Bill C-31 only helped a small minority of Native women regain their rights, leaving most in the cold. That’s the verdict of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which last month awarded four Innu damages ranging from $3,000 to $ 12,000 after their Band Council discriminated against them.
Marie-Jeanne Raphael says she was ordered out of her son’s house in the Innu community of Lac-Saint-Jean after she married a white man.
The incident occurred after Bill C-31 was enacted. It was supposed to give Native women back all the rights they had lost previously when they married white men. But the Lac-Saint-Jean band, like many others in Canada, said it didn’t have the money to look after the new members.
Another Innu woman, Louise Philippe, was also refused a house and the right to take an Innu language course. Marthe Gill and Nellie Cleary couldn’t get permits to build houses on lots they owned. Gill was also denied a hunting permit, even though she’d been able to get one before.
“Indian women are not faring well at all under C-3 I,” said a lawyer for the Native Women’s Association of Canada in one news article. “Seventy per cent of C-31 women haven’t been able to access their reserves because several bands have bylaws that prevent them.”
