{"id":830817,"date":"2026-07-28T06:20:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T06:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/830817\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T06:20:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T06:20:17","slug":"bc-conservative-leader-tells-mlas-to-start-using-the-term-indian-daily-hive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/830817\/","title":{"rendered":"BC Conservative leader tells MLAs to start using the term &#8216;Indian&#8217; | Daily Hive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The leader of the BC Conservatives has directed MLAs to change how they speak about First Nations.<\/p>\n<p>According to a report from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biv.com\/news\/commentary\/rob-shaw-bc-conservatives-urged-to-stop-using-term-first-nations-12596562\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Business in Vancouver (BIV),<\/a>\u00a0Kerry-Lynne Findlay, who was <a href=\"https:\/\/dailyhive.com\/vancouver\/kerry-lynne-findlay-bc-conservative-leader-elected#google_vignette\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">elected as leader of the BC Conservatives in May<\/a>, has started to tell MLAs to stop using the term \u2018First Nations,\u2019 and instead use the terms Indigenous, Aboriginal, or Indian.<\/p>\n<p>The term Indian is <a href=\"https:\/\/indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca\/terminology\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">widely considered outdated and often offensive.<\/a> While it is a legal term for someone registered under the Indian Act and used in that context, it has a \u201ccomplex, often idiosyncratic colonial use in governing identity through this legislation,\u201d according to the University of British Columbia\u2019s Indigenous Foundations.<\/p>\n<p>The BIV report states that Findlay\u2019s team \u201cpointed to the federal Indian Act as justification.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It also wrote that the directive \u201cis apparently in response to the term First Nations being viewed as a woke description and language from the left.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Aboriginal is a term used for the first inhabitants of Canada, and includes First Nations, Inuit, and M\u00e9tis.<\/p>\n<p>Inuit are groups of people who live in the far north, and, under Canadian law, are not considered \u201cIndians.\u201d M\u00e9tis is \u201d a collective of cultures and ethnic identities that resulted from unions between Aboriginal and European people in what is now Canada,\u201d according to UBC.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, First Nations is used to describe Indigenous people in Canada who are not M\u00e9tis nor Inuit.<\/p>\n<p>Daily Hive reached out to the BC Conservatives and will update the story with their response when we hear back.<\/p>\n<p>While Findlay was running for party leadership, she faced scrutiny from critics over past positions on Indigenous issues, including when she questioned another candidate\u2019s objectivity on Indigenous issues because his wife is Indigenous.<\/p>\n<p>With files from Kenneth Chan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The leader of the BC Conservatives has directed MLAs to change how they speak about First Nations. According&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":["post-830817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}