Birthday of Harold Cardinal

Harold Cardinal was an influential Cree writer and political organizer who, along with the Indian Chiefs of Alberta, opposed the Canadian government's assimilationist White Paper with the Red Paper (or Citizens Plus). He controversially opposed the 1975 Dene Declaration, since he considered it a white marxist document, and the use of court cases invoking the Bill of Rights to address Indigenous women's struggle against exclusion under the Indian Act, since he thought it would open the door to the privatization of reserve property, and its loss to settlers. Instead he advocated a longer process of amending the Indian Act, pending its abolition and replacement with a new framework centering Treaty rights.