2. Women's Perspectives - Christian Aboriginal Infrastructure ...

29 Letter from Deputy Superintendent General Scott to Arthur Meighen, Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs (12 January 1920), reprinted in NAC RG10, Vol. 6810, file
470-2-3, vol. 7. See also Leslie and Maguire, The Historical Development of the Indian
Act (cited in note 25).
30 An Act to amend the Indian Act, S.C. 1920, c. 50, s. 3. The provision was repealed in
1922 but reinstated in 1933 and retained in modified form until 1961, when it was finally
removed permanently in An Act to amend the Indian Act, S.C. 1961, c. 9, s. 1.
31 The Indian Act, S.C. 1951, c. 29, ss. 11(c)-(e) of the amended act all refer to the male
line of descent as criteria for registration as an Indian.
32 DIAND, Memorandum of 2 July 1968, as described in Kathleen Jamieson, Indian
Women and the Law in Canada: Citizens Minus (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1978).
The red ticket system is also referred to and described in the recent decision of the
Federal Court of Canada in Sawridge Band v. Canada, [1995] 4 Canadian Native Law
Reporter 121.
33 An Act to amend the Indian Act, S.C. 1956, c. 40, s. 6(2).
34 An Act to amend the Indian Act, S.C. 1956, c. 40, s. 26.
35 Jamieson, Indian Women (cited in note 32).
36 Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada (Ottawa:
Information Canada, 1970), pp. 237-238. For a discussion of the background to the issue
see Douglas Sanders, "The Renewal of Indian Special Status", in Anne F. Bayefsky and
Mary Eberts, eds., Equality Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
(Toronto: Carswell, 1986), p. 529.
37 Re Lavell and Canada (A.G.) (1971), 22 D.L.R. (3d) 182 (Ont. Co. Ct.). See also
Weaver, "First Nations Women" (cited in note 19).
38 Lavell v. Canada (A.G.) [1971] F.C. 347.
39 Bedard v. Isaac [1972] 2 O.R. 391 (Ont. H.C.).
40 Lavell v. Canada (A.G.); Isaac v. Bedard [1974] S.C.R. 1349. For the majority (5-4),
Justice Ritchie held that there was no impermissible discrimination. He distinguished (at
p. 1372) between this case and that of R. v. Drybones, [1970] S.C.R. 282, on the basis
that, as criminal law, the alcohol provisions in the Indian Act could not be enforced
without denying equality of treatment in the administration and enforcement of the law
before the ordinary courts of the land to a racial group, whereas no such inequality of
treatment between Indian men and women flows as a necessary result of the application
of section 12(1)(b) of the Indian Act. [emphasis added]
93