Canadian Association in Support of the Native Peoples Bulletin
Periodical profile published 1979
Year Published: 1979
Pages: 44pp Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Cx Number: CX968
This issue of Bulletin focuses on Native women.
Abstract:
This issue of Bulletin focuses on Native women. Attention is given to Native women's organizations, community groups, poetry, book reviews, photographs, etc. All of these in some way serve to illustrate a courage, strength and dignity found in native women who are working towards attaining justice and fundamental human rights for all Native people.
Highlighted in two articles is the sensitive issue of status. This issue, in particular, concerns Native women who are struggling for "the rights of Indian women to love, die and be buried on their reserves, the band membership of their children and, of course, forced enfranchisement.' Indian Rights for Indian Women (IRIW) is one of the few native organizations active in trying to change the Indian Act in order to ensure protection of rights for Indian women. Presently, an Indian woman who marries a non-Indian is stripped of her Indian status. As a result she is denied the right to live, or own property, on her reserve, and she and her children are cut off from social and cultural ties of her heritage. Indian men who marry non-Indians are not penalized. In particular elderly women, widows and deserted mothers with small children are suffering as they are being evicted from their reserves.
IRIW recommends that "a person with one quarter Indian Blood be registered as a status Indian and that the blood line follow either the mother or the father," and that this be made retroactive.
The IRIW is negotiating changes to the Indian Act with federal cabinet ministers and is involved in discussions with the Human Rights Commission, as well as giving a voice to Indian women who have traditionally had no recourse to unjust laws that govern their lives and the lives of their children.
$1.25 and $12./yr.
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