Where have all the Warriors Gone?

Hi Friends,
How long has the Canadian government been trying to eradicate the First Nations in this country? Well...from the beginning to present day! This is about legislated genocide.

I had met many people growing up who claimed to be "part" Indian (thats what we were back then) due to their having a great granddad being full blood Indian. The odd thing was, they very seldom knew much more than that little factoid. It inevitably turned out that great-granddad had been enfranchised, once he had obtained a university degree, and since then, he had little or no contact with his relatives, or the reserve living Indians from his past.

Was this his idea? Not likely. The policy of the day was: once you had attained a university degree you could no longer be called savage, and hence the enfranchisement! This policy was not only a brain drain from the reserves, but also served the second purpose of removing much needed role models from the communities. Visiting home was discouraged I would imagine, and not in their best interest either. I can attest to this myself, from an incident in my own childhood.

These policies were strictly enforced, by the Indian agents of the day. So much so, that as late as the 1950s my own mother had to carry a pass book,( a-la the apartheid South African laws ), to take us children to the reserve to visit our grandparents.

In the pass book it was noted what time you were to arrive and when you'd be departing, and by god there was to be no straying from those times. You were escorted off reserve property no matter what the weather, or what the reason, for not being able to vacate at exactly your given time. It was not unusual to find mothers with two or three little ones waiting on the outskirts of the reserve for their late rides, back home, as happened to us one time.

I remember even as a child wondering why the men of the reserve didn't rise up to this tyranny, and demand better treatment of their women? I have five brothers whom my father would've torn a strip off if they were to be anything less then gentlemanly to the ( fairer sex) as he referred to all women. Later on, as I became educated in the government policies I came to understand that maybe most men didn't worry so much over the treatment of their women because, they themselves were not punished for marrying out in the same way. As a matter of fact, they actually were coming out on top of these women because, again the government policies allowed them to not only marry out, but to give status to their wives and children.
It took a woman warrior to mount the fight for gender equality.

Here is how all that played out, and not with the aid of the men, but despite opposition from many men.

As we all know a complete fix was not to be had at this time. It now became another warrior woman's fight. Sharon McIvor entered into the status fray in 1985 and continued on for the past 25 years. This has now culminated in the passing of Bill C-3.

Sharon got the court battle to the point where the Canadian government is forced to amend the Indian Act once more to; once again, address the gender discrimination in it. Is it a complete fix? Not yet, though it could be. But that would take an honest effort on the part of the Canadian government, and support for Sharon, from the National Aboriginal Organizations.

Sad to say that neither has happened. After Sharon took on this fight without support from the National Aboriginal Organizations, financially or other wise, the newest partial fix offered by the Canadian government is "good enough" for these National Aboriginal groups to sign off on her struggle.

I guess bribery has its own rewards.
The most outrageous thing about all of this is of course,
the Canadian government had made the charge that this fight was about money, and not equality. Then Canada proceeded to make it just that, by threatening to cut off funding if the National Aboriginal Organizations didn't sign off on the flawed bill C-3, and these organizations played right into the government's hand by doing just as they were told to do...sign or lose funding.

Do these organizations speak for the Indigenous people in this country; really? The Grand Chief is elected by the regional chiefs, not the people of various Nations. Most of the regional chiefs are coincidentally men, and possibly the same ones who opposed Lovelace in the 1980s.

I have heard heroic accounts of our men warriors daring do, yet it is mostly the warrior women who are consistently fighting the modern battles. Sure, the issue is gender biased in the Indian Act, but these are your mothers, sisters, daughters, and in some cases grand daughters. When are more men going to step up and do as you should have been doing all along and assist your sisters in this struggle?

regards Debra