Toward further clarity or confusion, as one chooses, note the different designations used herein:

"After some 500 years of a relationship that has swung from partnership to domination, from mutual respect and co-operation to paternalism and attempted assimilation, Canada must now work out fair and lasting terms of coexistence with Aboriginal people." - Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996

Since the times of William Penn and John Woolman, Friends have been listening to and involved with concerns of Aboriginal Peoples. Canadian Friends continue to carry concerns through Monthly Meetings or through the Quaker Aboriginal Affairs Committee (QAAC). The formal beginnings of QAAC were prefaced by a minute recorded by Canadian Yearly Meeting 1974:

"...a confrontation between the Ojibway people of the [Kenora] area and various levels of government...has occupied our hearts and minds. We are concerned that active violence not erupt; and equally concerned that long standing grievances be understood, and all measures of settlement of those grievances be encouraged..."

Friends then went to Kenora to be a presence and to hear first hand the long standing grievances concerning land rights, housing, medical care, education, Native spirituality, child welfare, and mercury poisoning.

Friends have continued to listen and respond to the ongoing concerns of the First Nations of Canada. These include: self-determination; spirituality; land rights; fishing and hunting rights; health; housing; education; child welfare; extraction of natural resources; hydroelectric projects; protection of burial grounds; weapons testing; and the tourist industry.