Talk:List of Indian reserves in Canada

Talk:List of Indian reserves in Canada/Holding

Bands and Reserves
There is a big difference between bands and reserves concerning Aboriginal communities in Canada... the article doesn't mention it.Souris2005 10:07, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I began reorganizing this page with the Atlantic Region. I'l add more data when I'll have time to do it.Souris2005 10:47, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree, this whole page should be merged with List of First Nations governments and Tribal Council in the way it's been done in the Atlantic Region section. -- TheMightyQuill 21:07, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that I understand you. How would you merge the Inuit communities into the above? They do not have Tribal Councils nor are they First Nations Governments. As an example the population of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut is 80% Inuit but the elected hamlet council is 75% non-Inuit. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 21:37, 5 October 2006 (UTC)


 * There are reserves that host multiple tribes (nations), and there are first nations that live in multiple reserves. Just look at First Nations in Alberta and List of Alberta Indian reserves for differences. Merging the pages would create a total mess. On another note, many blue links in the "reorganised" sections are misleading, it's a good ideea to check if they go to the intended article, otherwise disambiguate. One way to do that is to include the number of the reserve in the link (as in Flying Dust First Nation Reserve 105, Saskatchewan), and the suffix "Nation" for bands/tribes (or just use the full official name, as in Bigstone Cree Nation, then create redirects if articles exist under different names). --Qyd 02:49, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Meaning of the list
Is this a
 * 1) list of communities in Canada with 100% aboriginal population
 * 2) list of communities in Canada with an aboriginal population of more than 50%
 * 3) list of communities in Canada with a significant percentage of the population is aboriginal (exact amount to be decided on)
 * 4) list of communities in Canada with any aboriginal people living there
 * 5) list of communities in Canada that were founded by aboriginal people

This may at first seem a bit silly but it's important. If #1 or #4 are used then there would be very few communities listed. If #2 is used then the list would be somewhat as it is now with Hay River Dene 1 included but not the town of Hay River or Yellowknife. If #3 is used then both Hay River and Yellowknife could be included (as the aboriginal population of both is the largest minority group) but somewhere like Toronto (Census Metropolitan Area) would be excluded (with an aboriginal population larger than the whole of the NWT). And if #4 is used then the list will be huge. I am interested to see what others think. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 14:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought it's a list of Indian reserves, the ones governed by aboriginal councils under the authority of the Indian Act of Canada, and supervised directly by the federal Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (as opposed to provincial municipal affairs, that manage other communities, incorporated or not, in every province/territory). Ultimately, the line would be drawn by the legal type of administration. --Qyd 15:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I hadn't thought of it like that, but if so then the list would be better named as List of reserves in Canada, List of Indian reserves in Canada or List of First Nations reserves in Canada. At the same time all the Nunavut communities and all but possibly one of the NWT communities should be removed.

