GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN THE INDIAN ACT

Many of the legal disabilities for women in the Indian Act have existed as much by omission as by explicit statement through the use of the constant masculine term in the legislation, even though a separate legal regime has existed for Indian women with respect to marriage, childbirth, regulation of sexual conduct, exclusion from the right to vote or otherwise partake in band business, and rights to inherit and for a widow to administer her husband’s estate. Because of the constant use of the masculine pronoun, confusion has existed at times in various communities as to whether Native women actually have any of the rights pertaining to men in much of the Indian Act legislation (Jamieson 1978, 56). Finally, definitions of Indianness have been asserted in such a patriarchal manner as to be fraught with discriminatory consequences for Indian women.

[…] Legislation in 1850 first defined Indianness in gendered terms, so that Indian status depended either on Indian descent or marriage to a male Indian. With the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869, not only were wives removed from inheritance rights and automatically enfranchised with their husbands, but Section 6 began a process of escalating gender dis- crimination that would not be definitively changed until 1985. With this section, for the first time, Indian women were declared “no longer Indian” if they mar- ried anybody who lacked Indian status. On marrying an Indian from another “tribe, band, or body,” she and her children now belonged to her husband’s tribe only (Jamieson 1978, 29–30).

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Gender and Women’s Studies, Second Edition : Critical Terrain, edited by Margaret Hobbs, and Carla Rice, Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6318365. Created from umanitoba on 2020-11-15 22:29:39.