A First Nation is making itself a safe haven from Alberta’s trans youth care ban

This story originally appeared on Them.The Saddle Lake Cree Nation is standing up against the Canadian Province of Alberta’s gender-affirming care ban by positioning itself as a safe haven for transgender people seeking medical care. In December 2024, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and other members of the United Conservative Party passed a law that bars medical providers in the Canadian province from prescribing gender-affirming care like puberty blockers and hormone therapy to trans youth under age 16. Smith previously stated that the ban’s goal is to “preserve [the] fertility” of young people, despite longstanding scientific research that puberty blockers do not render a person infertile, and studies demonstrating repeatedly that gender-affirming care saves lives.The law has sparked ongoing backlash from LGBTQ+ groups and human rights organizations including Amnesty International, Skipping Stone Foundation, and Egale Canada. On September 9 of this year, during a public gathering for the 150-year anniversary of Treaty 6 — an agreement signed between several First Nations and the British Crown in 1876 that legally recognized the sovereignty of Indigenous communities — leaders of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation said that they will not allow the Canadian government to make decisions involving the welfare of their trans and gender-nonconforming youth. Specifically, the Saddle Lake Cree are invoking the “medicine chest clause” in the very same treaty establishing the nation’s right to comprehensive healthcare, which its leaders say includes gender-affirming care. “No longer will our children and families have their rights taken away,” Saddle Lake chief Dale Steinhauer said during the gathering, per CBC News. “When one group's rights are removed, we are all affected.”Instead, Steinhauer announced that the Saddle Lake Cree Nation, located 100 miles northeast of the province’s capital Edmonton, will recruit doctors to provide gender-affirming care