Wasn't this at one time named List of Indian Reserves in Canada, and got renamed; that's how I remember it, or "read" it by a scan of its contents, even though they're very incomplete. What I've done just now in the interim on Squamish Nation is take the reserves listing and link/redirect them to existing village articles, i.e. when there are village articles. There's a logic, theoretically, in having separate reserve articles from the villages that are on them, but in practical terms in most cases that's just massive redundancy (I'm reversing a positin here, but never mind taht....)....so for Cheakamus 11 that's actually Chiyakmesh and I also made reidredts for the fully spelled out versions; this has bugged me for a while because of the complex map of reserves and intertwined municipalities and teh multiple communities within both; I'm still uncertain whether D'Arcy, British Columbia and Nequatque should be combined, but in those cases of "dual communities" it's not like a place that's native-only, or nearly so.....if this article's title is to stay the way it is, I recommend that the list become a list-table with locations, populations, band government attached and traditional name/village if any; and for now the numbered reserves shown should just link to existing place articles; unless, again, there's a particular political/land history that's notable for the reserve, but even that can be incorporated within the article-of-place; which may or may not have a native name like Chiyakmesh or St'a7mes or may be something like Shalalth, British Columbia or Nimpo Lake, British Columbia or many, many others; in some cases this just doesn't work e.g. Penticton and Penticton 1 shouldn't be merged, but then for clarity of titlign Penticton Indian Reserve should be used in lieu of the StatsCan-ism "Penticton 1"; and in spoken-word terms such usages including Westbank Indian Reserve and Osoyoos Indian Reserve]] have more than one numbered reserve, i.e. plot of land, than just the oen, whatever it is e.g. Westbank 1, Osoyoos 1. In the case of the Osoyoos Indian Reserve it's notable as a physical space subordinate to but independent of Osoyoos Indian Band (about half of the Okanagan's wine grapes are grown on it and it's the whole east bank of the Okanagan Valley from Vaseux Lake to Highway 3 up to the heights of the Okanagan Highland; it's bigger than the Osoyoos "rancherie", teh native village and occupied/commercial area of the reserve (which includes Nk'mip/Inkaneep tourism services) and also separate from Osoyoos, British Columbia, which has to be a sepaate town article Lillooet 1 won't be part of the Lillooet, British Columbia article but it might as well be a redirect to what the place is actually called by locals - not by StatsCan or StatsCan-cloning wikipedians; "T-Bird Reserve}" in that case but its "official" name now is T'it'q'et, which isn't pronounced anything like it looks....for now I'm redirecting that and the T-Bird one to T'it'q'et First Nation though that's really a government article, and otherwise is known as the Lillooet Indian Band (one of 3 bands on the town's immediate outskirts, and one of five in a twenty-mile radius, six within twenty-five...i.e. to Pavilion) Skookum1 (talk) 02:19, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I just consolidated all the Lillooet Band/T'it'q'et First Nation links just listed, which in that case is how it's got to work; but with Lillooet 1A, I happen to know that's Seton Beach, also known as Skimka, and which used to be a Lakes Lillooet space, since assigned by Indian Affairs to the Lillooet Band; it's also the public beach in Lillooet and so has an English name (for a while in the old Days Skimka was the old name, but also "Seton-foot" and likewise in railway times the locality was Craig Lodge...and to confuse matters the Cayoosh Campground is t he biggest thing in that area these days....).  Point is it's not always easy to make a direct connetion between an IR link and a community or village article; but consolidating them all is going to save a lot of grief with reduplication of information and various merge/not-merge campaigns.....Skookum1 (talk) 02:31, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Clarify numbers?
Perhaps someone could add a short sentence or two saying what the numbers (some with letters, eg. "4a") mean? I can't see it and I'm too dumb to know it. . . Jackmitchell 20:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It's a wiki-ism - "Lillooet Indian Reserve No. 4a" would be an actual name for what would appear here as Lillooet 4a; curious to me how Wikipedia is so anti-neologistic but actually goes and creates neologistic usages; yes, Census Canada uses these but only as a shorthand; "most common usage" is not to refer to Indian Reserves in the way this page does; similarly the regional district concept is mis-used in various ways. Most of what are listed on here already have town or band articles, btw; and there's no need to ahve reserve articles as such unless there's a particular land history or other notability warranting a separate article......"Capilano 1" for instance, also has a community article already (X̱wemelch'stn; Esla7an goes to the Mission Reserve No. 1 ("Mission 1") which is another community in the same tribal category (Skwxwu7mesh).  Myself I think this list is a waste of time, otehr than serving as a list of redirects to actual community names; and I wasn't around when the guideline that imposed Census Canada shorthand on Wikipedia's titling/geographic terms of reference, or I would have fought it tooth and nail, and I still think it whoudl be changed to reflect actual terminologies and usages, not a Wikipedianists-derived adapation/extrapolation of Census Canada's questionable naming practices....Skookum1 (talk) 18:30, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Further to previous, many reserves listed are not inhanbited; others are not hte primary reserve, or rather are only one of several resrves forming a community; the collection of numbered Lillooet reserves is a good example, but there are scores of others. Lots of others.  I think focussing on the reserve numbers in their titles is pointless; easier to just refer to the Indian Band which is assigned to them; 105 Mlie Post 2 for example, with all of three dwellings, is part of a group of reserves administered (or wahtever the term is) by the Ashcroft Indian Band; the Seton Lake Indian Band has about ten reserves, three of them inhabited, and I could spend a whole day coming up with such examples.  There's also an issue that Telegraph Creek or Nimpo Lake are non-native communities as well as Indian Reserves.....Skookum1 (talk) 18:44, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Re name change and changes
