A United Nations committee on Thursday called on Canada to
"fully"
address gender discrimination in its
"Indian Act"
that continues to affect tens of thousands of descendants of Indigenous women.
Read alsoCanada: Indian tribes push back “Big Oil”
Relations between the Canadian state and the indigenous peoples, known as
“First Nations”
, are defined by the
“Indian Act”
, an 1876 text which notably created hundreds of reserves in the country.
Prior to 1985, the law
"contained provisions that explicitly discriminate against Aboriginal women which deprived them of their status if they married non-Aboriginal men"
, explained the Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (Cedaw), a body composed of independent experts.
However, you have to be considered as indigenous to have the right to certain services and assistance, but also to have the possibility of living on indigenous territories, and the right to hunt and fish on traditional lands.
“Despite numerous legal challenges, Canada has only changed discriminatory provisions piecemeal rather than ending discrimination altogether
,” Cedaw said.
“The whole problem stems from the failure to respect the fundamental right of indigenous peoples to self-identification
,” said Corinne Dettmeijer, a member of the committee.
1,500 anonymous children's graves found
In Canada, the
"Indian Act"
is severely criticized by some natives who consider it obsolete and racist, and want its abolition.
The discrimination suffered by the natives is at the heart of a great debate within Canadian society, particularly since the discovery, in May, of hundreds of graves on the site of a former boarding school reserved for natives.
Since May, some 1,500 unmarked children's graves have been found on the sites of these schools, and numerous searches are underway across the country - between 4,000 and 6,000 students are said to have disappeared, according to the authorities.
Between the end of the 19th century and the 1980s, some 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly enrolled in more than 130 boarding schools across the country where they were cut off from their family, language and culture.
A national commission of inquiry had qualified in 2015 this system of
“cultural genocide”
.