I'd like to add a few comments. This act dates back to 1876 and was originally based on racial criteria. When it was introduced, a man, that man's children and, lastly, that man's lawful wife were Indians. That necessarily marked people because the act is characterized by patriarchal conceptions. In addition, it does not apply to all Indians. It only applies to those who are entered in the federal register, and that register, as its name indicates, is federal, that is to say that it is Ottawa that decides who is Indian and who is not. So that's the first problem. Belonging, recognition as an Indian depends, on a priority basis, on the services that the person receives from the federal government. The act also imposed a political system, the band council system, which was established in order to standardize politics, but also to establish the criteria for defining who would be the government's interlocutors.
Without going too far into the details, I will say that it is very hard to be a band chief. In fact, a band chief is simultaneously a kind of head of state, a negotiator for his nation, a federal programs administrator and a mayor. It's a very complicated task to try to perform these four functions at the same time. One or another should be selected. You can't be both administrator and negotiator, for example, to the same state from which you receive programs. It seems to me that, from a political point of view, something isn't working right. I conducted a number of interviews with chiefs who told me that they were in this system that they had to deal with and found it very hard to develop their own political initiatives because they no longer necessarily knew what their role was, since it didn't coincide with their conception of what a chief should be, based on what had been passed on to them historically.
As for the women, until 1985, as a result of the amendments made to the Indian Act by Bill C-31, an aboriginal woman who had married a non-aboriginal man lost her status. Starting in 1985, they were granted the right to retain their status. However, their children rely on a paragraph concerning an amendment made to the Indian Act under Bill C-31. They are classified as either type 1 or type 2, which I find abominable. I know some women who have told me that they are the daughter of so and so, but that, as they had married a non-aboriginal man, their children would not be aboriginal, whereas if they had married another one, they would be.
In a system of this kind, people define themselves under the act by means of a paragraph, which I find utterly terrible. I also know some aboriginal women who had a first aboriginal spouse with whom they had a child, then a second non-aboriginal spouse with whom they also had a child. As a result of the situation, one of their children would be able to pass on his status and the other not. And yet they have the same mother and were brought up the same way.
This is an aberration. Non-aboriginal women who married aboriginal men before 1985 became Indians under the act. In their case, their children don't depend on either a number or a paragraph in the act and can pass on their status without any problem. That's one of the fundamental discriminations. The amendments made to the Indian Act under Bill C-31 did not correct all the injustices of the act in question. This is only one example among many.