Former Qalipu chief says enrolment unfolding as it should

Brendan Sheppard says the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation Band was never meant to include every single person who could trace an ancestral bloodline to that group of indigenous people.

The former leader of the Federation of Newfoundland Indians and the first elected Qalipu chief has been vilified in the raging disputation over the enrolment process into the band.

He is the man who many consider responsible for the 2013 supplemental agreement, the terms of which have made it much harder for a successful application to be included in the founding members list of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation Band.

More than 100,000 people have applied, but only 18,044 have received letters of acceptance. Tens of thousands of those rejected have no way to appeal the decision.

In an interview this week, Sheppard said people have to remember that this is not the federal government ramming an agreement down the throats of the Mi’kmaq people.

He said the supplemental agreement is a deal the Federation of Newfoundland Indians agreed to, knowing it would limit the membership.

“I’m not totally surprised by the outcome,” said Sheppard. “We knew a lot of people would be affected by that ... This was definitely not (meant to include every person who thought they were Mi’kmaq) and certainly not 100,000 people.”

Sheppard said it is important to remember the Federation of Newfoundland Indians, up until about 2007, had to scrape up names to show it had about 6,000 members. It never had any more than that during its previous 35 years.

After a visit from former prime minister Stephen Harper in 2007 and a real chance of the establishment of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation Band, the numbers swelled to about 10,000.

The federation had independent research conducted to determine how many people might want membership. Sheppard said the federation thought its guess of about 20,000 was quite liberal.

The original Qalipu founding members list ended up with more than 23,000 names.

“When people started getting cards and car dealerships started advertising tax-free vehicles, all hell broke loose and the bottom came out of it,” he said.