Vuntut Gwitchin citizen takes challenge of residency requirement to Supreme Court of Canada

A Vuntut Gwitchin citizen is taking her precedent-setting legal challenge of her First Nation's residency requirement for councillors to the country's highest court. 

Cindy Dickson filed an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada last month. The court opened a file for her case on Oct. 25. 

It's the latest development in what's become a years-long battle over the self-governing First Nation's requirement for all elected councillors to live on settlement land, and a case that's forced courts to examine the intricacies and interaction of Canadian and Indigenous law.

Dickson had previously tried to run for council but was barred from doing so because she lives in Whitehorse.

"It's very difficult to go up against the government when you feel that your rights are [being] infringed upon ... and it's been hard on me, but I keep moving forward because I really feel strongly that we need some clarification so that our citizens are all treated equally," Dickson told CBC News Oct. 28. 

The First Nation had not filed a response to Dickson's application as of Oct. 29.

Vuntut Gwitchin Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm declined an interview request. However, he previously told reporters following the Yukon Court of Appeal decision that he would bring the issue forward at the First Nation's general assembly and allow citizens to decide what the next steps, if any, should be. 

The Supreme Court of Canada only hears a small number of cases every year; it has yet to decide whether it will hear Dickson's appeal.

Dickson brought a petition to the Yukon Supreme Court in 2019 challenging Vuntut Gwitchin's residency requirement, arguing that it was discriminatory and violated her equality rights as laid out under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

The First Nation, by the time the petition was heard in court, required councillors to move to settlement land within 14 days of being elected. 

The only consistently inhabited place within Vuntut Gwitchin settlement land is Old Crow, a fly-in community of approximately 260 people located roughly 800 kilometres north of Whitehorse.  

Dickson argued there were numerous reasons why Vuntut Gwitchin citizens might choose or be forced to live outside of Old Crow, including the extremely limited housing and access to healthcare available in the community, and that barring them from being on council was discriminatory. 

The First Nation argued among other things that it never agreed to the Charter's applications during the negotiations of its self-government and final agreements, and that the requirement was key in preserving Vuntut Gwitchin culture and tradition. 

A Yukon Supreme Court judge ruled that the Charter applied to the Vuntut Gwitchin government and found that while requiring councillors to move within 14 days was unconstitutional, the requirement for them to live on settlement land could stand.