Thank you very much.
I'd like to start by telling you a bit of my family's history.
My dad was francophone, my mother Cree and Ojibwa. Her parents—my maternal grandparents—spent many years in a residential school and married after leaving the school. Mostly, they lived in Indian country, but they moved to Kenora just before my mother was born. My grandfather enfranchised in 1922 in order to vote, because Kenora was a place where he could possibly vote if he wasn't an Indian. At that time, his family was automatically enfranchised, so my grandmother, aunts and uncles were automatically enfranchised.
My mother was born after that, so she never had status. She received status in 1985 when the Indian Act was changed, but she received a very limited status that she could pass only to her children. Growing up, we always knew that story about the Indian Act and enfranchisement, but we could never imagine challenging the Indian Act or that idea. While enfranchisement was well known by my family, it was never talked about anywhere. Even as the context of what you might call “indigenous rights”, “recognition”, “self-government” or those kinds of things began to come into the public discourse, enfranchisement, as far as I knew, was never talked about. I didn't know any other families with this history.
Then, several years ago, I heard about a case in Quebec regarding enfranchisement, in which INAC was taken to court. That case was won by the plaintiff. It led me to Ryan and the two families he was working with on enfranchisement. Our three brave little families, with Ryan's support and leadership, decided to challenge the Indian Act and the Government of Canada on the enfranchisement provisions. That's what led us here today.
I will let Ryan explain the ups and downs of the legal challenge and legislative process. All I will say is that, when we began this process, I was astounded by how many people contacted me after hearing about this challenge to the enfranchisement provisions. They told similar stories, and we learned more and more about how many families had a history of enfranchisement. It proved to me, even more clearly, that the goal of enfranchisement was not just to “reward Indians of good character”—as it was presented to my grandfather back in 1922—by letting them become citizens of Canada. It was also to remove, once and for all, status Indians from the calculus of this country, which I think we can agree meets certain definitions of a genocidal approach.
We are very glad to be here today and to see this work being undertaken.
Thank you.