August 21, 2025
RED FM News Desk
The BC Supreme Court has given the Canadian government until April 2026 to change the Indian Act to comply with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This decision follows a successful legal challenge by descendants of individuals who voluntarily gave up their Indian status.
The court ruled that provisions in the act which denied status to people with a “family history of enfranchisement” infringed upon the plaintiffs’ Charter rights. This refers to cases where parents or grandparents renounced their status and its associated benefits.
The ruling noted that the Canadian government agreed with the plaintiffs that the act’s registration provisions perpetuate “disadvantage, stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination” by denying people Indian status benefits based on their family history.
Lawyer Ryan Beaton stated that this decision comes eight years after he first met one of the plaintiffs, Sharon Nicholas, whose grandfather gave up his status in 1944 to protect his children from being sent to residential schools. Beaton explained that when individuals like Nicholas’s grandfather became enfranchised, their children also lost their status, a issue Nicholas had been working on for decades before taking it to court.
Beaton also mentioned that a related class-action lawsuit filed this month in Federal Court is seeking damages from the Canadian government for lost benefits due to the denial of status. The class is estimated to include between 5,000 and 10,000 people.
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