The Webpage of the Northern Shuswap Tribal Council

Status Card Info

Marg Casey m.casey@nstq.org

NOTE: All Certificates of Indian Status now include a renewal date

The purpose of issuing Status Cards is to verify that the cardholder is a registered Indian. Status Cards are only useful if the photographs are current. Some registered Indians have been denied services because some service providers have questioned whether their Status Cards are still valid. To remedy this situation, all status cards issued to individuals under the age of 18 will expire three years after being issued, and for those over the age of 18, cards must be renewed every five years.

To obtain a Status Card, two pieces of identification are required. One of these pieces of ID must be primary ID:

Valid Driver's License
Birth Certificate
BC Identification Card

Other ID may include:
Social Insurance Card
Medical Services Card
Baptismal Certificates
Student ID

The above ID cards must be presented when applying for a Status Card. Just knowing your SIN or Driver's License number is not accepted as ID.

For minor card ID, a Birth Certificate, Medical Card, Baptismal or student card may be used.
The identification policy is strictly enforced.

For Canoe Creek, Soda Creek, and Williams Lake Band members, there is no charge to obtain a Status Card. However, for individuals from other Bands, there is a $10 fee to handle the cost of the long distance telephone call necessary to verify registry information, the photo and the processing the card.

There is a new policy for issuing Indian Registry numbers to children. Now, when a new number is generated it is independent of the parent's number; previously childrens' numbers were dependent numbers of their parents (02,03 etc). Now the number a child receives is a permanent number and no new number is issued when the child turns 18. For those children currently with a number ending in 02, 03 etc., this is now their permanent number.