Ottawa, ON (November 6, 2009) – After over twenty years in a fight for equality, yesterday the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed with costs the case of Sharon Donna McIvor v. Registrar, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) is disappointed with the decision not to grant leave to appeal to Sharon McIvor, given that the issue of who can or cannot be an Indian is surely one of national importance.
“Ms. McIvor fought for many years for her, her children and her grandchildren’s rights. She has fought for all Aboriginal women and men who deserve the proper rights acquired to them and I congratulate her for her determination,” stated NWAC President Jeannette Corbiere Lavell. “Yesterday’s decision represented an opportunity for the highest court of the land to redress historic and ongoing discrimination against Aboriginal women under the Indian Act. I am especially disappointed that the court has dismissed the appeal with costs. This punishes the litigant for bringing an action. Clearly, I feel the onus should be on the government to come to the table to resolve these policy issues through a process that deals with the issue of citizenship.”
President Corbiere Lavell continued, “This issue is of the utmost importance to Aboriginal women. The loss of status when a First Nations woman married a non-Aboriginal man is one of the primary reasons why NWAC was founded in the 1970s. Bill C-31 was initially seen as a means to bring equality to First Nations women by removing sexual discrimination in the Indian Act; but the reality is that it created more discrimination not only against Aboriginal women but also against their male and female children, grandchildren and all future descendants. It created more division in families, communities and Nations. It introduced further bureaucratic categories of status, non-status, 6 (1) and 6 (2) Indians, cutting off the descendants of women who originally lost their status.”
The federal government is pursuing an amendment to the Indian Act to respond to direction from the B.C. Court of Appeal, with a bill expected to be tabled in the House of Commons in January. The bill will not contain a comprehensive redress for historic discrimination against Aboriginal women and their descendents, contrary to the results Ms. McIvor sought to achieve through her appeal to the Supreme Court.
“I personally went to the Supreme Court of Canada in order to regain my Indian Status. Due to continued gender discrimination some of my own grandchildren do not have Indian Status today. I welcome a process that acknowledges First Nations rights to determine who their citizens are and allow for cases of unknown or unstated paternity. Equality is still a vision we are committed to bringing about,” concluded President Corbiere Lavell.
The Native Women’s Association of Canada is founded on the collective goal to enhance, promote, and foster the social, economic, cultural and political well-being of Aboriginal women within the Aboriginal community and Canadian society. In 2009, as we celebrate our 35th year of service, we are proud to continue to speak as a voice for Aboriginal women.
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For more information contact:
Joshua Kirkey, Communications Advisor
Native Women’s Association of Canada
(613) 722-3033 ext. 231, mobile (613) 290-5680
jkirkey@nwac-hq.org
One Comment
Sharon Donna McIvor’s determination and clear understanding of righteousness concerning our fundamental rights of self determination is certainly entirely heartening.
I do not know why & also would not care what Canada’s Supreme Court’s reasoning for dismissing the legal claim may have been, what I do know is that Canada’s Supreme Court & indeed no Canadian has/possesses any legal authority of any kind in these matters, therefore I would not consider this to be an end of the process for the proper available means for our nations to address this matter of fundamental importance to our identities. The next natural and obvious step is to bring this case before an international, meaning a global human rights tribunal, just as similarly needs to now happen on the broadest range of issues concerning Canada’s illegitimate and illegal imposition of alien, colonial, racially discriminatory, genocidal policies, which are all fundamentally ‘like’ this one. How even dare any foreign colonial entity even suggest to us that they could have any proper let alone a full understanding or legally valid entitlement to be able to determine how we define ourselves in the first place! We are the originators! It is entirely preposterous, and frankly, any individual who could imagine such a thing has clearly subscribed their own identity to a colonial societal mind-set that is, as a statement of fact here, blatantly racist in its agenda to even exist/persist at all, in a time when the world has already moved well beyond the historical paradigm of granting any remnant of moral/ethical validity to colonial ideals of empire, and more frankly makes in my view any Canadians and any world citizens who could make a personal statement that they could condone this, as morally-ethically ’sick’.
Pressing these matters at the global level of consequence is also important now because there needs to be a concerted effort to reach globally responsive legal determinations on the equal standing of all indigenous nations’ fundamental and inalienable rights of self determination. It has to be done now because we have to be more fully empowered through globally wrought agreements and commitments, much the same as in the continuation of our cultural reaffirmations of our historical founding covenants with earliest European representatives in particular, so that we can proceed with our inherent right of STEWARDSHIP of all our territory– collectively speaking of Onowaregeh, from the Haudenosaunee cultural law, as we obviously will anyway, + then with the affirming recording of global accords, which will enable us to impact environmental adaptation measures to the utmost success that can be possible.
My comment is finally then directed to indigenous nations, in that we must assume these responsibilities. We already know because the science makes it pretty convincingly clear that today the planet’s future security has already walked of ‘the’ cliff, even with very many unknowns of incalculable measures, which only makes the available prognoses that much worse, so we must realize that our own fore-bears’ timidities and otherwise lack of ability to rally together sufficiently in providing for what we steward means that today the best we can hope to achieve are some measures of creative mitigation, again a cultural necessity, since if we cannot there is already a pretty clear glimpse of how bad things are going to get in the immediate future now, it is all taking place at a quickening pace that wasn’t obvious even five years ago…
… not wanting to go off the topic though I believe the real issue is in the specific facts of what is inherently ours and what we must provide for the seventh generation to come (and has really nothing to do with the absurd superficiality of a ‘Supreme Court of Canada’), which, again frankly, has to express the very high likelihood today that this will NOT be possible-…
example{if the US high-resolution satellite imaging agency had not been directed to disallow ongoing up-to-the-minute disseminations to the scientific community, perhaps the world would have been better ale to ‘get’ the alarm message coming from the Inuit? But now, clearly due to this type of colonial interest of impeding, what is the prognosis for the seventh generation to come of Inuit peoples being able to continue enjoying their cultural customs which have been uniquely theirs to enjoy for millenniums?}