"Indian Rights for Indian Women"

SINCE ITS INCEPTION IN 1971, INDIAN RIGHTS FOR INDIAN WOMEN (IRIW) HAS BEEN ONE OF THE FEW NATIVE ORGANIZATIONS PREPARED TO DEAL WITH SOME HIGHLY SENSITIVE ISSUES WHICH CONCERN NATIVE WOMEN - THE RIGHTS OF INDIAN WOMEN TO LIVE, DIE AND BE BURIED ON THEIR RESERVES, THE BAND MEMBERSHIP OF THEIR CHILDREN AND, OF COURSE, FORCED ENFRANCHISEMENT.

As currently applied, Canada's Indian Act strips a woman of her indian status if she marries a non-Indian, although, Indian men are allowed to marry non-indins without penalty. IRIW has been the only organization to take the responsibility for trying to change a law which discriminates against Indian women on grounds of race, sex and marital status.

In 1971, the year of IRIW's formation, Jeannette Corbiere-Lavell was protesting her loss of legal status that resulted from her marriage to a non-Indian. IRIW was not registered federally as an organization when Lavell went before the Supreme Court of Canada. The organization could not officially back her appeal; however, members of the group supported Lavell as individuals. Theirs was the only national group to do so.

Jenny Margetts, President of IRIW recalls that, during the Lavell case, her organization asked the Native Council of Canada to act on its behalf but that "this got badly disorganized... From then on after being tossed from one organization to another and because no one wanted to take responsibility for funding IRIW, we decided to stand on our own. We spoke for ourselves to cabinet ministers, departmental officials and our people."

Margetts is a Plains Cree from Saddle Lake, Alberta, who was disenfranchised in 1960 when she married a non-Indian. Along with the other members of IRIW she has helped the organization stand on its own since 1973.

IRIW members have come up with options to discriminatory clauses of the Indian Act.

They recommend that a person with 1/4 Indian blood be registered as a status Indian and that the blood line follow either the mother or the father. Margetts says it is possible for the government to consider making this 1/4 blood rule retroactive. This would mean that women who have been enfranchised because of marriage and children of mixed marriages would be eligible to all the rights of a status Indian, providing they meet the 1/4 Indian blood criteria.

"IT'S NOT THE MONEY THEY ARE AFTER, IT'S THEIR RIGHTS THEY ARE AFTER."

Margetts: "We dealt with retroactivity at our last workshop and after doing these workshops together the Native women came up with the fact that they would like to see status granted retroactively but that there would be no payment involved for the loss of status, there would be no compensation. I think that's very Indian. When I saw that recommendation - and it passed unanimously - I saw it as being quite indicative of what Native people feel. It is not the money they are after, it's their rights they are after."

Margetts said an appeal board at the local band council level would help settle the who-is-and-who-isn't-Indian question and ensure that Native women would have the rights guaranteed to them under the Indian Act.

"Tribal councils or band councils should have an appeal system and at the national level have a tribunal system whereby a person whose status is questioned by the government could go to a board or tribunal, present a case and get on a band list, or a membership list or a general Indian list. There would be women involved in this appeal system. I think this appeal system would be fair to the women."

"What is happening now at the reserve level, the band council level, is that the band council is composed mainly of men, and that the women never have any kind of appeal system to go to. They do not have any recourse of appeal for themselves or for their children. Don't forget, there are many children involved - both boys and girls - and a lot of time these children lose their status at the whim of the band council."

"THE PRESENT INDIAN ACT REALLY PROTECTS THE INDIAN MEN AND NOT THE INDIAN WOMEN."

Margett says it is not only non-status women who lose rights under the present Indian Act, but also status women. "It is particularly affecting the rich reserves. Money talks. Economics. These are the new rich reserves coming into gas royalties, oil royalties. Of course, the fewer members you have the mor eeach band member will get. They are, for instance, looking an illegitimate children and striking them off the band list."

IRIW's other recommendations include:

1. In the case of marriage to a non-Indian person, a matrimonial properties contract should be compulsory. This contract would be endorsed by the Band Council and would establish clearly that the non-Indian has reserve residency rights only.

2. An Indian Bill of Rights should be passed to guarantee Indian rights.

3. Non-Indian children adopted by Indians should enjoy residency rights only, until their age of majority.

4. Tribal marriages should be recognized as valid and all rights of the married couple should be ensured on and off the reserve.

5. Because of the retroactive enfranchisement, the Department of Indian Affairs should take necessary steps to obtain additional lands when necessary.

6. Finally, those non-Indian women who gained status through marriage should lose their status.

Indian Rights for Indian Women is not interested in merely a revised or updated Indian Act. They are trying to ensure that women who have a right to be there are not evicted from their homes on reserves.

Margetts: "We have taken the case of the Tobique women (Tobique reserve in New Brunswick where the band council is evicting non-status women and children from reserve lands) and have passed a resolution saying we will do everying in our power to help them stay on their land, in their homes."

"We are helping the women on this reserve, and many reserves across Canada fight their evictions. Caughnawage is one case where we write to the band council quite frequently, especially when they come out with their eviction notices to old ladies, widows and other women who have a right to live and be buried on their reserves."

In the past few years band councils across the country have been serving more and more eviction notices.

Margetts emphasizes that IRIW, under its present leadership, does not want to see Indian women and Indian men fighting each other. "We said in the national workshop in Edmonton, in April, that we would not spend our energies fighting with our people, our own Native people. NIB and Native associations across the country come out hitting hard in press releases, the media and it is very difficult not to fight and because politically I have very strong feelings about what they are saying about us many times. But true to our words, we have not fought back."

IRIW has met with federal cabinet ministers to present its set of recommendations regarding changes to the Indian Act. The group has also discussed expanded guidelines for the new federal Human Rights Commission which currently exempts the Indian Act from its responsibility.

"We have the support of the Human Rights Commissioner, Gordon Fairweather. He will be spending half a day with us at our board meeting. He has also said that the cabinet ministers are talking to him and they will likely be given the task of coming up with recommendations on how that whole section should be dealt with at the federal level. To me that makes sense: it doesn't just involve Faulkner but the Human Rights Commissioner."

No one wants to be responsible for funding IRIW. They receive monies to hold meetings, workshops and some special project funding but they do not receive core-funding from the government. (The National Indian Brotherhood, Native Council of Canada and Inuit Tapirisat of Canada receive core funds from the Department of the Secretary of State.) Nevertheless, the organization was able to produce a well-documented report on the Indian woman's status issue entitled" Indian Women and the Law in Canada: Citizens Minus.

"It is a documentation of what has happened to women, what is happening to women. She (Kathleen Jamieson) mentions the NIB joint cabinet committee and the book deals with it only up until the time that they were refusing to allow us to be part of that consultation process. It does not deal with the fact that NIB has left the joint committee."

IRIW is currently involved in a second report on Native women and elders, which they expect to release in the summer of 1978.