The Lovelace decision came about when Sandra Lovelace, a Maliseet women from the Tobique Reserve in New Brunswick, married an American man and moved away, which effectively stripped her of her Indian status.
When she moved back home to the reserve, Sandra and her children were denied housing, education, and healthcare, all things that are supposed to be provided for status Indians under the Indian Act
Canada (AG) v Lavell was a landmark 5-4 Supreme Court of Canada decision that found Section 12 of the Indian Act did not violate the respondent's right to "equality before the law" under Section 1 of the Canadian Bill of Rights.
This case came about when Jeannette Vivian Corbiere, an Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) woman from the Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve on Manitoulin Island, married a non-Indigenous man from Toronto, Ontario.
On March 31st, 1960, the Deputy Governor General, on behalf of Her Majesty, gave royal assent to An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act, which repealed portions of Section 14(2) of the Act and granted the federal vote to status Indians.
Up until 1960, Indigenous peoples in Canada did not have the right to vote in federal elections, unless they were willing to give up their 'Indian' status through enfranchisement.
Enfranchisement was the process of stripping Indigenous people of their Indian status to gain citizenship rights instead.
Prior to 1960, laws around voting contained several qualifications that voters