Indigenous Women’s Right to Vote

Original title: Photograph of election officers at Hiawatha Council Hall, near Rice Lake, Ontario, during the first federal election in which all adult aboriginal people in Canada could exercise their right to vote (from left to right: Lawrence Salleby, Chief Ralph Loucks, Lucy Musgrove, Eldon Muskrat), October 31, 1960

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“In 1960 …, parliament extended the federal franchise to Canada's aboriginal population.”

Indigenous women who were status Indians acquired the right to vote in provincial and federal elections later than non-Indigenous women. As is noted in the biography of John George DIEFENBAKER, prime minister from 1957 to 1963, it was only in March 1960 that men and women with Indian status became eligible to vote in federal elections without having to renounce their status or certain rights attached to their status. They were first able to exercise their new right from 31 October that year in a by-election held in Ontario.

DIEFENBAKER, JOHN GEORGE