Inuit ancestry lost with the stroke of a pen

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As many as 900 people who thought of themselves as Inuit may now be wondering where their Aboriginal ancestry has gone.

Since 1992, the Labrador Inuit Association has been slimming its 5,000 name membership list to suit new eligibility criteria determined during land claim discussions with the province of Newfoundland and the federal government.

With a decision made by the association's board of directors, letters were sent to some of it's members, informing them that their memberships had been revoked.

Lisa White, a married mother of three now living in Edmonton and going to the University of Alberta, is one of those members.

The letter to White told her that under the "Connection to a Community" section of the membership criteria, she was no longer a member of the Labrador Inuit Association. Since she is no longer a member, her uninsured health benefits from Health Canada and her post-secondary education funding from Indian Affairs had also been revoked.

She wonders if that means she is still Inuit.

According to the new criteria, a membership can be revoked if a person has no direct Inuit blood and if they or their parents were not born in the Labrador land claim area. If there is Inuit blood, it has to be at least one-quarter in order to maintain membership.

White is sure she has one-quarter Inuit blood. Her father's mother was 100 per cent Inuit.

To prove that, however, White must appeal to the Labrador Inuit Association - a process she fears could take several years.

Much like the Aboriginal women who had to meticulously show blood line ancestry when applying for Bill C-31 status since 1985, White can no longer just say she is Inuit - which she has believed herself to be since birth.

She can't understand how she used to be an Inuit member, eligible for uninsured health benefits from Health Canada and education funding through Indian Affairs, and now has to prove that she is still Inuit. While the funding and health care was nice to have, White said she can do without it. She is more concerned about her loss of Inuit ancestry.

"I still consider myself to be Inuit," she said. "I don't agree with it at all. They can't take the blood out of my veins."

Now she is looking for a way to get her status back. She has turned to Indian Affairs, but was told the department can't help.

Unlike Treaty Indians who are registered directly with Indian Affairs, Inuit people do not have such a registry. Indian Affairs relies on numbers sent to them by the Inuit association.

Indian Affairs spokesperson Lynn Boyer told Windspeaker that the Labrador Inuit Association is in charge of its own membership. Despite the fiduciary responsibility of Canada to all Aboriginal people, including the Inuit, the federal government has left it up to the association to tell them who is and who is not Inuit.

Boyer said there is no act to legislate matters regarding the Inuit. There is only the Indian Act. For the Inuit of Labrador, that responsibility lies with the Labrador Inuit Association.

"The position of the federal government is that it is their right to define who their membership is," said Boyer. "We go on the information they provide."

And according to that information, there were 834 people in the middle of September who were no longer recognized by Indian Affairs, Health Canada or the Labrador Inuit Association as Inuit.

An employee with the Labrador Inuit Association who didn't want her name used said the association was reducing its membership to only the purest forms of Inuit people before the Labrador land claim settlement is made.

"We settle the land claim, we don't want anyone there that shouldn't be there," she said. "We want to clear up our membership."

Joe Dicker, the former vice-president of the Labrador Inuit Association and the man whose signature is at the bottom of many of the revoked membership letters, said that when the association began in 1973, the membership applcation process was very lax.

"In the beginning, when the direction was on to recruit, the eligibility of enrolments wasn't very clearly defined," he said. "There were a lot of people not supposed to be members who got in."

It wasn't until the late 1980s and the early 1990s that the association, along with the province of Newfoundland and the federal government, began to look at the criteria as part of land claim negotiations.

At an open meeting in 1990, the new criteria were announced, voted on and accepted by majority. Dicker said those people who were living away from the community were able to send a vote by proxy.

At that point, the association began to streamline its membership.

Dickers said the process has been fair and, while there were a few complaints at the beginning, the majority of the people in the dozen communities served by the association have accepted it.

Dickers said the people removed from the band list haven't necessarily lost their Inuit ancestry, just their association membership.

For Lisa White, there is no difference between the two. She is baffled.

"I don't know what I am," she said. "It's like we suited their policy once, but now we are no longer up to par."

All that is left for White is to take legal action. According to Indian Affairs, the Labrador Inuit Association can determine its own membership as long as they don't contravene the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

White is going to see if she can challenge the association and also the federal government for giving up on her. She wants to tackle the decision to dump her from the membership list as a human rights violation.

"I'm not going to let them get away with that," she said.

According to the Labrador Inuit Association, there are still more people on the current membership list who will receive notice that they will be removed.