Canada's Indigenous Women Still Fight for Equality

While Sharon McIvor was a child, she spent her days wandering her grandmother’s First Nations community deep in British Columbia. She learned how to fish, harvest sap and pick berries, as the Nlaka’pamux Nation had done for millennia.
She was confronted with more than a century of gender discrimination, When the time came to teach those skills to her grandchildren.
Campaigners say the repercussions of that discrimination range from the denial of services and rights to a crisis in which as many as 4,000 indigenous women in Canada have gone missing or been murdered.
Mclvor married a non-indigenous man and was not entitled to indigenous status anymore. A 1985 change to the act eventually allowed her and her children to gain status – but prevented her from passing it to her grandchildren.
Without status, McIvor wasn’t able to live on reserve land and was excluded from hunting, gathering and fishing as well as traditional marriage, funeral and healing ceremonies.
On the contrary, her brother who twice married to non-indigenous women was able to pass his status to his children and grandchildren.
“What I lost was my community, and what I lost was my ability to feel like I belonged,” said McIvor.
She and her descendants also had no rights to claim the tax breaks, healthcare and education benefits accessed by some First Nations.
Canada’s senate unanimously passed a legislative amendment last year through which it finally seemed that equality was indispensable. After initially balking at the idea, the federal government – led by the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau – eventually approved the provisions.
But no timeline was set for the changes, and now the government says that first it needs to consult with First Nations and other indigenous groups.
“There’s no way that anybody in the world should be consulting with somebody on whether or not they should continue to discriminate,” said McIvor.
> Shiuly Akter