Indigenous Hub

Gehl v Canada is the story of Lynn Gehl's lifelong journey of survival against the nation-state's constant genocidal assault against her existence. While Canada set up its colonial powers--including the Supreme Court, House of Commons, Senate Chamber, and the Residences of the Prime Minister and Governor General--on her traditional Algonquin territory, usurping the riches and resources of the land, she was pushed to the margins, exiled to a life of poverty in Toronto's inner-city. With only beads in her pocket, Gehl spent her entire life fighting back, and now offers an insider analysis of Indian Act litigation, the narrow remedies the court imposes, and of obfuscating parliamentary discourse, as well as an important critique of the methodology of legal positivism. Drawing on social identity and Indigenous theories, the author presents Disenfranchised Spirit Theory, revealing insights into the identity struggles facing Indigenous Peoples to this day.

Canada's Indian Act is infamously sexist. Through many iterations of the legislation a woman's status rights flowed from her husband, and even once it was amended to reinstate rights lost through marriage or widowhood, First Nations women could not necessarily pass status on to their descendants. That injustice has rightly been subject to much scrutiny, but what has it meant for First Nations men? Martin J. Cannon challenges the decades-long assumption of case law and politics that the act has affected Indigenous people as either "women" or "Indians" - but not both. He argues that sexism and racialization within the law must instead be understood as interlocking forms of discrimination that have also undercut the identities of Indigenous men through their female forebears. By restorying historically patriarchal legislation and Indigenous masculinity, Men, Masculinity, and the Indian Act makes a significant contribution to a transformative discussion of Indigenous nationhood, citizenship, and reconciliation.