Native activist files complaint against Canada at UN

A new lawsuit against Canada, being filed to the UN, will claim the country discriminates against aboriginal women when it comes to granting Indian status.

British Columbia aboriginal activist Sharon McIvor announced details of her suit in a release Friday.

“Canada continues to discriminate against aboriginal women and their descendents in the determination of eligibility for registration as an Indian,” McIvor said in the statement. “Despite amendments made to the Indian Act when the charter came into effect in 1985, aboriginal women are still not treated equally as transmitters of status, and many thousands of descendants of aboriginal women are denied status as a result.”

In 1994, McIvor challenged the constitutionality of the sex discriminations in the registration provisions of the Indian Act in court. The B.C. Supreme Court ruled that a section of the act violated the Charter. But on appeal, the B.C. Court of Appeal ruled that although the the act was discriminatory,

it was justified because the government’s aim was to maintain the existing rights of the aboriginal men and their descendants who’d been given preferred status.

The legal battle continued. In 2009, the B.C. Court of Appeal ruled that the Indian Act discriminates

between men and women.

To address the ruling, the federal government introduced Bill C-3 in March of this year. The bill is an amendment to the Indian Act that will ensure eligible grandchildren of women who lost status after marrying non-Indian men will become entitled to Indian status.

But McIvor said Friday that the bill doesn’t go far enough and will still exclude descendants of unmarried Indian women.

“Because neither Canadian courts nor Parliament have yet granted an adequate and effective remedy for the sex discrimination which has been a hallmark of the Indian Act for more than a hundred years, I will take my case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee,” she said.

“I will continue ... until Aboriginal women enjoy equality.”