Witness intimidation allegation dog court challenge to Bill C-31

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The second half of the trial challenging a controversial amendment to the Indian Act wrapped up in a federal court in Ottawa last week with further allegations of witness intimidation.

Bernice Wells, a witness from the Tsuu Tina reserve in Alberta, told the court that she was scared of retaliation from members of her community for testifying in defense of Bill C-31.

"But it is my reserve and I will die there," she told the court.

The case, which first got underway in Edmonton Sept. 20 and reconvened in Ottawa Nov. 15, involves a challenge by members of three Alberta bands to Bill C-31.

The 1985 amendment to the Indian Act restored Indian status to disenfranchised Natives, many of them women who had married non-Indians.

Many C-31 Natives were put back onto band lists by Ottawa once the bill was passed. But the plaintiffs, lead by Conservative Senator and Sawridge Band Chief Walter Twinn, maintain that only bands can determine membership.

Twinn, along with fellow plaintiffs Bruce Starlight of the Tsuu Tina Nation and Wayne Roan of the Ermineskin Band, argued that uncontrolled increases in membership threaten the economic, social and cultural security of bands.

So far, more than 150,000 people have applied for status under the bill. Some 95,000 Natives across Canada have been re-instated. Approximately10,000 of them are from Alberta.

Natives cannot go back to the old days but they can return to the values they once held, Wells said, including the belief no one person is more important than another.

Wells, who was the last person to testify in the 50-day trial, said she is not interested in the wealthy band's financial assets, but rather in its values and culture.

Witness intimidation is nothing new to this trial. Two weeks ago, Mary Two-Axe Earley, who testified from her wheelchair, was confronted outside the courthouse by Kahnawake councillor Billy Two Rivers. The two got into a heated exchange in Mohawk over the dangers the amendment presents to reserves.

More than 1,800 people are currently on a waiting list to return to Kahnawake, Two Rivers told her, and the government cannot be allowed to impose its will on Mohawks in this manner.

Earley said she had also been pressured by other people from Kahnawake not

to testify as a witness for the Native Council of Canada, which is acting as an intervenor in the case.

Meanwhile in Edmonton RCMP are still conducting their investigation into the possible intimidation of witnesses during the Edmonton portion of the trial.

Lawyer for the intervening Native Council of Canada (Alberta) Jon Faulds, told the court Nov. 4 that witnesses Francis Jensen and Edith Crowchild decided not to testify after a telephone conversation with the plaintiff's counsel of record, Catherine Twinn.

Catherine Twinn, Senator Twinn's wife, said she spoke to the two women but emphasized that the witnesses called her. Justice Frank Muldoon, the judge presiding over the case, pointed out that the conversation still constituted a breach of client-solicitor privilege.

Two of the three witnesses for the Non-Status Indian Association of Alberta, another intervenor in the case, were also to appear in court Nov.. 4. But the two Tsuu Tina women failed to show up after a telephone conversation with as an yet un-named third party.

A third woman from that reserve did testify, despite being told by an-named female telephone caller that she would "do all right" not to.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, defendants and intervenors will return to Ottawa in March to make their final arguments. The court had some 150 volumes of material and five expert reports to consider.