Discrimination Against Women 's Human Rights

Barker, J. (2008). Gender, Sovereignty, Rights: Native Women's Activism against Social Inequality and Violence in Canada. American Quarterly, 60(2), 8. Retrieved fro m http://search.Proquest.com.Ez proxy.library.yorku.ca/docview/61688929?Acc ountid=15182.

The rights and freedoms of Aboriginal people have changed significantly during the 20th century after facing many years of neglect and inequalities. In that time, change in indigenous rights and freedoms was brought about as a result of government policies, political activism and legal changes.

“However, Aboriginal people still struggle for more than words on paper. They require the enactment of visible justice, where aboriginal people have a pride of place and heritage that can be shared as well as respected.” (king, 2010, p.216).

Although the Canadian government has done a great deal to repair the injustices inflicted on the First Nations people of Canada, legislation is no where near where it needs to be to ensure future protection of aboriginal rights in the nation. An examination of the documents that comprise the Canadian Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms reveal that there is very little in the supreme legal documents of the nation that protect aboriginal rights. When compared with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples it is clear that the Canadian Constitution does not acknowledge numerous provisions regarding indigenous people that the UN resolution has included. The most important of these provisions is the

Human rights are the rights of humans, regardless of nationality, gender, race, or religion. We should all have this in common as we are all part of humanity. However, Indigenous people did not always have these rights (Ag.gov.au, 2015). Aside from basic human rights, Indigenous people also have their own rights specific to their culture. Before 1967, Indigenous people had different rights in different states and the Australian federal government did not have any jurisdiction over Aboriginal affairs until Australia’s constitution was amended for this purpose in 1967 (Moadoph.gov.au, 2015). Between 1900 and the present time, there have been significant changes to the rights of Indigenous Australians. The effects of the European Settlement on the Indigenous people of Australia have been devastating. When white people began arriving in Australia, the Aboriginal people believed them to be ghosts of ancestor spirits. However, once they realised the settlers were invading their land, the Aborigines became, understandably, hostile (Slater & Parish, 1999, pp.8-11). In 1788, the total Indigenous population was believed to be between 750,000 and one million. By 1888, the Indigenous population was reduced to around 80,000 Australia wide (Korff, 2014). The three main reasons for this dramatic decline were the introduction of new diseases, violent conflicts with the colonisers, and settlers acquiring Indigenous land (Digital, 2015). In 1848, the Board of National Education stated that it

Indigenous peoples are undeniably some of the toughest and most courageous peoples that have ever walked the Earth. The horrific events that have shaped their past could have easily been enough to wipe out their race as a whole, but instead of allowing it to beat them down they remained resilient and are even pushing back in order to change the way the public views them. Eve Tuck and an author from Pine Ridge have spoken out in hopes to gain a consensus about viewing indigenous peoples in a different light - one that identifies their strength instead of their pain. Before delving into the main context of the paper, I want to first summarize the arguments of Eve Tuck and the author from Pine Ridge in order to assure the rest of the paper is

Joffe, P., Hartley, J., & Preston, J. (2010). Realizing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Triumph, hope, and action. Saskatoon: Purich Pub.

Gabriel, along with other speakers at the march, highlighted Canada’s colonial past for how indigenous people have gotten trapped in this cycle of oppression. Colonization involves the process of “othering”; that is, centering Eurocentric ideas and people at the top of the hierarchy. From the inception of Canada, ingenious women were “othered” and viewed as an extension of the land, to be colonized, dehumanized, and fetishized by the colonizers (Alexander M.J. et all, 39; Native Women’s Association, “Root Cause” 3). This attitude has been passed down for generations and compacted with the lasting effects of the 60s scoop and residential schools have left indigenous communities, especially women, vulnerable by disrupting their values, roles, and traditions (Native Women’s Association, “Root Cause”

Since the beginning of colonization, indigenous people of Canada have been repressed in many ways by the Westerners. Aboriginal women have been having a really hard time, being not only aboriginal, but also women in a male-dominated society where women are seen as secondary and don’t have all the rights and privileges that men have. We will focus here on the legal discrimination against indigenous women in Canada that came with the Indian Act of 1876 and the amendment of 1985, how those two events influenced women. We will first study why indigenous women have been more discriminated than indigenous men, then how the Indian Act reinforced this inequity. Then we will see how the 1985 amendment came to be, a century later and what are the consequences of legal discrimination for indigenous women in Canada. We will conclude that, in a context of discrimination against natives with colonization, the Indian Act made legal injustices in detriment of indigenous women, and that after years of favouritism against them they finally gained a bit of justice through the amendment of 1985.

Aboriginal women of Canada have struggled since 1967 to have their right to identity and their civil and political rights recognized. Part of this battle included changing century-old provisions in the Indian Act which banished women from their families and communities by forcing them to give up their Indian status, Band membership, and, essentially, their identity as Aboriginal women if they married outside their race (Leslie and Macguire 25).(f.1) The Tory government amended the Indian Act in June 1985 through Bill C-31. Aboriginal women 's struggle continues, however, as some Indian Chiefs are trying to overturn the amendments in court, claiming they interfere with their jurisdiction to determine membership in their own communities. It is my position that the civil and political rights of Indian women are fundamental human rights, and that they are Aboriginal rights which are now recognized under section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982.(f.2) These rights have never be extinguished and they continue to exist.

She argues that women face many institutional and societal barriers. In this regard, I will give examples of the institutional and structural barriers such as “The Indian Act” which have significantly affected Indigenous women in Canada in many ways including social, economic and political. While comparing feminists and Indigenous feminists, I think that Native women are different in several ways including social, cultural, historical, political and economic; therefore, Indigenous feminism is a way of practicing the values that they have been taught and inherited from their

If government officials are truly interested in assisting Indigenous communities in dealing with the violence in their communities, they should demonstrate this commitment by developing a national strategy to curb violence against Indigenous women. Special attention should be paid to the way race, gender, and power intersects in the violence faced by Indigenous women. Furthermore, as specifically mentioned by Professor Adam Jones of UBC Okanagan, the structural violence of their continuing poverty, discrimination and dispossession from ancestral territories, as well as the echoing trauma of the residential-school genocide needs to be assessed (Jones). Significantly, to address violence against Indigenous women successfully,

Each individual makes up the society as it is, and various characteristics and beliefs makes up an individual. Although, individual lives together with a variety of personal ideologies, emotions, cultures, and rituals, they all differentiate one person from the other making up one’s own identity. This identity makes up who one is inside and out, their behaviour, actions, and words comes from their own practices and values. However, the profound history of Indigenous people raises question in the present about their identities. Who are they really? Do we as the non-native people judge them from the outside or the inside? Regardless of whether the society or the government were involved in their lives, they faced discrimination in every

This webpage outlines the discussion of the 2014 United Nations (UN) world conference on indigenous peoples. It brings together in succinct detail the outcomes and objectives, promoting the implementation and advancement of Indigenous peoples rights. The Human Rights Commission mentions only the UN which could suggest bias. However, the UN is made up of a multitude of organisations and governing bodies that give the source authority.

Gender discrimination against women is out of control across the world and seeps into many aspects of women 's lives. This discrimination harms women in two ways. First, women directly experience stressful events. The experience of sexism is so common that some research suggests women can experience one to two instances of everyday sexism. But women aren 't only harmed by sexism through the physical stress caused by others. They are harmed to the extent that they internalize and adopt these sexist attitudes that can manifest as poor self-concept. This negative self-concept often obvious on a subconscious level, as women and men will demonstrate automatic negative biases against women (Ferguson, 2013).