley — the first and only Supreme Court of Canada case that recognized a Metis community with Metis rights protected by s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. To this day, the landmark R. v. Powley decision has remained foundational for ongoing Metis rights assertions and negotiations with the Metis not just in Ontario, but across the Metis Nation Homeland.
This agreement also commits the federal government to introduce recognition legislation into Parliament as soon as possible to anchor our nation-to-nation, government-to-government relationship. From the failed constitutional conferences in the 1980s, to the Metis Nation Accord being rejected as a part of the Charlottetown Accord in the 1990s, to the Kelowna Accord in 2005, we have been close to having our self-government recognized before to only have politics overtake promises or principles.