BREAKING🚨🏳️‍🌈 A Cree Nation just declared its land a safe haven for the trans kids Alberta banned from care, using a clause written into a treaty in 1876. On September 9, at the 150th anniversary gathering for Treaty 6 in Fort Pitt, Saskatchewan, Saddle Lake Cree Nation announced it will offer gender-affirming care on its reserve lands in central Alberta. It invoked the treaty's "medicine chest" clause, which First Nations read as the Crown's promise of full health care, and says that places these services outside provincial jurisdiction. Alberta's Bill 26 bars doctors anywhere in the province from prescribing puberty blockers or hormone therapy to anyone under 16. Two companion laws force schools to notify parents about a student's name or pronouns and bar trans girls from female sports. Last November, Danielle Smith's United Conservative government used the notwithstanding clause to shield all three from being struck down in court. "All children, including trans and two-spirit children and their family, will have safety under our treaty," Chief Dale Steinhauer said. She tied the laws to what the medical system already did to her people: "This is what we would have wanted when our children were being experimented on and our women were being sterilized." The Nation's new Health and Well-being Law is written to exempt clinicians who provide that care from being disciplined by their regulatory colleges, and doctors licensed anywhere in Canada are invited to practice on its reserves. Dr. James Makokis, a two-spirit family physician from Saddle Lake who pushed for this, said what he is putting up as collateral: "in my case that could be my medical license." If you appreciate Gay News, it would mean the world if you followed my page. Thank you for being here.