Historical And Ongoing Construction Of Aboriginal Women

The issue of violence against Aboriginal women is my chosen subtopic that strongly contributes to the history of Aboriginal women’s struggle for rights and identity in Canada. To search relevant newspaper articles for this topic, the databases that were used were Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, as well as Canadian Newsstand Major Dailies. The reason these two databases were chosen was because Canadian Newsstand offered articles from multiple newspapers in the country, therefore providing me with diverse news in different provinces other than Ontario. The article I obtained from Canadian Newsstand was Canada Called on to Stop Violence Against Aboriginal Women from the Leader Post newspaper in Saskatchewan. