Meegwetch.
[Witness speaks in her native language]
I bring you greetings from my people. I am from the Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve situated on Manitoulin Island. I am Anishinabe from the Anishinabek Nation.
Many years ago I came before a committee such as this to retain my right as a member of my community, because, to me, this is who I am. It's my identity and my place, the place of all my ancestors and the place of any future generations that I'm part of.
I would like to share with you some of the teachings I have been brought up with and show you how I intend to use them as president of the Native Women's Association of Canada. Maybe some of you have heard of the grandfather teachings. These are practices that we try to follow every day.
The first is honesty, and through honesty, in my role as the president, I hope to be looking at transparency and accountability.
Humility. We're looking at our provincial and territorial member associations. They have been at the bottom rung, and we need to ensure that their voices are heard, so this is going to be one of my big initiatives.
Respect. Respect is inherent in all our relationships with each other. When we think of respect, we think of human rights and the matrimonial real property legislation that is being proposed, because this ensures that respect is being continued.
Under truth, we're looking at economic development, employment, education, training, especially for our women. The results will have a positive impact on our families and our communities.
Courage. It takes a lot of strength and courage to challenge legislation. We're looking at the Sharon McIvor case and our rights as citizens within our own nations.
Under love, love of our people, love of our community, love of our families, we're looking at the elimination of poverty, and all that this entails.
Wisdom. We look to the wisdom of our elders, the wisdom of our teachers, for health, well-being, and for a sense of balance within our communities.
So that's my view of how I'm going to approach my role as the president of Native Women's Association of Canada.
I would also like to acknowledge that we are here working and speaking to you on the lands of the Algonquin people, and I acknowledge them and recognize that it is a privilege to be here.
The Native Women's Association of Canada, for those of you who may not have been recently told about us, is a national representative organization made up of 11 provincial and territorial member associations, which we could refer to as PTMAs, from across the country. We are dedicated to improving the social, economic, medical, and political well-being of our first nations women, our Métis women, and the Inuit women of Canada. Many of our provincial organizations consist of members from those three categories.
At this committee session, I would like to present the priority issues that the Native Women's Association of Canada is considering, the issues that all of the aboriginal women in this country are looking to resolve. We're looking at the discriminatory provisions in the Indian Act, which we're still having to deal with. We're looking at matrimonial real property and violence against aboriginal women.
We will also speak about the need for greater capacity for the Native Women's Association of Canada to effectively carry out our critical work, particularly given the fact that NWAC is the only national organization representing the views of aboriginal women.
If we look at the Indian Act, in April 2009 the British Columbia Court of Appeal ruled in the McIvor case. I happen to know Sharon McIvor and I was supporting her in this initiative. The provisions they were looking at in the Indian Act were paragraphs 6(1)(a) and 6(1)(c), which governed registration or status. The ruling said that these were unconstitutional and must be amended within the year.
This is a consequence of the discriminatory second generation cut-off enacted in Bill C-31, which means that brothers and sisters may have different abilities to pass on status to their children. In particular, mothers who regain status through Bill C-31 will not be able to pass on this status to their grandchildren as easily as those who had prior to Bill C-31.
This particular section affects me directly. I regained my status under Bill C-31. For 15 years I didn't have my status, even though I'm very much a part of my community. Now under Bill C-31, two of my grandchildren have status according to the provisions; three of my granddaughters, whom I love dearly--these are my future generations--do not have status because of this provision within the Indian Act.
The McIvor decision is in part a welcome decision from the perspective of first nations women in Canada who have long fought for the removal of this discrimination resulting from Bill C-31. But it is not what we envisioned.
I took my own personal case to the Supreme Court of Canada--this was way back in 1970, so it's a long time ago--in my endeavour to remove sex discrimination contained in paragraph 12(1)(b) of the old Indian Act. I did it to protect my children and my grandchildren's rights.
Now here we are, almost 40 years later--I know because my son is 39--and we all know that Bill C-31 did not in fact result in equality in a meaningful way. This complicated system established under subsections 6(1) and 6(2) for status under the Indian Act has not only left residual discrimination toward the women's descendants--my granddaughters--but it will also lead to the eventual elimination of Indian status for many of our first nations. This is unfair, and we need to deal with it right away. I think this is an appropriate time to be addressing this.
I was also the commissioner on citizenship for the Anishinabek Nation, and during that work with my communities, the 42 first nations, I was told and I realized that within three years some of our first nations in the Anishinabek Nation will have their last status Indian born. After that, there will be no more status Indians in that community. That is in the middle of southern Ontario. That's reality. That's what we're facing under this current Indian Act.
There is also the unfair requirement for our women to state the paternity of their children. If they do not, their children's father is deemed to be non-status. This is totally unacceptable. I don't know if you would require your women to have to do that in order to keep their citizenship. There are many reasons for this within our communities, social and cultural reasons, and it definitely needs to be looked at.
We were told just last week in a presentation from Indian and Northern Affairs Canada that the federal government does plan to make the required amendments to ensure that the registration provisions comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We're pleased they have made that commitment. It is a step in the right direction. Earlier I mentioned that we support the B.C. Court of Appeals' decision in part, and that's because it is still too narrow. It is not dealing with my grandchildren and Sharon McIvor's grandchildren. This needs to be looked at. If we can do it in a meaningful way to ensure that the constitutional requirement to consult and accommodate our people's aboriginal and treaty rights is ensured, then I think we would be starting in the right direction.
In the Government of Canada's presentation to us last Friday, I believe, it outlined plans to hold national engagement sessions with national aboriginal organizations and 15 regional engagement sessions. This was done to provide information on the government's preferred approach to legislative amendment and to provide an opportunity to review and to receive views of all the aboriginal delegates they were talking to. But it was just an information session, and INAC has acknowledged that. If this is the approach that leads to the formulation of legislative change, you can be assured that the views and perspectives of our first nations community members will not have been solicited in this process in any kind of meaningful way.
NWAC urges this committee to call upon the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs to put adequate resources to hold meaningful discussions with the national aboriginal organizations and our communities across Canada about these legislative amendments. We urge you to ensure that the feedback received is considered in the drafting of these amendments. A culturally relevant gender-based analysis of the proposed amendments must take place. We would like some assurance that this is going to be done.
Once again, the unstated paternity presumption must also be addressed in a meaningful way. This is done to ensure that our women are not put through any more hardships. Once again, this is only dealing with our women within our communities, and it's just double hardships again. I know it's not a simple issue, and it goes to the essence of our rights as first nations, as nations within this country of Canada. We are nations, and we should have the right and be able to practise our rights as nations within this beautiful country of ours. All we would like to see is to have that right.
If we have that right to decide who our citizens are, who our members are, the right to our language, the right to our history, the right to practise our own ceremonies, I think that would be a step in the right direction. I believe it's the only way we can go.
