Advocating for Women’s Rights in the Indian Act

In 1970, two weeks after her wedding, Jeanette Corbiere Lavell received a letter from the Canadian government informing her that due to her marrying a non-Indigenous person she was no longer legally considered an Indigenous person.  

The legal battle that followed would eventually make its way to the Supreme Court and pave the way for critical changes for Indigenous women in Canada. 

Advocating for equality

Jeannette Corbiere Lavell and Dr. Dawn Memee Lavell-Harvard – a mother-daughter duo of human rights advocates – shared this story of injustice and activism as featured speakers at an event titled Advocating for Women’s Rights in the Indian Act, facilitated by Trent University Library & Archives. 

Dr. Lavell-Harvard is the director of the First Peoples House of Learning (FPHL) at Trent, and her mother Jeanette has been recognized with numerous awards for her advocacy and activism, including being named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2017. 

A letter of erasure

This letter stripped Jeanette’s legal Indigenous status and attempted to disconnect her from her heritage and community. 

“I received this letter two weeks later from Indian Affairs saying, ‘Jeannette Corbiere, you are no longer a member of the Wikwemikong unceded reserve... find enclosed, a check for thirty-five dollars.’ That was it. Thirty-five dollars. That was how much I was entitled to for losing all my rights,” said Corbiere Lavell. 

“Why should I have to lose my connection? My sense of belonging to my community? That's where I was born, my relatives were there, my ancestors were buried there, and now going back I could have been charged with trespassing. They could have called the police and hauled me away.” 

Jeannette would not accept this. With the legal help of Clayton Ruby, a young lawyer and close friend, she challenged this section of the Indian Act in court. Her case went through several levels of the Canadian legal system, ultimately reaching the Supreme Court of Canada in 1973. Although her challenge was initially unsuccessful, losing the case by one vote, it paved the way for subsequent successful challenges. Ultimately, this led to the reinstatement of status rights to Indigenous women like Corbiere Lavell in 1985. 

Her struggle highlighted the deep-seated discrimination within the Indian Act and started a broader conversation about the rights of Indigenous women in Canada. 

Dr. Lavell-Harvard went on to explain some of the inequities that remain in the Indian Act, including 6(2), which affects a person's ability to pass on status to their descendants if they have only one parent who is recognized as Indigenous. This leads to what's called the “second generation cut-off", where a child may lose status after two generations of marriage with non-status individuals. 

“If you have a parent who is a Canadian citizen, you have Canadian citizenship, period,” said Dr. Lavell-Harvard. “We are nations and we are sovereign First Nations. We should have the right to function in a citizenship model as well, which means that if we have a parent who is a First Nation member, if we have a parent who is Anishinaabe, we should have the right to pass that on to our children regardless of who you choose to marry.”  

Dr. Lavell-Harvard emphasized that any meaningful dialogue about replacing or abolishing the Indian Act must include those directly affected by these discriminatory clauses.   

"We can't have that conversation until our women and children and grandchildren are returned to their rightful place. Because otherwise, the full maternal lines of our nations won't be part of that conversation.” 

Placing history in context

Throughout the talk, Dr. Lavell-Harvard returned to the idea that Indigenous teaching often takes time to speak of the past, present, and future. In this spirit of establishing context, the event itself included a virtual tour hosted by the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, where Lavell-Harvard’s story was featured in a display on the history of women’s rights in Canada. 

The event at Bata Library also included a live poetry reading by Sarah Lewis '16 (Gzowski College), Peterborough’s 2021 Poet Laureate. In this way, Trent students were able to see Dr. Lavell-Harvard’s story as connected to their campus, their city, and the larger story of Indigenous human rights in Canada past, present and future. 

Advocating for Women’s Rights in the Indian Act was hosted by the First Peoples House of Learning and the Trent University Library & Archives. 

Posted on June 11, 2024