Indian Homemakers' Association

INDIAN HOMEMAKERS' ASSOCIATION (IHA), established in 1969, is a provincially organized network of aboriginal women's clubs. The association acts as an advocate for aboriginal women living on and off reserve, provides a variety of social services from its office in VANCOUVER and holds an annual conference that brings together members from IHA clubs across the province. Originally reserve-based, Indian Homemakers clubs evolved from a mid-1930s initiative of the Department of Indian Affairs, which also provided the name. The department undertook to offset the effects of growing poverty on prairie reserves during the Depression by providing resources, such as shared sewing machines, and "homemaking" instruction to women on reserves. Indian Homemakers' Associations were then set up across Canada; from the mid-1960s onward, many of them formed the basis for a new and more political aboriginal women's movement focussing on the rights of aboriginal people and women. IHA of BC was at the forefront of these movements in the 1970s and 1980s. Because of its political stance, the association's charitable status was withdrawn by the federal government in the late 1980s. In the 1990s the association has been less visible provincially and nationally. See also ABORIGINAL RIGHTS; FIRST NATIONS; WOMEN'S MOVEMENT.