I changed the title to List of Indian Reserves in Canada as that is their official legal designation; use of "First Nations reserves" or "Reserves" is POV and in the case of "Reserves" is vague (because of the designation "Government Reserve", which is a different item). "Aboriginal communities", which was in the previous title, is far too vague as Victoria, Vancouver, Kamloops, Prince Rupert, Regina, Winnipeg etc etc are all major aboriginal communities of off-reserve aboriginals, the same is even more true of many smaller communities; some Indian settlements in northwestern BC have no associated reserves, not sure what to do about them except to footnote that maybe. I also hid the tribal council and band lists, other than Manitobas as it's all there is for Manitoba, as TCs and bands are governments and can be in a tableized version of this list, which I'll make later today, and could/should also be listed separately, with their own tableizations of reserves associated with them. Only populated reserves should be shown, there are too many otherwise, at least in BC, but I didn't amend the title to say that. In the case of the Yukon NWY and Nunavut introductory paragraphs about why non-Indian Reserve settlements are common, and the nature of things like Charter Communities and Hamlets in the NWT are explained, as well as the Dene presence in the government of that Territory. Also most of these can be redirects to placename articles e.g. Chopaka 7 can go to Chopaka, British Columbia as that's all Chopaka is; in other cases teh Capilano Indian Reserve has a separate land-history and non-native development history on it and can be a separate article than Xwemeltsn (or however it's spelled) which is the traditional village on that site, ditto the Mission reserves to Esla7an. Or, again, the Lytton 1 reserve is really Camchin and shoudl not be a redirect to Lytton, British Columbia, similarly Lillooet 1 vs. Lillooet, British Columbia. I should stress again that Indian Reserves are not bands and bands are not peoples, ethnographically speaking, they are as User:OldManRivers would tell you, Indian act governments and should not be equated with "communities", though they are part of said communities, which obviously have an older and often much more ancient life than their desigation as Indian Reserves, and in many cases were relocations anyway.....Skookum1 (talk) 13:38, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It turns out that Lillooet 1 is a redirect to T'it'q'et First Nation, aka the Lillooet Indian Band; for now such redirects are somewhat functional although again there's a distinct land history in that case, and also more than one reserve under the governance of that band. Equating/redirecting reserves with the bands that run/occupy them is not always a good idea; the ethnographic group forming the cmomunity on this reserve also used to occupy the site of the Main Street of Lillooet, and has other land-associations in the area; too complex to easily explain without fully-researched articles in such cases; for now such fudgings as with Pavilion 1 to Tskweylecw First Nation are more suitable than, in that case, a redirect to Pavilion, British Columbia, as Pavilion is a "regional community" covering adjoining ranches and non-IR settlements.Skookum1 (talk) 13:43, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that there should have been some discussion first. However, rather than move it back I have removed all the non-Indian reserves from the NWT and Nunavut. I also think that the title should have been List of Indian reserves in Canada, with the small r, as per the article Indian reserve. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 19:14, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I was bold, and as you can see in sections above tried to raise this discussion before; as for the small-r Indian reserve usage, that's not hte normal media/Canadian English usage, but a Wiki=style usage that just looks odd; all such places are spelled as capitalized when in print, unless only "reserve" is used. "Indian Reserve" is an official designation, and not just when in combination form; Wiki-lower case is something that often gets mixed results; Alaska Purchase I got to move from Alaska purchase fairly easily, but such as "Regional District", when referring to it as a body, are necessary to distinguish it from any quasi-geographic usage.  Official documents, and native websites also, use both-caps; why shouldn't wiki?Skookum1 (talk) 19:43, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * In the case of the moved NWT/NT/YT material "hatnote" or main-template style notes could be used there; Yellowknife is a major aboriginal community, like Whistehorse - or Edmonton or Vancouver - and as with most municipalities in the NWT/NT or whatever hamlets and charter communities are collectively classed as; there's a US category something like Category:Settlements in Oklahoma with significant Native American populations, whatever the correct form of that in all its variations; I think because of the parallel situatinos in BC, e.g. Hazelton, Lillooet etc as well as the many non-reserve communities in northern/NW BC, that a different article ,and a different category is required; more on this later, I have to run but will be back this evening; I'm still trying to straighten out the main part of the list and intend to tableize it tonight (you did notice the band and TC "hides" I made, yes?).Skookum1 (talk) 19:47, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I just fixed the Yukon as there are only four reserves listed by Stats Can. It appears that the other places are like the NWT in that the majority of residents are native but they are not Indian reserves. It appears that we both tried to get some clarification on what the list was supposed to include, Talk:List of Indian Reserves in Canada. It's fine as a list of reserves but should not include non-reserve communities or should be under a different name. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 20:12, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * It just wasn't working under the old "Aboriginal communities" title; see associated comments on the WP:Canada discussion page (at bottom, can't recall exact title Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Canada maybe...there are aloso discussions somewhere in NorthAmNative concerning t he difference between a reserve/reservation and a community and keeping those concepts separate....(and from governments, too, and from ethnographic articles...otherise mixed content results, as in where technical linguistics material is found on ap age titled as an Indian eservation or on a government page; which used to e3 the case, in fact in some caess....)..Skookum1 (talk) 04:24, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

