Meegwetch.
Greetings, honourable members of Parliament. I am Ingrid Green, the director of research and evaluation at the Ontario Native Women's Association. Founded in 1971, ONWA is the oldest and largest indigenous women's organization in Canada. We have over 50 years of experience in listening to, supporting and advocating for indigenous women, including first nations women and their descendants. The issue of sex discrimination in the Indian Act was one of the catalysts for the formation of the indigenous women's movement in Canada, including establishing ONWA as an agency.
I am here today urgently calling for your support of the Senate committee's amendments to Bill S-2 without further delay. It is ONWA's position that first nations women have the right to our indigenous identities, culture, community and nations, as well as the right to pass on our identity and culture to our children. While Bill S-2 is the start, the amendments are needed to fully remedy all the remaining and residual discrimination stemming from previous versions of the Indian Act. Without these amendments, we risk further perpetuating the profound and lasting harm to first nations.
I want to speak about this harm, in particular the ongoing impacts of sex discrimination on first nations women and their families. The loss of status and band membership from “marrying out” has over time been linked with the appallingly high rates of gendered colonial violence that indigenous women continue to experience, including human trafficking and the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls crisis. First nations women spoke to this at the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in the 1990s. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls also linked sex discrimination in the Indian Act with these high rates of violence against us. The consequences of the legislated discrimination are deadly. The violence against us has been rising at an exponential rate since the national inquiry was launched in 2016. In fact, it has doubled.
In addition to the gendered colonial violence we face, many first nations women experience trauma, poor health, addictions, poverty and homelessness, which lead to further intergenerational harm through colonial systems. These challenges are then greatly compounded by the lack of access to community and cultural supports.
Since 1985 Canada's approach to fixing the two-tiered and convoluted status provisions has displaced first nations women and their children from their families, communities and nations, denying them the right to equal enjoyment of their identities, cultures, languages and lands. Previous attempted remedies have not been able to fully repair what was lost. The establishment of levels of status resulted in social divisions and, too often, lateral violence. First nations women under subsection 6(2) bear the brunt of this colonial violence. The divisions and lateral violence within first nations communities are aggravated by ongoing underfunding from the federal government, which positions new registrants as a threat to first nations already grappling with a scarcity of resources.
Committee members, the rights of first nations women should not be pitted against the collective rights of our communities. It is time not only to listen to first nations women but also to act on our recommendations. With respect to the path forward, we implore this committee to fully, and with urgency, end the sex discrimination in the Indian Act and endorse the amendments to Bill S-2. This includes amendments to remove the second generation cut-off by returning to a one-parent rule for transmission of status. Failure to eliminate the second generation cut-off will allow numbers of registered Indians to decline, eventually leading to the extinction of status Indians and entire communities, as you have heard from several witnesses already. A one-parent rule tackles not only the urgent issue of extinction but also sex discrimination. This rule effectively legislates who first nation peoples can fall in love with. They should not have to choose their partners based on the ability to pass their rights to their children.
I want to close by saying that amending the legislation is just one step. First nations must also be financially supported to welcome those who have been displaced from their community through forced assimilation. This is central to meeting Canada's fiduciary duties.
Honourable members, ONWA calls on each of you to support the amendments to Bill S-2 as endorsed by the Senate and by the United Nations Human Rights Committee just last month in their review of Canada's compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This is an opportunity for a unified act of reconciliation. Our survival as first nations in Canada and our very lives, safety and well-being as first nations women depend on it.
Meegwetch. Thank you for your time.