Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in this debate. It has been distressing for me to hear government members talk about how strongly B.C. supports the bill. In fact I would not be here if that were the case.
What is even more distressing is that members do not speak for native Indian people as they claim. I would like to read into the record part of a paper presented by Wendy Lundberg at the Reform hearings in Vancouver last Friday. If I do not finish and people would like to know where to reference this paper, they can do so on the Internet at www.reform.ca/scott and click on the Nisga'a link there. The text of the hearings last week in Vancouver are in their entirety. I would like to add that my colleague from Cypress Hills—Grasslands quoted previously from this paper and I will continue. Miss Lundberg said:
Native leaders say that the federal government has a fiduciary responsibility to protect their interests and their rights, but in a treaty of collectivity, how are the rights of the individual going to be protected? As a native woman, as a status member of the Squamish Indian Band, I can tell you that individual rights will not be protected. I know, because as recently as June 1999, my individual rights were not protected by the federal government that allowed Squamish Band Council to falsely represent me and enter into an agreement under Bill C-49, the First Nations Land Management Act.
I was legislated even without a treaty on to the path of self-government, whether or not I wanted to be there. My rights and freedoms are supposed to be protected under the charter, but native women in Canada know even without the ratification of any treaty, that the charter does not apply to them. In fact, after the passing of Bill C-49, the Native Women's Association of Canada had to resort to the filing of a lawsuit to bring forward the total failure of the federal government to provide any protection for native women's property rights. These rights which are protected for non-native women in Canada include the rights to an equal division of property on marriage breakdown, inheritance and expropriation on reserve lands. The rights of all aboriginal peoples, including aboriginal women, are supposed to be protected by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.
And the rights and freedoms of all Canadians, native and non-native, are supposed to be guaranteed equally to male and female persons under section 28 of the charter. Already, though, we have seen that this is just not the case. The individual rights of my mother, Nona Lockhart, a native woman born on reserve, have not been protected. In 1947 she was stripped of her native status and Squamish Band membership because she married a non-native man. This discriminating rule of the Indian Act did not apply to native men, who could marry whomever they pleased without punishment or loss of their identity.
When her father died, my mother could not even live in the house where she was raised or inherit his two properties on reserve lands, despite the existence of an Indian Affairs approved will. My mother was theoretically reinstated pursuant to Bill C-31 in 1988, but Squamish Band Council has not returned her property to her, thereby denying my mother her rightful inheritance.
While thousands of native women in Canada suffer similar injustices at the discretion of their own band councils, the federal government ignores its fiduciary responsibility to them. My mother is a Canadian citizen, she should be protected by section 28 of the charter, which guarantees rights and freedoms equally to men and women and by section 15 which says that every individual is equal before and under the law without discrimination based on race, ethnic origin or sex. And although my mother's story is documented in my testimony before the standing Senate committee on aboriginal peoples in a hearing in May 1999, the federal government still has not exercised its fiduciary responsibility to her and litigation is not an accessible option to native women.
In debates on Bill C-49, some female members of parliament, non-native women, whose rights are enshrined in the charter said that each native band would determine these issues in their communities, based on unique native cultures. History will show that in 1999, the Canadian government allowed the perpetuation of discrimination, alienation and injustice of native women under the guise of cultural freedom, unique rights and unique cultural identity. Clearly, treaties and self-government issues have personal significance to me.
And in preparation for debate with my own band, I have studied Nisga'a treaty documents, the most comprehensive being the agreements between Canada, British Columbia and the Nisga'a Nation. Although the Nisga'a constitution makes reference to the charter, it is the wording of the proviso: “Bearing in mind the free and democratic nature of Nisga'a government” under section 6(2), which is the most disconcerting to me. The Nisga'a treaty is not just about a northern territory of British Columbia, it's about the future of Canada as a whole, and how peoples and communities, native and non-native will co-exist. While the chiefs will argue that all treaties will be different and unique to each native band, ultimately it will be the same leaders who will have the resources to protect their interests and take their cases to the courts seeking interpretation of the precedent setting words in the Nisga'a Treaty.
Native women, powerless, penniless and unable to access the courts for their individual rights will be at home, if they have a home, anxiously awaiting the court's decision. And I'd just like to add a couple of footnotes to that. The properties on reserve lands under claim by inheritance belonged to my grandfather, the legendary lacrosse goalie, Henry Hawkeye Baker, who was inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1966, and the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame in 1999. Hawkeye, a Squamish born native man, also played for Canada with honour, pride and dignity in the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, where the team won a bronze medal.
And my second footnote, I would like to say that my mother, Nona Lockhart, lives in Richmond, B.C. and is a constituent of the Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific. I would like to comment on something I saw on CPAC last week. It involved Question Period on November 22, 1999, and the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development was commenting on the protest against the Nisga'a treaty in Vancouver last Friday. He said, and I quote from Hansard : “Mr. Speaker, I just got back from visiting British Columbia on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. One of the things I noted was that Reformers tried their hardest. I have never seen them work so hard. In a huge metropolitan city like Vancouver they managed to get a whole 200 people out to say they were opposed to the Nisga'a deal.
When I was in the labour movement I could do that with one phone call and I would get 500 people out”. Well, I would like to suggest to the minister of Indian affairs that the reason there were so few native women out in Vancouver last Friday demonstrating their opposition to the treaty is because they did not know about the hearings taking place and they have probably not had the benefit of reading the treaty documents, and even if they did know about the hearings, they...could not afford even the bus fare to get there. The Native Women's Association of Canada receives nowhere near the amount of funding that the Assembly of First Nations does.
And lastly, I would also like to table to the committee and these proceedings a copy of a letter dated November 1, 1999, that I received from the Secretary of State for the Status of Women, in which she acknowledges the legislative gap of native women's property rights, and in which she supports the government's position and belief that native women's rights will be addressed by First Nations communities. In other words, her acknowledgement that her rights as a non-native Canadian woman are protected and guaranteed under the charter, while I, my aunt and other native women have to fight for our rights. And I would just like to table that document to this hearing please. Thank you—
I would say that the ministers and the government are totally ignoring the issues. They are not listening to the grassroots people and they are not exercising their fiduciary responsibility to us. They only speak and deal with the chiefs and councils, and I have documented in black and white...many of the problems and issues that we face. I am not making problems come out of the air. These are evidentiary matters documented and presented to the government and still they ignore the native women and the grassroots members.
This paper was presented by Wendy Lundberg last Friday, a native Indian woman and member of the Squamish band.
