September trial date set for Challenge to Bill C-31

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A trial date for Senator Walter Twinn's constitutional challenge to Bill C-31, the law that returned lost status to Native women and their children, has finally been set for Sept. 24.

The 11-week trial will open in Edmonton and run for an estimated five weeks. Following a three-week recess, the trial will reconvene in Ottawa.

Twinn, a member of the Sawridge band, filed suit against the government in 1986 along with Wayne Roan of Ermineskin and Bruce Starlight of the Sarcee bands. Two other Natives also filed papers in the suit but have since dropped out.

The plaintiffs want to have the 1985 amendments made to the Indian Act, also known as Bill C-31, declared unconstitutional. The controversial amendment was intended to restore band membership to thousands of Natives, many of them women,

who lost their status by marrying non-Natives.

Twinn maintains that only bands - not the government - can grant Native status. Since the bill became law, the federal government has granted status to more than 90,000 people, 9,500 of them in Alberta.

Native Congress of Canada (NCC) Alberta chapter president Doris Ronnenberg said she welcomes the setting of the trial date.

"We have been interveners in the case for many years," she said. "It would be the position of NCC to bring forward a large number of witnesses and to support the 1985 amendments.