Spirit of law ignored?

Page 11

In early August, more than four months after a Federal Court judge ordered she be added to the membership list of one of the wealthiest bands in Alberta, Cecile Twinn said she had to go to a food bank to feed the grandchildren she has in her care.

On March 27, while ruling on a Crown motion made in the Bertha L'Hirondelle versus the Queen case, Federal Court trial judge James K. Hugessen ordered that 11 women be immediately added to the Sawridge band list "and be immediately accorded all the rights and privileges attaching to band membership."

The case has been before the courts for 17 years.

Cecile Twinn, 59, and her sister Margaret Ward, two of those 11 women, contacted Windspeaker on Aug. 20 to say they didn't feel the Sawridge chief and council were following the spirit of Hugessen's ruling.

"They called a meeting. We went to it. But it had absolutely nothing to do with any of us women being reinstated or our rights," said Twinn. "They kept talking about their by-laws. That whole meeting was just a real farce. Nothing of importance was really touched on."

The women say they were told that the band had no money for them.

"They're trying to say they don't have any money for us because they didn't get any funding for us," Twinn said. "They told us they're broke right at the meeting. 'We're broke. We can't give you women any money.'"

If Sawridge is really broke it would of great interest to many people in Alberta.

The band's investments, as documented on the Web site of the Lesser Slave Lake Indian Regional Council, an organization to which the Sawridge band belongs, include the Sawridge mall and a hotel in the town of Slave Lake, a supermarket and a 24-hour truck stop. Sawridge also operates resort hotels in Jasper National Park and in Fort McMurray and has a majority interest in Optima Engineers and Constructors, an engineering firm in Calgary.

Estimates of the band's assets have been put in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The band has been fighting against the provisions of Bill C-31, attempting to avoid including many individuals who say they should rightfully have band membership.

When C-31 was passed in 1985, it was intended to remedy a discriminatory practice that saw Native women who married non-Native men lose their status while Native men who married non-Native women did not. The minister at the time, David Crombie, told the House of Commons that C-31 would grant disenfranchised women automatic status and band membership. He also said that bands should have the right to determine and manage their own membership lists, but a balance had to be struck between those two interests. This balance was worked into the legislation and bands could not take control of their membership lists and then act to exclude the members that C-31 was designed to include.

Sawridge has been painted by some as a greedy, oil-rich band trying to keep its membership small so that each member would retain a sizable share of the band's wealth.

Catherine Twinn is a lawyer and the widow of the late Walter Twinn. He was the former Sawridge chief, and father of the current chief, Roland Twinn. The band's two councillors are Bertha L'Hirondelle, the chief's aunt, and Ardel Twinn, his brother.

Catherine Twinn has stated in the past that the band's legal fight against C-31 is not about money, but about the band's right to control its own membership list.

If it's not about the money, wondered Cecile Twinn (no relation), then why haven't other members of her family been granted membership now that she has been found to qualify.

"I've got an older brother and two younger brothers. My sister and I are band members. Wouldn't that make my brothers also band members? Like from birth? Because we got [dis]enfranchised when we got married," she asked. "My brothers are not listed as band members."

And her children will have to fill out a lengthy membership application form and hope for acceptance. That form is notorious throghout Alberta. Originally it was 280 pages long. A revised version is now 43 pages long.

"[The original form] asks how many sexual partners you've had, how many cigarettes you smoke, questions that have nothing to do with being an Indian," Cecile Twinn said. The question about cigarettes is still in the revised form,

as is the requirement to provide a detailed list of an applicant's monthly expenses, and an essay on why the applicant wants to be a member of the band.

The judge's decision was basically a finding that "the band's application of its membership rules . . . is in contravention of the Indian Act."

The judge quoted speeches by Crombie and a letter the minister wrote to Sawridge Chief Walter Twinn at the time advising him of the intention of C-31.

While the band has been contesting various aspects of C-31 for years, the judge ruled that it is law and must be obeyed until such time as it is repealed or replaced.

He eventually agreed with the Crown's assertion that "the plaintiff band has effectively given itself an injunction and has chosen to act as though the law which it contests did not exist."

Judge Hugessen rejected as a "red herring the Sawridge argument that the women had not applied for membership, and should therefore not be granted membership."

"The evidence is clear that all of the women in question wanted and sought to become members of the band and that they were refused at least implicitly because they did not or could not fulfil the rules' onerous application requirements," he wrote.

The judge hinted that the band has been rather selective in which laws it follows or enforces.

"Furthermore, in the minister's letter to Chief Walter Twinn on September 26, 1985, in which he accepted the membership code, the minister reminded Chief Twinn of subsections 10(4) and (5) of the Act, and stated as follows: We are both aware that Parliament intended that those persons listed in paragraph 6(1)(c) would at least initially be part of the membersip of a band which maintains its own list. Read in isolation your membership rules would appear to create a prerequisite to membership of lawful residency or significant commitment to the band. However, I trust that your membership rules will be read in conjunction with the Act so that the persons who are entitled to reinstatement to band membership, as a result of the Act, will be placed on your band list," the judge wrote, adding, "Sadly, it appears from the band's subsequent actions that the minister's 'trust' was seriously misplaced. The very provisions of the band's rules to which the minister drew attention have, since their adoption, been invoked by the band consistently and persistently to refuse membership to the 11 women in question. In fact, since 1985, the band has only admitted three acquired rights women to membership, all of them apparently being sisters of the addressee of the minister's letter."

Our calls to Chief Roland Twinn and Catherine Twinn seeking comment for this story were not returned.