Native women document injustice against women

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The Aboriginal Women's Action Network recently put on a workshop to develop a questionnaire that would research and document the impact that years of patriarchal and genocidal policies have had on First Nations' women and First Nations' societies.

The conference also featured guest speakers with years of expertise in dealing with the ramifications of historical policies designed to undermine the economic, social and political standing of women.

One keynote speaker, Sharon McIvor is the academic dean at the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology. McIvor is renown for her historical expertise on Aboriginal Rights and the Indian Act. She addressed land ownership rights and enfranchisement. McIvor described the historical development of policies that recognized Indians only as "Indian males and their wives and children." This was the catchword that was used to determine eligibility for registration as Indian.

"Around 1870, the first part of the restrictive definition started to happen," said McIvor. "That was the first time that only men were entitled to status, and anyone that that man had blood relationship with, which is basically his wife and his children. From that point on an Indian woman had no rights to status unless she could attach herself somehow to a male that had status."

McIvor addressed the litany of legal and political maneuvers designed, as assimilative and genocidal policies, to: restrict Indian activity; assimilate Indians into society; replace traditional First Nations systems of governance and replace them with a disruptive elective system; gradual absorption of Indian land into non-Native ownership, and; eliminate First Nations rights and title with enfranchisement. Although the First Nations people were initially cajoled to enfranchise, success was faltering so involuntary enfranchisement was imposed.

"If you became educated, got a degree from any university, you were automatically enfranchised," McIvor said. "If you became a member of clergy, you were automatically enfranchised. If you lived off of your reserve for more than five years, you were automatically enfranchised."

McIvor continued by describing legislation that entitled federal agents to strike women and their children from band and tribal registries for any number of reasons - many of which were arbitrary decisions. McIvor's address included a number of current court cases that challenge loss of status, Bill C-31 discrimination and second-generation cut-off issues. McIvor says that many of the court actions taken on behalf of women's issues are being challenged not only by the federal government but also against many tribal and band councils as well. McIvor says hundreds of thousands of dollars and incredible amounts of time and effort is being poured into these cases yet the courts persist in finding avenues to postpone and discontinue hearings.

Liz Hall, the United Native Nations' family re-unification worker, discussed the issues of access to information and registration, covering the many problems facing applicants who have lost status because of adoption. Re-instatement into band registries has, in many cases, proven to be close to impossible because of the archaic record-keeping of the past and the overwhelming obstacles inherent in provincial legislation regarding confidentiality of adoption records.

Joan Grant Cummings, president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), has been pressing the issues of women of color and Aboriginal women.

"NAC is a very hard place for Aboriginal women and women of color to be. Because of the fact that we have been marginalized in the feminine movement within Canada - and NAC has a history of doing that. These women, Aboriginal women and women of color, should be in the leadership of NAC," she said.

Cummings spoke of developments at recent APEC conferences she had attended where Indigenous women lobbied against the interests of multinational corporations and their influene on governments and international policies. She cited examples of multinational corporate bio-piracy like the company that has manipulated and patented seed stock and registered the names of organic substances like 'basmati' for corporate trademark affecting and impacting the economies of women internationally.

"Globalization has created a permanent increase in the poverty of women and children globally," said Cummings. "Women's unpaid work has increased phenomenally in our communities and in Canada we are seeing it because we are the ones that are picking up the slack because of the cuts to education, social services, public services. We're still the ones who carry most of the care activities in the home and that is unpaid work."

Cummings stressed that political activities of a powerful unified front of women can confront issues like global bio-piracy, female migrant workers, security issues, militarization of communities and the rise in fundamentalism in peoples' movements that also oppress women. Other recommendations that came out of the APEC conferences that Cummings attended were: the need to destroy the hold that multinational corporations have over the world's food supplies and the need to fight the mismanagement of the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. Cummings stressed that these organizations needed to be replaced with democratic international financial institutions - an international organization that is an elected body connected to peoples' organizations and operating from a human rights perspective. The remainder of the conference was dedicated to development of the questionnaire that will be delivered to a number of communities in order to determine the impact that Bill C-31 has had on Native communities and specifically First Nations women.