Court strikes down Indian Act provisions that exclude descendants of those who gave up their status
2025/08/22 Leave a comment
Different but has some parallels with the first generation cut-off for citizenship transmission (that C-3 will replace):
The B.C. Supreme Court has given the Canadian government until April 2026 to change the Indian Act to bring it into compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms after a successful legal challenge by descendants of people who renounced their status under the law.
The court ruled that provisions of the act that denied status to people with a “family history of enfranchisement,” where their parents or grandparents gave up their status and the benefits it entails, infringed upon the plaintiffs’ Charter rights.
The ruling says the Canadian government agreed with the plaintiffs that the registration provisions of the act perpetuated “disadvantage, stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination” tied to enfranchisement by denying people the benefits of Indian status due to their family history.
Lawyer Ryan Beaton says the ruling comes eight years after he first met one of the plaintiffs, Sharon Nicholas, whose grandfather gave up his status in 1944 to spare his children from going to residential schools.
Beaton says when people like Nicholas’ grandfather became enfranchised, their children also lost their status, and Nicholas had been working for decades on the issue before challenging it in court.
Beaton says a related class-action lawsuit filed this month in Federal Court is seeking damages from the Canadian government over lost benefits related to the denial of status under the law, and the class is estimated to include between 5,000 and 10,000 people.
He says the ruling has been “incredibly gratifying” for Nicholas.
“So for her it’s been, you know, a 40-year journey to get to this point. She’s an incredible person,” Beaton said….
Source: Court strikes down Indian Act provisions that exclude descendants of those who gave up their status
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Multicultural Meanderings 