[undent]BTW see this about all the variations in redirects needed for many of the entires in this list; a lot of work/time-consuming, but all should be done....no way to botomate it that I can see....Skookum1 (talk) 04:50, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Removed Saskatchewan items and tableization
I did Saskatchewan first -tableizing - and found a number of entries, either FN governments or town names, which were not IRs and were in some case evidently duplicates that will go in teh "nearby communities" or "location" field; some like Aquadeo, Saskatchewan didn't belong at all (85 aboriginal out of 985 total does not an aboriginal community make; unless it's aboriginally governed? - that article also needs to be Aquadeo/Meota No. 468, Saskatchewan (rural municipality) vs Aquadeo Beach, Saskatchewan aka Aquadeo...). Anyway here's waht I took out, much will be "knit" back in.....I need a break, each item takes a while to source both through CGNDB and INAC to get the necessary numbers/bands/TCs/latlongs/NTS.....the population fields can probably be trimmed, I suppose, with on-reserve non-aboriginals and other extraneous detail put in the "Comments" field (e.g. the Capilano Reserve's big tenants, Park Royal, and Vancouver Bulk Terminals etc.... The Saskatchewan section I've done as a framework; once all sections are tableized there's no need for the provincial sections, as the sortability of the table makes finding all in one province easy enough.  Here are the excerpted items:

