Mary Two-Axe Earley

Earley, a Mohawk activist, spent her life demanding changes to the Indian Act to protect the treaty rights of Indigenous women. Earley both forged allies and faced intense opposition from the leadership of her own community challenging the discriminatory policy that stripped Indigenous women of their status and therefore, many of their rights if they married a non-Indigenous man and this work towrads justice was presented to the Royal Commission of the Status of Women in 1968. The Commission recommendation that followed later became Bill C-21 in 1985 where the Canadian government passed legislation that restored the right to live, own land, or be buried on reserve to thousands of Indigenous Women and their children.

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