CEDAW/C/81/D/68/2014 and denied their right to determine their own identity. The law was discriminatory against women, because the same rules did not apply to indigenous men. 2.5 In 1989, Sharon McIvor, an indigenous woman, launched a legal challenge to the discriminatory provisions under the amended Indian Act. As a result of the amendments of 1985, she and her son had become eligible for status; however her son’s children were not entitled to registration, because their mother was not indigenous. Ms. McIvor submitted that persons whose grandfathers had been indigenous, rather than their grandmothers, were entitled to registration. Almost 20 years later, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled that the amendments of 1985 continued to perpetuate the historical disadvantage experienced by indigenous women and those who traced their status through the maternal line. The federal Government appealed; the British Columbia Court of Appeal found that the amendments of 1985 had infringed upon equality rights, because they had merely postponed the second generation cut-off by one generation. As a result, amendments to the Act were adopted under Bill C-3 of 2011, according to which all grandchildren of women who had lost status by marrying someone without status regained their eligibility for status, provided that they were born after 1951. 3 However, Bill C-3 gave them only the limited form of status that made their ability to pass on status to their own children dependent on the status of the other parent. That restriction did not apply to status Indians of parallel generations who, because they traced their descent from the male line, were not affected by the disenfranchisements of the past. The reforms were carried out without adequate consultation with indigenous peoples, and the views of indigenous peoples’ organizations and leading advocates for indigenous women’s rights, who had called for a process of broader reform to eliminate all forms of discrimination, were ignored. Implication of the legislation for the lives of the author and his children 2.6 The author resides in Kelowna, British Columbia, outside of his traditional First Nation territory. He is from a long line of leaders of the Capilano Community, part of the Squamish Nation. The author’s paternal grandmother was Nora Johnson, born in 1907, an indigenous woman and the daughter of two indigenous parents from the Squamish Nation. When Ms. Johnson was a child, the State party forcibly took her away from her family and placed her in a residential school. In 1927, she married a non-indigenous man. As a consequence, she ceased to be considered by the State party as indigenous. Her son (the author’s father) married a non-indigenous woman in 1976; the author was born in 1977, and he was not entitled to registration as a status Indian. 2.7 As a result of the amendments of 1985, the author’s paternal grandmother was entitled to registration as a status Indian under paragraph 6 (1) (c) of the Indian Act, but, because she had married a non-indigenous man, she was able to pass status on to her son (the author’s father) under section 6 (2) only. The author’s parents (a section 6 (2) status Indian father and a non-indigenous mother) applied for registration on the author’s behalf, but it was denied because of the second generation cut-off rule. 2.8 As a consequence of the amendments of 2011, the author’s father was deemed to have been entitled to registration under section 6 (1) of the Indian Act, and, as a result, the author became eligible to entitlement and registration for the first time. He applied for status for himself and his children, who were born to a non -indigenous woman. The Indian Registrar registered the author under section 6 (2), the more restrictive form of status, and denied the registration of his children. By comparison, descendants of status Indian grandfathers would never have lost their status and would therefore have been able to pass on their status to their children. __________________ 3 22-03658 Cut-off date based on the date on which a previous version of the Indian Act had come into force. 3/19