The Metis Settlements could maybe go back in the list, if the title was amended List of Indian Reserves and Metis Settlements in Canada, but that's presumptive partly because there's only a few Metis Settlements, nearly all if not all int eh Prairies; List of Metis Settlements in Canada as a separate list is easy enough to do instead.Skookum1 (talk) 01:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Beauval - village - Metis?
 * Buffalo Narrows
 * Chitek Lake
 * Clearwater River
 * Cochin
 * Cole Bay
 * Cumberland House
 * Debden
 * Dore Lake
 * Duck Lake
 * Duff
 * East Prairie Metis Settlement
 * Elizabeth Metis Settlement
 * Fishing Lake Metis Settlement
 * Gerald
 * Gift Lake Metis Establishment
 * Green Lake
 * Île-à-la-Crosse
 * Jans Bay
 * La Loche
 * La Ronge
 * Lebret
 * Lucky Man
 * Meadow Lake
 * Michel Village
 * Morin Lake
 * Pinehouse
 * St. Louis
 * Timber Bay
 * Tobin Lake
 * Turnor Lake
 * Vawn
 * Weldon
 * Weyakwin
 * Pondering this last night, realized I'd forgotten to add an area (ha.) field; I'll trim the too-many population columns into one I guess; unless you've got other fields to suggest?Skookum1 (talk) 15:30, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Right now it's way too big. The size of the article has gone from 59,322 bytes to 128,615 bytes with just one province. I would suggest that this remain a simple list with only a few columns per province. Then a spin off for each province with more detailed information. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 16:23, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll migrate the Saskatchewan section to List of Indian reserves in Saskatchewan, or to its talkpage I guess until it's finished, and will trim this down to just the IR, the associated band government, the adjacent/nearby town/location and maybe the population and area - and I'll leave the province column for later integraiton of all sections; not having the latlong and NTS in this table will make finishing it a lot easier; CGNDB is a very slow site at times, as is inac.gc.ca....Skookum1 (talk) 16:37, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

