i did a bunch of research into this a few years ago, as i was writing an essay on the indian act for a course in indigenous law.

there are two groups indigenous to the island of newfoundland: the inuit and the beothuk. the beothuk were indeed eliminated from the island by a process of genocide that is largely unrecognized, so any claims that the island was free of indigenous groups is based on the premise that this genocide was "successful". and, you will not find any trace of the beothuk, no matter how hard you look. inuit groups remain, but they are transient over the pack ice. the mik'maq are indigenous to the atlantic mainland; any mik'maq claiming status in newfoundland have migrated there since contact, and making such a claim for indigenous status in an area migrated to post-contact essentially doesn't make sense under the judicial precedent, which requires groups to demonstrate a connection to the land that precedes contact, whenever it was (and this area, being the closest to western europe, had the earliest contact....).

but, all you need to do is look at the pictures to come to the obvious truth: these people are europeans, and that is blatantly obvious.

in fact, much testing has been done on this point. the harsh, difficult truth is that most of the indigenous groups in the eastern coast have r1* in the y-dna in proportions approaching or exceeding 50%, and there are even a few groups that are over 80% r1* in the y-dna. what this indicates is that not just many but most of these indigenous groups are actually of primarily european patrilineal ancestry, and that their indigenous component is strictly matrilineal. and, this is in fact a very common consequence of colonialism: the colonizing group takes the women from the colonized group, either through consent or more often by force, and then prioritizes the interests of it's own offspring over those of the purely indigenous pairings, which eventually asserts the colonizing dna as dominant, even when the indigenous culture prevails.

this creates a real problem for the state, which is now in the awkward position of handing out special rights to what are essentially european groups. they rarely speak the language, and the truth is that the only connection they have to their matrilineal ancestry is in the preservation of survivalist tactics. that is, the only remnants of the indigenous culture that have survived are those that were necessary for the colonizers to adopt in order to adapt.

that said, it really demonstrates that culture is a social construct and not a biological one. we don't pass down culture through genes, we teach it in social relationships. these people may not be genetically indigenous, but if they are carrying on the indigenous culture then who is to tell them they are not?

in terms of tangible realities, i'd argue that we should have a universal drug benefit to begin with, and that the truth is that few of these people are going to end up paying taxes, anyways. but, the reality on the ground is trickier than the article is letting on: the reality is that the overwhelming majority of status indians are totally white.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/03/04/families-divided-after-ottawa-tells-thousands-theyre-not-indigenous.html