Sandra Lovelace Nicholas Politician

Mary Sandra Lovelace Nicholas, CM (born April 15, 1948) is a Wolastoqiyik or Maliseet Canadian senator representing New Brunswick. Sitting as a Liberal, she is the first Aboriginal woman appointed to the Senate. As an activist on behalf of First Nations women and children, she received international recognition in 1979 for bringing her case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. In 1985 she succeeded in having Parliament revoke a discriminatory section of the Indian Act, which had caused women marrying non-Aboriginals to lose status and also deprived their children of status but did not treat men the same who married non-Aboriginal women.