"Indian Reserves, Settlements, and Villages"
OK, though it's a long title, what about List of Indian Reserves, Settlements and Villages"? - all capitals to distinguish "settlements" etc from non-incorporated settlements, i.e. that aren't formally "Indian Settlements" or "Indian Villages" designated by legislation. In my table-izing of Alberta just now I left in the Metis Settlement and the Indian Settlement; there are so few of these in the west (and nothing like this in BC) that maybe they belong alongisde the IRs - I'm uncertain as to whether Metis Settlements should qualify; if they do, this page belongs in Category:Métis, for instance....I trust the Alberta table serves as an example of why this was necessary; Bigstone Creek Nation has several reserves; in other cases I've found reserve articles after de-piping them from the town/First Nation target article in the original; in the removed Saskatchewan items about some like Clearwater River went to geographic-object articles, in that case the river Clearwater River (Saskatchewan). Lots of tidying left to be done, just suggesting a way to keep the Indian Villages and Indian Settlements here; and noting again that I think the use of "Indian reserve" is unwise and inappropriate; fine if used without the "Indian" to uncapitalize it; I've noticed on StatsCan (but not on inac.gc.ca) that teh lower-case "Indian reserve" is used, but it's by no means a legal usage and isn't born out by actual band usages or INAC's either....Skookum1 (talk) 15:06, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That would work then all the listings for the NWT that are at Indian affairs could be used. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 17:14, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You mean the listings at inac.gc.ca e.g. this website's listings? Note on that page btw that Eskasoni First Nation's official name is just "Eskasoni"...I've noticed others like this, it seems variable; but the band-page already existed; I'm in NS but not familiar with the place, I get the impression that Eskasoni, Nova Scotia is indistinguishable and may not include non-reserve lands, I'm not sure; Tatamagouche is a different matter and needs a multi-split....btw what do you think of converting the "Tribal Council" field to "population" and using "Comments" for "Area"?  Not all IRs or bands are in Tribal Councils, and TCs are directly related to Indian Reserves, only bands are...sortability by size and population seems to make more sense (note: only on-reserve populations, not hte FN's actual population which would belong on List of First Nations governments in Canada/List of First Nation governments in Canada, whichever title is more appropriate).Skookum1 (talk) 17:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

"Indian Reserves in the Atlantic Region"?
This section is just replication of what's within the NB/NS/NL/PE subsections, no? I'm thinking there's no need for it as a heading, no more than "Indian Reserves in the Western Region" or "Indian Reserves in the North" etc....I imagine you might still be up, I'm headed for bed soon...easy enough to put on th "Holding" sandbox but I'm not sure even that's necessary....Skookum1 (talk) 04:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

"Location" vs. "Communities"
My original intent with that column was to give towns adjacent or nearby as a point of reference; in some cases there are none, other than directionals (40km NW of wherever etc). But just having "communities" predicates it towards communities on the reserve....this may not mean much in Eastern/Atlantic Canada or in many instances on the Prairies, but in BC it can be quite different, as there might be more than one village or rancherie (i.e. on the same reserve); in my expansion of Nova Scotia reserves this morning I'd use stuff like "nr. Antigonish" if it's say 10km west etc..I'm not at all sure what to do if Shubenacadie 13 is the same as Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia; I mean, is Shubenacadie more than the just hte reserve, or is it only the reserve; ditto Beaver Lake and various others; the idea of the column, anyway, was to give an idea of the exact location, not of the communities on-reserve...maybe there's a better title for the column....Skookum1 (talk) 15:58, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The column was using two different titles in different provinces. I just stuck the communities in for a placeholder. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 04:47, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

"17a" vs "17B"
I know the former has become a Wiki-standard; in nearly all geographic references, e..g CGNDB, Atlas of Canada, BCNIS, the capital letter form is used/standard. This falls in the same category of "WP:Wiki-ism" like "Indian reserve" which I think needs correcting across the board; the second-word-lower-case "rule" in Wikipedia of tne departs from outside-of-Wiki-norms....not an issue for this discussion page maybe, but just to raise it again as a concern and also why I labelled this page with a capital-R. 17a/17B ssems much more clearcut; what do the primary sources use, basically? The primary sources being INAC, CGNDB, BCGNIS and the band governments' own pages. Got the same issue with the ways "regional district" is uncapitalized, or with "region" or "district" being substituted for the phrase/term.....Skookum1 (talk) 16:02, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I only looked at the INAC source and because they used all capitals for the reserve, Band name I wasn't sure if they were 17a or 17A. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 04:49, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

