The Indigenous neighbours you didn't know you had

They're known by many names : Sudbury 817, one percenters, or Robinson Huron Treaty (RHT) annuitants who aren't members of the 21 First Nation signatories.

There's about a thousand of them in what Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) calls a general list. They have status cards, live in the territory, receive annual payments from the treaty but don't have a community to call their own.

Some say being in this specific situation when interacting with other First Nations, government officials and the public can create confusion, with few people being aware of the existence of this group in northeastern Ontario.

A spokesperson for ISC says general lists were created in 1951 as an administrative tool for the Indian registrar "to recognize individuals who were entitled to registration, but who – for various reasons, could not or chose not to become members of a specific First Nation." 

The creation of the general list allowed people to be registered without band membership. Initially, those lists remained small. ISC says there were less than 100 people in Canada on general lists in 1984. 

However, when the Indian Act was amended in 1985 to create paths for people who had lost their entitlement, that increased the number of people on general lists. Today the Indian Registration System maintains 11 regional general lists with a total of approximately 3,500 individuals.

Greater Sudbury resident Lori Rietze is one of them.

Her paternal relatives received treaty annuity payments in Nipissing First Nation until her grandmother commuted in 1936. 

Commutation is a process whereby an Indigenous person receives ten years of treaty annuity money in exchange for surrendering their status rights. 

"We think she might have sold her rights to protect my dad and his siblings from being taken to residential schools," said Rietze.

It took Rietze some 15 years to find the information she needed to reinstate her father's status with ISC in the early 2000s.

Although her family was historically listed on Nipissing's paylist, the First Nation told her they weren't on the band member list, meaning her grandparents and great grandparents would visit the community to receive their treaty annuity but were not formally part of it.

Rietze's search to find her paternal relatives' exact community of origin was inconclusive, although she did find family members in several communities, including Temagami, Nipissing and Pikwàkanagàn. 

However these ties aren't enough to meet the requirements to be granted membership, and so she remains on the Sudbury 817 general list.

"As an 817, if you go anywhere, you're asked what reserve you belong to. I don't have a reserve," she said. "Where do I belong?" 

Rietze says being Anishnaabe without a specific community means having no common space to gather in for cultural and social events like ceremonies or pow wows.

"I do my smudging at home, we don't have a place for us 817," she said.

It also means the people on that list have no band office or chief and council who can speak for them.

The one percenters 

As treaty beneficiaries, the Sudbury 817 are entitled to receive some money from the $10 billion compensation for past annuities Robinson Huron Treaty First Nations received from Ontario and Canada in 2023.

One per cent of the total settlement is to be distributed among treaty beneficiaries who do not reside in the 21 communities. That also includes people who transferred out of one of the Robinson Huron Treaty communities to another community through marriage or some other life event.

It's been almost a year since the settlement was announced, and the First Nations have conducted several engagement sessions with their members to discuss the distribution process. 

The one percenters, however, have not yet had a single meeting. 

According to correspondence shared with the CBC, this situation has caused some people in Sudbury 817 to feel forgotten and excluded from the process. 

Some worry that by not having conversations about the distribution, no money will be put aside for the group's collective and future use. 

There are also concerns about whether one per cent will be enough for all those eligible for a payout, and what will happen if it isn't. 

Every RHT First Nation has elected a trustee to represent them at the litigation table and help make decisions about the distribution process. 

For one percenters, RHT leadership appointed Allan Manitowabi as trustee-at-large. He was part of Sagamok Anishnawbek before joining Beausoleil First Nation, a community that is not part of RHT.

He recently shared a message asking the one per centers to be patient.

"The RHT litigation fund is not familiar with all the circumstances that establish the reasons for the maintenance of the Sudbury General List by Indigenous Services Canada officials," he said. 

He added that RHT leadership has asked to have access to the Sudbury General List to begin the process of verifying entitlement and communicating with those eligible for individual payouts.

The plan is to set up an online portal for the group on the RHT litigation fund's website once all the data has been collected.

That includes counting people who, like Manitowabi, have transferred out of Robinson Huron Treaty territory.