29. Mary Two Axe Early: Fighting for Indigenous rights

Mary Two-Axe Earley: A woman of flint

This episode of 'She Changed History' delves into the life of Mary Two-Axe Earley, who fought against the discriminative laws of the Indian Act in Canada. How a shreddies grandma can change the world. Mary, born in 1911, faced the harsh reality of losing her rights and status upon marrying a non-indigenous man, a result of oppressive legislation that affected countless indigenous women. Highlighting her personal tragedies and unwavering determination, the script narrates her journey from being a silenced widow to a relentless activist. Her efforts culminated in the passing of Bill C-31 in 1985, which restored status to thousands of indigenous women and their descendants. The episode also touches on her wider influence on the Canadian feminist movement and the ongoing struggles of indigenous communities.

Other episodes mentioned: bell hooks

Sources today are:

1) The Canadian Encycolpedia
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/mary-
two-axe-earley
2) Canadian History Ehx
https://canadaehx.com/2021/09/11/mary-two-axe-earley/
3) a blog by Clarissa Peterson called Badass Women
https://www.clarissapeterson.com/2017/02/mary-two-axe-
earley/
4) a blog called Feminism is for everybody
https://gwst1501.wordpress.com/2022/03/14/spotlight-mary-
two-axe-earley-indigenous-women-pioneering-for-equality-and-
a-better-future/
5) the website of Elections Canada
https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=eim/iss
ue9&document=p10&lang=e
6) …and a special thank you for the pronunciation of native
words, which comes from a video made public by the
Indigenous Student Ambassadors at Champlain College Saint-
Lambert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmHR5leIYGE


00:00 Introduction to Korean Milk Melon Soda
01:27 Welcome to 'She Changed History'
01:56 Mary Two-Axe Earley's Early Life
07:54 The Impact of the Indian Act
15:40 Mary's Activism and Legal Battles
30:53 The Legacy of Mary Two-Axe Earley
34:42 Conclusion and Call to Action

Transcript

audio1149095103: 0:07

I've opened it so I'll finish it. But it is a. Um, milk based Korean soda that says it's melon, melon flavor, milk melon. It's exactly as delicious as you would expect. Uh, it's got little lady on it with an umbrella. It's very, a lots is going on. But if I grimace. Close to share house somebody, somebody said that they had heard of this drink and it was like a cream soda, and then all in typical enthusiastic fashion. Yeah, got great. Found a supplier and just bought like a palette of it so he didn't just get the one flavor that everyone was like, oh, that sounds kind of nice. He got all the flavors. So we've got all this wacky shit left over. Yes, poorly. I don't wanna do food waste, so I'm determined we. It is a cream soda. Oh, that makes it, it sound better than milk. You were like milk with melon. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah. My, my Korean isn't exactly up to scratch, but I have to just go. It says soft drink, Milky melon is what it says. So there you go. That's what we're having. M yum, yum, yum. I am so excited about this story today. Hi, Vicki. Hi. Three times a charm. We did it. Yes. How are you? I am, I'm well, thank you. I think I'm a little too excited about today's, about today, uh, episode. I'm, yeah. I'm jumping the gun. That's brilliant. Well welcome everyone to, she Changed History, lovely. Kara is pumped to give us, a story today. So take it away. Karara. Just let's hit the ground running. Let's go. Alright, let's go. So today we will be talking about Mary two Acts early and our little intro is as follows. Imagine living in a time and place where marrying from outside of your culture meant expulsion from home and from the company of the people you had always known. Now, imagine if this happened not because of the beliefs of your own society, but because of lo laws foisted onto you by people who had taken control of your land. This was the reality faced by indigenous women in Canada who married non-indigenous men. After the Indian Act of 1876 was made law by the Canadian government, the system of laws overturned centuries of culture around inheritance and tribal memberships being handed down within families along matrilineal lines, and one woman affected by these laws. Was married to X early and today we're going to find out what happened to her and how her response changed the world for so many others. You, you know what? My only Canadian history is Anna Green Gables. That is it. Oh. I mean, I don't have anything else. That's a pretty great. Not, not hugely useful in, oh, this specific, but it's, it's just so lush. I mean, yeah. It's little lush. Love it. Did you watch the Netflix? I didn't. Oh. Watch the Netflix. It's beautiful. Oh. Oh, okay. I think it's, oh, that'll be. It was really little cozy and they canceled it. And I was gutted. Yeah. That, no, that was one of my pandemic watches was that I'm sure it exactly. The pandemic. So, um, maybe she's just too wholesome for our times. Maybe that's why they canceled it. That's true. Alright, so sources for today are not Anne of Green Gables, sadly. Damnit They are. Yeah. The Canadian encyclopedia. A website called Canadian History, a, which is kind of a Canadian joke if we have any s um, a blog by Clarissa Peterson called Badass Women. Mm-hmm. A blog called Feminism is for everybody. Uh, the website of Elections Canada. Oh, and a special thank you for the pronunciation of Iroquois words, which comes from a video which was made public by the indigenous student ambassadors at Champlain College St. Lambert. Um, anything I get right is thanks to them. Anything I get wrong is all me, so I will give it same. Okay. So we begin, Mary to Acts early, is born in 1911 on the Gaga Reserve on Montreal South Shore. Uh, she was a Ghana GAA woman. And these are the people that outside of North America or even within it we might know as Mohawk. So, um. Like a lot of the women that we talk about, uh, her early life was sort of a mixture. She had this deep. Family connection, deep sense of community. And she also faced sadness. So when she was very young, she would help her mother to care for sick people in their community. Um, she learned a lot of practical skills at her mother's side. She. Learned her values about being of service, and she went along with her mom to work with people who were really quite sick until her mother herself, uh, tragically died of Spanish flu, which you probably will know, claimed so many lives around the world after World War I. Crazy, isn't it? We were never taught about Spanish flu at school. It was only, um, I found that out on my own kind of just interest, but it's, it was in it. Too many, too many vibes to the Spanish flu. Extraordinary. And I only know about it because of the novel Life After Life they mentioned it. Okay. And I was like, wait, wait, what was, oh, so yeah. Massive, massive, um, pandemic. And Mary's mother was one of the people who unfortunately died. Mary was only 10 years old at the time, so that's very, very sad. And you know, for the rest of her childhood, she lived on the reserve and was surrounded by that community and they kind of were her family and that was the state until she was 18, and then necessity took her to Brooklyn in America. Um. There were jobs to be had in healthcare because a community of Mohawk people was establishing itself in New York City, filling roles in the building trade as the city grew. So all these skyscrapers going up, massive community influx of workers. Mary goes along to to work in care, got, um, yeah, kind of use the skills she'd learned from her mother. it's like, um, here today, isn't it? I think it's not, to my mind, it's not a low skill job at all. It's probably not hard. No. It's the highest of skills really, to It is, good on her. Intense and special work. And it takes a special kind of person, I think, to do it. And Yes. Yeah. So you know the kind of person we're dealing with here. I hate you. Sensible, serious, hardworking, skilled. That's who we've got. And obviously it's not just us who thinks so because she meets this fella, uh, Edward Early, who's an Irish American, and they fall in love. Oh. And they get married. It's gorgeous. They have two children and it's all, everything's lovely here. Right. Okay. My. Nice and Roy living their lives working hard, getting on with it, and we are going to put them down there in that happy time for a moment, and we're gonna talk. A little bit about the history of how indigenous people like Mary and her mother aim to be living on reserves in Canada in the first place. So a little background, in the 18 hundreds, European settlers were increasingly coming into what is now Canada. And of course they wanted land to farm. They wanted to build towns. But the land was not empty. The indigenous people had lived there since antiquity. They had their own cultures, their own systems of government. the incoming new Canadian government sort of took a. Belief from the book of, British colonialism and took the view those British, ugh. Yes. Well, we get all fingers in everything. We're the most annoying. It is, uh, one of the areas in which Britain were, was, a world leader. And, so in this case. The Canadians kind of took the view, as the British often did, that the indigenous people and their beliefs were obstacles to progress like, you know, coming in and viewing it as. Hours for the taking. So, ugh, in the late 18 hundreds and the early 19 hundreds, that government introduced a series of treaties, which, was called the numbered treaties, and they were set up as kind of partnerships. So the indigenous leaders agreed to share the lands of Canada with the settlers in exchange for things like education, healthcare tools. And crucially, they were promised, dedicated, areas of land to, to live on. in Canada. Those are known even now as reserves. And if you studied American history or if you watched Yellowstone, you will know in America those lands are generally known as reservations. So I did think that when you said reserve earlier in my mind, yeah. My mind would take, goes Yellowstone again. Um, yeah. So is this, assuming that the indigenous people didn't have education, didn't have healthcare. Well, so that's a really good question and it kind of leads on to the other side of this mm-hmm. Story, which is the game is raked. So the indigenous leaders. They kind of signed these treaties in good faith. They thought that they, what they were getting for their people was peace and survival. And I, I am not in a position to say whether the leaders uniformly believed that the European education and healthcare and so on was superior to what they had already been cracking on with for millennia. my instinct is probably not, but they sort of saw. Which way the wind was blowing and thought, look, these people are here. We have to find a way to make this work. Let's be pragmatic. What can we do to safeguard our own future as much as possible? And if we get some extra stuff out of it, so much, the better. You know? So they were, they were trying to be good leaders. but unfortunately. The government didn't always honor its promises. And what, yeah, that's a shock. I know governments, governments are like that sometimes, aren't they? Uh, so in, in specific, the reserve, the lands that were set aside for the, the reserve were often. Not particularly desirable, smaller than Anticip. Oh, so they gave them the happy Yeah. Just like, oh yeah, you guys can now have that bit at the back, which is less fertile Christie layer. Some of the research suggests that the treaties were sometimes signed under duress or there was a bit of like bait and switch where one thing would be promised and something else would actually take place. At the same time, the government is using some of these policies like the education offer to sort of europeanized the indigenous population and that was one I, I would say of the examples of how it was intended to function for Okay. And furthermore, they were controlling the indigenous community by limiting their abilities to hunt, fish, travel, do all the things that were sort of part of their. Indigenous culture and it also just survival activities. Being able to sort of feed yourself in the way you always have done. Changes if you are restricted to only working a certain parcel of land. it's death by a thousand cuts, isn't it? It's the classic of, I'll just tweet this a little bit. I'll just cut that corner off for you there, and I'll just Yeah. And then suddenly you wake up one morning and your whole, the gut of your culture has just been ripped from underneath you. And before you know. You're in the snare because you're kind of thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, I'm making, I'm not thrilled about this, but I have to be pragmatic and times are changing and I need to get with it and get as much out of it as I can. And so I'm going to go along with this in on the understanding that it's the, the least worst, right? but an actual fact. It was a massive disruption, a massive trauma, and it laid the groundwork for a lot of the challenges that indigenous communities still face now of, of course. I've got a little aside here. Um, that in the, the Iroquois language, Montreal, the major city where Mary early lived in Quebec mm-hmm. Was, known in Iroquois as. Jo Jaga, which translates to where our group broke apart, and I thought, oh, that is heartrending. But it kind of, I don't know, maybe that name predates everything I've just said, but it feels so on the nose for what we're talking about that yeah, that it's the breaking open of a way of life and sort of for all of that, the counterpoint is, as I say. The leaders are trying to be savvy and get what they can out of the situation. They see it perhaps as the least worst option. They also see it as one last place where the first peoples have got their own, um, community, their own rules. It's a consolidated place where they have rights to property that is enshrined in law. Okay. However, in all of these political machinations, it's women who pay the price. We are thinking about it on such a big scale, aren't we? We're thinking about it in a very binary that all that and yeah, actually underneath that, how many layers of, it's what we were talking about last week at Bell Hooks, isn't it? It's like every layer means something different until you get to either the bottom of the pile or is in bell hooks, hooks case, the top of the pile.'cause she twisted it into an advantage, you know? So, yes. I am so glad you mentioned that. That is exactly, exactly the way to think about it, because you're. When you get down to the granularity of individual lives, that's where you see that's the pointy end of these kind of big, sweeping policies and okay, that's where we're going to rejoin Mary early because she, for most of her life, she was just cracking on just a normal working, married mom, doing her thing, quiet and unassuming. And just practicing. She was a Catholic, she just was living her life. Mm-hmm. But in the 1960s, Mary saw a tragedy that she couldn't ignore, and her kind of quiet and hardworking nature found a new focus. sorry, how have we jumped from 18 hundreds? Oh.'cause she was born When was she born? Mary was born in 1911. So the laws, the laws that underpinned this were ratified in, I wanna say it was 18. Yeah, 1876. Yeah. 1876. And now it is. She was born in 1911. She's, she got on with it, living her life. We are now zooming all the way up. This is my grandmother's generation. Basically, we're zooming all the way up into. Of the last century. Um, so. Dramatic over there. Ah, you know I was born I something the last century. Yeah, that's what people are saying now. Anything like, um, what's considered old? Oh, well if you were born in the, in the 19 hundreds. Okay, mate. Alright, so here we are in the 19 hundreds, right in the middle, 1960, um, 1966, to be specific. Okay. But yes, we have a quote here. Um, quite in 19 66, 1 of Mary's friends, Florence, died of a heart attack in her arms. Mary believed that being denied property rights on gge reserved that had been a contributing factor In Florence's death, Mary began a series of writing and speaking campaigns to raise awareness of the detrimental impact that the Indian Act had on indigenous women who lost their status. What happened to Florence and to all native women who married non-indigenous men at the time, was that under the rules of the Indian Act, they were deemed those women were deemed no longer to be members of their indigenous community. And that's what is known as losing status. As part of that loss of status, they were stripped of every right, that status entailed, including the right to live on the reservation. So those status laws enshrined in the Indian Act affected thousands of women early, would already have been aware that this was happening. And then it happened to her friend and she saw in, in real terms, the human cost of those laws, Having seen it happen to Florence and to other women in her community marry herself, she had already begun trying to change things and then in 1969, her own husband died. Right. Got it. And now suddenly she herself was subject to those same laws. So her grandmother's home on the reserve, which she'd grown up in, inherited, moved back to, she no longer owned under the Indian Act. Wow. Just. No home for you, and this is so much to happen in just three years as well, like Right. You're your best friend in 66, losing your husband in 69. Yeah. So you're bereaved and you're homeless and you no longer have access to the community. Yeah. They did. Quite a bit of quick thinking. They realized that because Mary's daughter had married an indigenous man, they could transfer the house into her name, which saved the family from losing the house entirely. Mm-hmm. However, she was lucky. To be in that position. not everyone had that. Yeah. Yeah. It was a, you know, the best option she had and she was fortunate to have had it. However, she was still stripped of her right to vote on reserve matters, which would impact the future of the community that she loved. She had her daughter not married, an indigenous man. Her grandchildren, any descendants of her daughters would've lost their rights to their ancestry property community, the right to live and work on the land. So for Mary's son, for example, he was shit out of luck and any children he had, you are no longer part of the community in a legal sense. Right? Again, was not an accidental side effect. That was the intended effect. That taking people out of the community and out of the reserve system and their descendants out of the community and out of the reserve system by kind of snaring the women out like this, if they marry right outside. Allowed the government to winnow away at the indigenous population and the indigenous culture because it was not going to be passed on anymore By that branch of, of, yeah. So it's like through the back door almost. It's not a direct hit, is it? But I mean, it's, it's so nasty for the people who experienced it and I know, um, from the reading that early in particular. It really hit her hard that she realized she was not going to be allowed to be buried on her family's cemetery plot because the Catholic cemetery that her family used was it on the reservation and it's, but every part of her life and