[3] The MIB presented their landmark position paper—entitled "Wahbung: Our Tomorrows"[4] —in opposition to then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau's 1969 White Paper which proposed the abolition of the Indian Act.
The federal government at the time argued that the Indian Act was discriminatory and that the special legal relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian state should be dismantled in favour of equality, in accordance with Trudeau's vision of a "just society".
The federal government proposed that by eliminating "Indian" as a distinct legal status, the resulting equality among all Canadians would help resolve the problems faced by Indigenous peoples.
[4] The body would dissolve by the early 1980s due to the difficulties of an increasingly elaborate agenda and emerging regional interests.
In 1988, the Chiefs-in-Assembly formulated a model for province-wide political cooperation among the First Nations, thereby establishing the basic structure and mandate for the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and its secretariat.