gained attention at the international level.  Sandra Lovelace, a Maliseet who had lost her status through a marriage that later ended and wished to return to her reserve, took a complaint against Canada to the United Nations Human Rights Committee.  In its 1981 ruling, the Committee found that, as she was barred from returning to her home community, her rights had been violated under Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights , which guarantees that persons belonging to minorities may enjoy their own culture. (7) These findings and continued pressure from Indian women led to a variety of proposals for reform. (8) The debate also emphasized fractures within the Aboriginal community.  Women's groups, led by the National Committee on Indian Rights for Indian Women and the Native Women's Association of Canada, advocated a quick legislative solution to the problem.  Other Indian groups, in particular the National Indian Brotherhood/Assembly of First Nations (AFN), were hesitant about legislative changes.  While the AFN expressed opposition to the discrimination in the Act, it argued that membership rights should be the prerogative of First Nations and opposed piecemeal changes to the Indian Act in the absence of constitutional reform. (9) This highly divisive conflict was often (and continues to be) posed in terms of women's rights versus Indian rights.  Douglas Sanders, writing in 1984, described the debate over sexual discrimination in the Indian Act as the "single most contentious issue in Canadian Indian policy" at that time. (10) After an interim