even her death every from, from, from that moment forward. And you know, she herself said, when I married I was just in love and I just married this man. And yeah. So you don't think, what am I trading off? You think, well, that's ridiculous. Nobody's gonna hold that. You know? Yeah. Standard for, that's that, just can't. And yet, here we are. And also she probably felt pressured to marry, like even if she did understand that. You know, unmarried women, I imagine didn't get a very good reputation in the sixties. Like, no, you know, there was that societal pressure to at least be married on top of everything else, wasn't there? Yeah. And she was a Catholic woman, so Yeah. You know, she, she's very important. Probably, probably prioritized having that, that kind of traditional family. But then with her historical cultural beliefs and the way that people would hand down legacy along female lines. What a slap in the face to be told, oh no, we're changing that you can't have things because you married out. It's just as ridiculous as recently as the sixties as well. Like this is why as recently as the sixties. Living memory and so being strict to those rights. Yeah. So you're, you're quite right too that she's facing a lot in her personal life. She's lost her dear friend. She's lost her spouse, she's lost her home, and she's having to go through legal challenges around that attempt by the government to personally control her, get her off the reservation, but she still sees it as. A way to try to engage with and change the entire system. Oh, she doesn't. She's young system. She does system. Yes she does. Because she is Mary God, two x early and she is not taking the shit laying down. I love, I love it. So she doubles down, she gets busy, she's writing letters, she's giving speeches, she's raising awareness, she's making connections. She reaches out. To other first people's groups in Canada because she knows that other women are out there being affected by this, working against this organizing to overturn the laws. So Mary Forms alliances and in 1974, she and some of the other women, founded the Quebec Native Women's Association. So like a focus group, an activist group, to really get involved with these matters. And in 1975, she and 60 other women from the community went to the International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City. Yeah. And oh, you're, I think you're gonna like this. I've got another poetry. I wanna be there, Rick. It's so cool, isn't it? There's an excellent quote about something that I think really highlights her, her personality, and her spark. Would you read that quote? Yeah. Quote, while at the conference, two Ax Hurley received a phone call informing her that the gge Band council had served the women in attendance at the conference. Eviction notices a brilliant strategist to Ax Hurley use this event to highlight the racist and gender discrimination she and other women faced in Canada. In light of the negative coverage garnered by this move, the band council withdrew their original eviction orders. So, so this happened at the conference? Yeah. She's like a judo master. They attack her, she uses their attack and throws them on the ground and amazing, the media savvy of it. It's amazing to me that she knew instead of getting overwhelmed and just shutting down, oh God, I have to deal with this. I have to go home. Which is what they. Clearly wanted. She thought, alright then let's dance. Um, I love it. There's, you know, even if you would've rehearsed a speech a thousand times, you'd still be nervous, right. Getting up there and then thrown a curve ball. Yeah. Just the eyes of the world upon you. Exactly. And it is, it is like the Eminem, you only get one shot, like Yeah, she's. She's going for it. Absolutely. Stepping up and taking that moment and it, it just exemplifies the kind of activist that she was. She tirelessly for 20 years and more noticed a growing sense of public unease around this injustice and kept on asking the government to repeal the parts of the Indian Act that stripped status from women who married non-ST status men. And she's just at this time gaining the momentum she needs to make that final push. And what's super helpful is that she wasn't. Reluctant to engage with politics when she had to. So, right. She's not a politician and she's not trained for this, but she knew something was wrong and someone had to do something about it. So her approach of just being commonsensical and steady and relentless gained her support. There's this story about in 1983, this big constitutional conference, whatever that may be, I'm picturing like Prime Minister's question time. I don't know. Okay. But Sheets thought I want to speak about these issues. I would like to have a time slot. And yeah, she was, she was refused. They said, no, no, no. Classic. Classic. However, the premier of Quebec, may, we remember his name, Rene Leki. Leki Leki. Beautiful. Yielded his time slot to Mary. He gave her his own time slot. Yes, he did. Which I just love. So allies, this is what the world needs. And she was able then to speak her mind. On the public record. And would you read a quote from that speech? Oh my gosh, yes. Quote, please search your hearts and minds. Follow the dictates of your conscience. Set my sisters free. Oh, wonder how long that slot was as well.'cause I imagine it's only like three minutes, it would've been, it would've been moments. You're right. So she needed to hit that bullseye. It me and not Miss and I, I don't know. I mean, this is just my personal reflection here in that, but what is extraordinary to me is that after everything she's seen she's still. Sees the decency and the potential for cooperation. Yeah. she's doing it through the right channels. Right. She's doing it through incredibly generous channels. Yeah. She's not saying, I'm squaring up to you. She's saying your heart has it in it to see that this is wrong. Your conscience knows this is wrong. And you know what? It only blueman worked because in 1985. After all of her many, many, many decades that work paid off. And the bill that she had been championing, which was called Bill C 31, received royal Ascent. Okay. Through that bill, the Indian Act was amended to restore status rights to women and children who had had their status removed under the past law. And it also set as law that in future women would not be stripped of status based on who they married. Great. So it was backdated and it was going forward. Yeah, exactly. And that meant that on the day that it passed Bill C 31 restored status to 16,000 women. 