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From first(adjective) + nation,coined in the late 1970s in place of the word Indian which had become regarded by some as derogatory (though it is still used: see the usage note).
1980 December 18, Eugene Steinhauer, President of the Indian Association of Alberta, witness, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence of the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on the Constitution of Canada: Respecting the Document Entitled “Proposed Resolution for a Joint Address to Her Majesty the Queen Respecting the Constitution of Canada” Published by the Government on October 2, 1980 (First Session of the Thirty-second Parliament), number 29, : Queen’s Printer for Canada, archived from the original on 2024-08-04, page 101, column 1:
Today we speak as the descendants of our grandfathers who signed treaties with the Commissioners representing Her Majesty Queen Victoria in the late 1800s. The various governments of this country have made attempts to abrogate our treaties in one way or another. In spite of this, our treaties stand stronger than ever because we have had to rise as First Nations to defend them.
The Campbell River First Nation claims the 40 hectares of prime real estate has been illegally acquired, and it wants the land returned to it, along with damages.
The prolonged sufferings and ghastly deaths of Jesuit missionaries at the hands of hostile First Nations on the borders of the French colonies in Canada in the early seventeenth century rank high in the history of Christian suffering.
Rendered as first nations in MacCulloch’s earlier work, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (2004), page 440.
(by extension, less common) A community or settlement of indigenous peoples of any country or region.
In Canada, First Nation and First Nations are the usual terms in official use, news media, and polite conversation. Indian has come to have a stigma attached to it because of its origin from the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) thinking he had arrived in India when he reached the Americas in October 1492, but it remains in common use officially (for example, in the name of the Indian Act (enacted in 1876) which provides for the exercise of federal jurisdiction over First Nations peoples; and in the name of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, replaced in 2019 by Crown–Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada), as well as informally by First Nations people themselves.