By Jacqueline St. Pierre, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Manitoulin Expositor OTTAWA—In the sterile fluorescence of a Senate committee room, where legislation usually trudges along at a bureaucrat’s pace, history cracked open on November 17, and two women from Manitoulin—one in the gallery, one waiting at home—felt the ground shift beneath them. When senators voted ten to one to amend Bill S-2 and replace the second-generation cut-off with a one-parent rule for First Nations status, Dr. Dawn Lavell Harvard did what any daughter raised in the long shadow of a half-century legal battle would do: she reached for her phone. The moment the amendments passed, she texted her mother, Jeannette Corbiere Lavell—the same woman who, in 1971, dared to take the federal government to court after Canada erased her status…
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