46,000 descendants. So who knows how many millions of people will have benefited between 1985 and now, and Mary's own reserve, for example, was able to restore access to over 2000 women and their descendants. That was, that was just her reserve. She herself was one of them. And in fact, she was the first person who status was, reinstated by the Minister for Indian Affairs as was. And could you read the words he said? And then her response, which is. I could find no greater at tribute to your long years of work than to let history record that you are the first person to have their rights restored under the new legislation. Mary had this to same reply. Now I'll have legal rights again. After all these years, I'll legally be entitled to live on the reserve to own property, die, and be buried with my own people. She's very gracious. And a gentle soul. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think so. MTAE had lots of public re recognition alongside with the restoration of the rights that should have been hers in the first place. Shall I whiz you through a list of her, big gongs that she see? Yes, let's go. So in 1979, she was given the Governor General's Persons Case award in 19 Strong 81. Yeah, sounds good. 1981. She got an honorary doctorate of law from York University in Canada. Doctorate. Excellent. Yeah. In 1985, she was inducted as an officer of the Order of Quebec. In 1990, she, along with two other First Nations activist women, received the Robert S Livic Award from McGill University to recognize their contributions to the defense of the rule of law and the protection of the individual against arbitrary power. I love that they, I don't mean the heavy words. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 19 96, 2 acts early was given the Inspire Award, which is, a National Aboriginal Achievement Award, and that was specifically to recognize her efforts in making Bill C 31 happen. Okay. And. In addition to all of that, a documentary called I Am Indian again, tells the story of her life and its title was taken from a moving quote from early talking about how it felt to have her identity stolen away, and then reclaimed. And the director, is a woman called Courtney Montour, who herself is a Mohawk from Ghana, ga. Gay, just like Mary. So yeah, she's part of the same community and gorgeous. When Mary two x early, sadly died in 1996, at the grand age of 84. It was thanks to the work that she herself had done and the changes that she herself had brought, that she was able to be buried as she wished in the Catholic cemetery at, the UAA Reserve. So the lasting legacy then of Mary two x Earlys work, work resonated in her own life. But also is the restored, rightful status and rights and properties of so many women and their descendants. And I'm glad you mentioned Bell hooks earlier, because that's the other piece here that her work lives on in the understanding it brought to the wider Canadian feminist movement and Canadians in general. About the kind of specific challenges that being an indigenous woman brought and it's that intersectional thinking that you talked about in that episode. And I think Bell Hooks would really have approved of Mary Early and the fact that. She clearly saw that whilst these challenges were happening to her, they also brought her unique opportunities. We need to put them together at our dinner party. Oh, yes, please. Oh, I'd love, love to see it. So I'm gonna end with a bit of cheese and I can, you know, I can't help myself, but here we go. So the name of the community that Mary grew up within is the Ganaga, which translates roughly to the people of the Flink. And I think Mary early in her persistence and strength and her determination lives up to that name. She's a woman of Flint. Yes, Cara? Absolutely. Yeah. Why was she called two Acts? Is that her name? Like literally two acts Mary? That was, that was her family name. So like my surname is Gardner, her, her, her maiden name. I didn't know if she wielded at someone like, what was that? I'm not really sure how, I don't know enough about Mohawk culture to understand where certain from, but that just shows my lack of understanding of that culture, doesn't it? Well, here we are, babe. The system is functioning as intended. Our educations did not encompass this, So there's a reason we don't know this stuff and that we have to go out and do this research and find out cool shit about amazing people. Oh my gosh, she's so cool. And the picture of her as well. I know it's just her face, but I can totally see her with her handbag on this stage, the vibe, the fashion, and that, iron fist in a velvet glove. Yeah. Like I am so kind and gentle, but do not. Across me. I love that photo of her so much. It's like the nuns of the shreds advert for people who can't see the photo, we know they were badass in the shreds factory and she know Mary is the same. Be more mery, be more merry,

audio2663295054: 34:42

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