BC list
I have a .CSV file obtained from the Geomatics Branch that I'm winnowing for all its IR entries; this seems to be the only way to get all of them, the INAC site would be too cumbersome at ~10 entries/page.....when it's all done I'm reasonably sure the only way to deal with it is going to be A-C, D-H, I-M etc., depending on how many are in each letter-section....and I've realized where the "Mission 1" and "Shubenacadie 3" designations came from; they're part of the French form of the reserve name, ie. Basque 18, RÈserve indienne, whereas the English form is Basque Indian Reserve No. 18 (although the Gazetteer, the CSV document at hand, uses "Basque Indian Reserve 18". Again this is an issue for discussion elsewhere, but I don't think the French name->Census area designation is the same thing as the name of the reserve in English.  Wiki-isms abound, this is one of the most glaring ones in Canada IMO....Skookum1 (talk) 19:02, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Indian Reserve, capital-R
I object. All sources, especially legal documentation, capitalize both terms; look at any BCGNIS or CGNDB reference, look at any Indian Band [sic) webpage; the non-capitalization of "reserve" is a wiki-ism, perhaps borrowed from journalism styleguides that do not reference the sources, which is what Wikipedia should be doing. It's no more correct to un-capitalize the r than it is to uncapitalize the i.  On all maps, on all sources, whether locational references or even in StatsCan, the r is capitalized.Skookum1 (talk) 23:44, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The term "Indian reserve" is the same as "city", "town", "village" or other types of legally-named settlements: it gets capitalized in the proper name of a specific Indian reserve, but not outside of that context. For example, you would write "the City of Toronto" or "the City of Vancouver", but you don't capitalize "city" outside of a proper name (e.g. "the city (not the City) has three universities", "Vancouver is the largest city (not City) in British Columbia".) "Indian reserve" is the same: the R gets capitalized in the proper name of a specific Indian reserve, not in every usage of the term. Wikipedia is bound by standard writing style, not government-officiated legalese. StatsCan also capitalizes "City", "Town", etc., in every last one of the same contexts in which it capitalizes "Indian Reserve", but that doesn't make those standard usages that Wikipedia should be following in text. Bearcat (talk) 17:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * StatsCan is by no means authoritative or exclusive in any way, other than as made-so by Wikipedians. BCGNIS and CGNDB are only some of the potential more-authoritative sources; in the same vein I think the adoption of the StatsCan "Pavilion 1a" format, which is derived from French, is also incorrect.  The defining parameter would be how Indian and Northern Affairs Canada uses the term, and likewise how it's used in any legislation or land descriptions.  "The boundaries of the Indian Reserve shall be....etc", as you'll also find in Land District-specifications and many, many other documents.  I'll find some in-context usages to further demonstrate this point (not just federal legislation and documents, but provincial and municipal and RD ones as well as from MoF and various others, likewise local print media).  I don't regards StatsCan in any way as a defining parameter of how Canadians do or should speak/write, especially as per geographic/land-title objects.  The defining parameter for land-title objects, in particular, should be governed by the legislation, not by StatsCan "shorthand".  Also, there are instances where capital-C City and capital-V village are appropriate in order to avoid confusion, as when meaning the municipal body as a "legal person" or as an entity, e.g. while "there are three skating rinks in the city" is right, "the City ordered the three rinks shutdown for safety reasons", though that's a loose example.  The point is to distinguish between passive references to the municipality, in whichever case, and when it's the city government or administration as a body that's the reference; this is common practice in the print media when there is a need to avoid confusing the city as a place vs the city as an institution/legal entity.  i.e. to avoid having phrases like "the city was opposed to...." where the meaning may be the populace as something distinct from the civic government.  I'll be back about the IR thing (which is a common-enough abbreviation, both caps, so as to implicitly mean "Indian Reserve", not "Ir" for the alleged "Indian reserve"...I've only seen "Indian reserve" in Wikipedia and in Wikipedia clones, it's not a correct usage...unless you're a StatsCan bureaucrat....or a Wikipedian invoking StatsCan as if theo nly meaningful fedeeral cite, over and above CGNDB which is official (and very much so)).Skookum1 (talk) 18:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Re: capitalizing "city" as a shorthand reference to the organized body: Actually, in proper English usage, if you wanted to refer to the organized government entity rather than the municipality in general, proper writing style would be to make specific reference to "the city council" or "the municipal government", not just capitalizing the word "city" as a standalone noun. The truth is that a lot of people misunderstand what they were actually taught in grade school, and wrongly believe that the rule is to capitalize nouns that refer to classes of institutions rather than what it really is, which is to capitalize the proper names of specific institutions, but not their general class nouns if those aren't directly appearing in the context of the full proper name. Bearcat (talk) 18:36, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Capital C-"City" figures not only in official correspondence and legal documents, and is commonplace in print media, ditto distinguish "the Town" meaning a town government vs "the town" meaning the place/community (sometimes and especially when used in the same sentence/paragraph). What confuses schoolkids is when the terms are used interchangeably, often obfuscatorily so....Anyway I went to INAC and it's worth noting e.g. right here that they capitalize the "R" even when "Indian" isn't present.  In my view, the correct usage is the one from the same context, i.e. Indian Act legislation/ministerial language, which is also used by the band governments themselves.  I'm still cruising for stand-alone IR usages, I know there's lots, and many with more "official weight" than StatsCan.....Skookum1 (talk) 18:52, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Here we go, while this page's second table does use small-r "reserve" when that word's alone, in the very next row of that table it says:
 * The given name of an Indian Reserve. It represents a tract of land set aside as a Reserve or Crown Land for the exclusive use and benefits of the Band(s) to which it is assigned. Note that, in BC at least, we have other forms of reserve, e.g. Government Reserve, Timber Reserve, which are also always capitalized because they are a proper name for a particular type of land alienation, same as District Lot, which is also abbreviated both-caps "DL".Skookum1 (talk) 18:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * the subsequent rows use capital-R "Reserve" without Indian, as well; the first line would appear to be an aberration. the same logic applies to Indian Village, Métis Settlement. etc.Skookum1 (talk) 19:01, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia, just for the record, is bound by standard English style usages, not officialese. It doesn't matter how government documents handle the capitalization of such terms — what matters is what the standard rule in normal English writing is, and the standard rule in normal English writing is that such terms are not capitalized unless they're actually figuring in the proper name of a specific example of the term. And in case you didn't notice, out of all the capitalized terms you cited above, the only one that's actually a bluelink is Indian Village — but it isn't an article about the concept of villages that are occupied by "Indians", it's a disambiguation page listing four or five things whose actual proper name is "Indian Village". Bearcat (talk) 23:50, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * This was already stated (repeatedly) in our discussion on WPCanTalk Noticeboard's talkpage, but there is a legal designation of "Indian Village"; apparently what's needed is an article on those, i.e. Indian Village (Canada). This is a more-than-sourceable item and there are very many of these (and they're not IRs).Skookum1 (talk) 15:29, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Break down this article?
I can see merit in forming a new article for each province. In cases such as Manitoba, this could be further broken down into geographical or language subsections. There is a significant amount of work for an expert to interpret some of the nuances of language, culture and geography. An example would be the Dené of Northern Manitoba where there are, I believe, four Reserves. Do they all speakers of the same Chipewyan dialect? Can they all be termed "Caribou-eaters"? It's a fun task for someone with the correct background. --Stormbay (talk) 22:15, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

re the Manitoba section
I've just spent some time creating/fixing band government and reserve and tribal council articles in Manitoba, and have been adding List of Indian reserves in Manitoba to the See alsos on the band article. Coming here for a look, I see it's a bit of a mess and includes the completely irrelevant (though citable) band and IR numbers, which have no use for the public and are like listing someone's driver's license or student ID on a bio. I'll remove them now, but this section needs to be table-ized like others already here, with areas etc and for general cleanup/clarity. Also such a large list that like BC's it should probably be split off entirely from this article.Skookum1 (talk) 05:52, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Use of the term "Indian"
I am reverting recent changes on 31 August which essentially changed Indian reserve to Native reserve, plus introduced some formatting issues. I can understand how this came about, but having done a few searches such as and  I think that the use of 'Indian' is probably ok, and perhaps formally correct in this case. I have no strong feelings on the issue either way, but the implications of effecting such a change are wide ranging, affecting many pages, templates, categories etc. and therefore ask that before any such change is made again, editors seek consensus before doing so. Derek Andrews (talk) 22:41, 31 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Fully support the revert per longstanding strong consensus. See Talk:Indian reserve. In a nutshell, these are the most salient points from the discussion:,  and . Hwy43 (talk) 02:01, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

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