Registration under the Indian Act is not the same thing as Nationhood. First Nations knew who their own people were long before Canada, through kinship, responsibility, and community ties. But while the Indian Act remains in place, federal registration still shapes access to services, benefits, and, in some cases, community membership. That is why the second-generation cut-off is not a technical problem buried in legal text. It is a colonial rule that reaches into family lines and tries to turn belonging into a state calculation.

The cut-off was written into the 1985 amendments to the Indian Act. Those changes created the 6(1) and 6(2) registration categories, and with them a formula that can stop a child from being registered after two successive generations of parenting with someone who is not entitled to registration. The same rules can split siblings into different categories simply because of birth year or the date of a parent’s marriage. Canada built a paperwork system that can tell one child they may pass on legal status under the Act while telling their brother, sister, or cousin that the line ends with them.

This system did not arrive as neutral law. It sits on top of older discrimination that targeted First Nations women and their descendants through “marrying out” rules and enfranchisement. Indigenous Services Canada has acknowledged that before 1985, women lost entitlement when their fathers or husbands lost theirs, and that a First Nations woman who married a non-entitled man could lose entitlement for herself and her descendants. Some people were also pushed into enfranchisement to practise certain professions or to keep their children from residential schools. In 2022, the Senate committee studying registration said the remaining inequities still burden First Nations women and their descendants and urged repeal of section 6(2) because it continues the policy of assimilation.

The harm is not small or abstract. In the federal Rights-Holders Information Kit, Canada reported that 322,173 people across the country were registered under section 6(2) as of January 11, 2024—about 29 percent of the total registered population. The same document says that if these rules stay in place, the registered population will continue to shrink, and some communities could see entitled or registered members disappear within the next few generations. This is what colonial math does: it reduces living Nations to a formula and then treats that formula as if it were natural.

That is why Bill S-2 matters, but also why many First Nations women, families, and leaders said its first version was far too narrow. Introduced in 2025, the bill originally addressed four registration issues, including enfranchisement, but it did not end the second-generation cut-off. After hearing from 57 witnesses, the Senate committee amended the bill so it would also remove the cut-off, move to a one-parent rule for passing on status, and end the “unknown paternity” barrier. The Senate completed third reading on December 4, 2025, and sent the amended bill to the House of Commons.

As of March 2026, the bill has passed second reading in the House and now sits at committee, while Parliament is also working against an April 2026 deadline linked to the Nicholas case. Canada says more consultation is needed and points to a collaborative process launched in November 2023 with 17 Indigenous organizations involved in an advisory process. But the Senate committee warned in 2022 that there had already been ample consultation on these inequities and that every added day, month, and year of delay keeps harming First Nations women, their descendants, and their communities. Earlier this month, UN Human Rights Committee experts asked Canada whether the House would adopt the Senate amendments removing the cut-off.

Still, the deeper truth is larger than Bill S-2. Even Canada’s own Rights-Holders Information Kit says the Indian Act is a colonial law designed to control First Nations affairs, that it will never fully align with the UN Declaration, and that it must eventually be repealed. Ending the second-generation cut-off is not the destination; it is the minimum required to stop ongoing harm while Nations continue the larger work of bringing women and descendants home, rebuilding connections broken by colonial law, and reclaiming full jurisdiction over citizenship and belonging. Indigenous peoples do not come from Ottawa’s categories. Indigenous children do not stop being who they are because the state tries to count them out.