Bill C-31 is an amendment to the Indian Act that the Canadian government passed in 1985. The bill allows Native women who lost their Legal Indian Status through marriage to regain their Status. Prior to the passage of Bill C-31, the government was authorized to take Legal Indian Status away from women who married a non-status or non-Native spouse. The amendment also contains a loophole known as the “two-generation cut-off clause,” which maintains that if a family marries out of Status for two generations, the children of that second marriage become non-Status Natives. King is critical of the bill because he sees it as the Canadian government’s effort to reduce the population of Status Natives.
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Bill C-31 Term Timeline in The Inconvenient Indian
The timeline below shows where the term Bill C-31 appears in The Inconvenient Indian. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 7. Forget about It
...to forget history, shifting his attention to his proposed 1985 start date to address Canada’s Bill C-31 , which passed in 1985 and was created to address the inequality between Status Native...
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