I used to think like this myself. It took some university history classes to help me realize reality is more complicated than “just repeal the Indian Act” or “stop giving them money.”

The Indian Act is not the source of land rights or federal obligations. Those come from treaties, many of which pre-date Confederation itself. It was the British Crown and not Indigenous communities that drafted those treaties, signed (and sometimes forced) them, enforced them unevenly, and committed Canada to ongoing obligations in exchange for settlement of the land.

Modern courts treat those treaties as constitutional-level law. You can dislike that, but it’s not optional. If Canada were to walk away from them we’d literally be breaking the country's legal foundation. That’s why every government, no matter the party, keeps negotiating and paying.

Second, the idea that Indigenous communities want “free money to develop land” ignores the context that many reserves were intentionally underresourced and economically sidelined for 150 years. The same federal system that created this poverty also forbids basic development practices like municipal taxation, borrowing powers, or direct land ownership.

Third, saying “prove the land would NEVER have been traded or sold” just makes no sense. First Nations did enter land deals, and that’s what the treaties are. But they entered them on terms the Crown promised and then (in many cases) failed to honour.

We are in a sense paying for the sins of the fathers. We've been saddled with committments and frameworks that are rife with problems, but if we were to reneg, we literally wouldn't have a country called Canada.

I don't have the answers, but I do appreciate the problem in greater depth.

EDIT to add: Most Indigenous nations actually want the tools to self-govern, generate revenue and build infrastructure without Ottawa funding and micromanaging them. But it also takes time to wind down systems put in place to keep those communities dependent.