Women and the Law

"Beginning with Elsie Knott, the first female chief in Canada, Cora Voyageur presents the lives of sixty-four of the ninety women chiefs who have assumed the traditionally male role of elected First Nations leadership. Using a range of qualitative research strategies, surveys, participant observation, interviews, and discussions with focus groups, Voyageur presents the colonial histories behind the issues that contemporary Aboriginal communities struggle with and delineates the resulting leadership dilemmas for chiefs, while also articulating a story that is unique to First Nations women.

"In Club Native, filmmaker Tracey Deer uses Kahnawake, her hometown, as a lens to probe deeply into the history and contemporary reality of Aboriginal identity. Following the stories of four women, she reveals the exclusionary attitudes that divide the community and many others like it across Canada. Deer traces the roots of the problem, from the advent of the highly discriminatory Indian Act through the controversy of Bill C31, up to the present day, where membership on the reserve is determined by a council of Mohawk elders, whose rulings often appear inconsistent.

"Author Pamela Palmater argues that the Indian Act's registration provisions will lead to the extinguishment of First Nations as legal and constitutional entities. The current status criteria contain descent-based rules akin to blood quantum that are particularly discriminatory against women and their descendants. Beginning with a historic overview of legislative enactments defining Indian status and their impact on First nations, the author examines contemporary court rulings dealing with Aboriginal rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in relation to Indigenous identity.

"The hidden crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada is both a national tragedy and a national shame. In this ground-breaking new volume, as part of their larger efforts to draw attention to the shockingly high rates of violence against our sisters, Jennifer Brant and D.

"Katrina Jagodinsky’s enlightening history is the first to focus on indigenous women of the Southwest and Pacific Northwest and the ways they dealt with the challenges posed by the existing legal regimes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In most western states, it was difficult if not impossible for Native women to inherit property, raise mixed-race children, or take legal action in the event of rape or abuse.