Mary Two-Axe Earley

It was 5 July 1985, in Toronto.

A seventy-three-year-old woman received a letter. It came from the minister, David Crombie.

The letter gave back what had been taken from her almost fifty years earlier: her Indian status.

Her name was Mary Two-Axe Earley.

Mary was born on 4 October 1911 in Kahnawà:ke, a Kanien'kehá:ka community on the St. Lawrence River, south of Montreal. Her mother was Oneida. She was a teacher, a healer and a nurse.

Part of Mary's childhood was spent at Fort Totten, North Dakota. She was about ten when her mother died of the Spanish flu while caring for sick students. Mary then returned to Kahnawà:ke.

At eighteen, she left to work in Brooklyn, New York.

In 1938, in Kahnawà:ke, she married Edward Earley, an Irish American engineer. They raised two children in Brooklyn. In summer, they came back to Kahnawà:ke.

But one section of the Indian Act said this: a Status woman who married a non-Status man lost her status. She lost her rights, and her place on her people's land. The rule targeted women only.

In 1966, a Kanien'kehá:ka friend died of a heart attack in Mary's arms. She had lost her home because of that law. Mary believed the stress had played a part.

That year, she began writing letters and giving speeches. In 1967, she founded Equal Rights for Indian Women, then co-founded Indian Rights for Indian Women. In 1968, she testified before the Royal Commission on the Status of Women.

In 1969, her husband died. Mary wanted to live in the house she had inherited from her grandparents, in Kahnawà:ke. But without status, she could not own a house on the reserve. She had to transfer it to her daughter.

She called herself "a guest in my own house."

In 1974, she helped found Quebec Native Women.

In 1975, she went to Mexico City for the International Women's Year conference, with some sixty women from Kahnawà:ke. The band council issued notices of eviction from the reserve.

The press took notice. The notices were withdrawn.

In 1979, she received the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case.

In the early 1980s, she asked to speak at a first ministers' conference. She was refused. The Premier of Quebec, René Lévesque, then offered her his own seat.

On 28 June 1985, Bill C-31 received royal assent. Gender discrimination was removed from the law.

One week later, in Toronto, Mary was the first to regain her status. After her, some sixteen thousand First Nations women and forty-six thousand of their descendants were able to regain theirs as well.

She died on 21 August 1996 in Kahnawà:ke, at eighty-four. As she wished, she rests in the Catholic cemetery on the reserve.

In 2025, Canada designated her a national historic person.

Mary Two-Axe Earley was Kanien'kehá:ka, the daughter of an Oneida mother. Her struggle echoes Ubuntu without being the same thing: you do not belong to a people by law, but by the bonds that tie you to your own.

A woman had been a guest in her own house.

She opened the door for thousands of others.