First Nations Leaders Open Ottawa Summit With Ceremony Before Carney Meeting

First Nations leaders gathered in Ottawa on Sunday for a day of ceremony with Prime Minister Mark Carney and provincial premiers, one day before the first First Nations-First Ministers meeting in Canada in more than two decades.

The closed-door meeting runs on Monday, October 26, on unceded Algonquin territory in Ottawa. It is the first gathering of its kind since the Kelowna Accord talks of 2005, when premiers and then prime minister Paul Martin met Indigenous leaders to discuss closing the socioeconomic gaps in their communities, The Canadian Press reported.

National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak of the Assembly of First Nations said the ceremony matters because it sets the frame for the meeting. Starting with ceremony, led by knowledge keepers and elders, ensures participants enter with the right frame of mind, grounded in First Nations spirituality, she said.

How the room is set

There will be 28 seats in the main meeting room: one for the prime minister, one for the national chief, 13 for provincial and territorial leaders and 13 for First Nations representatives, most of them Assembly of First Nations regional chiefs. The Privy Council Office has not confirmed which premiers will attend. Quebec Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith have both said they will be absent.

The agenda covers long-term political governance, including rights and treaties, jurisdiction, health care, policing and land, plus economic partnerships and prosperity. Tension sits under the economic items: the federal and provincial push to fast-track major projects is the reason chiefs demanded a seat at this table in the first place.

Consent is the live question

Woodhouse Nepinak has called the meeting a big test of Canada's ability to reconcile economic growth with First Nations rights, and has said it cannot be a one-and-done event. A First Nations-controlled sovereign wealth fund has been discussed as a concept, with no formal commitments yet.

Other leaders are setting limits in public before the doors close. The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs has said its participation does not constitute consent to government decisions or major projects. Abram Benedict of the Chiefs of Ontario noted that regional representatives were allocated only three minutes each for opening remarks, and asked for more speaking time.

Rights defenders are also planning a National Day of Action in Ottawa on Monday, arguing that several of the projects under discussion sit on Indigenous territories whose leaders were not invited.

What to watch on Monday is simple: whether the meeting ends with a process, dates and named commitments, or with a photograph and a promise to meet again.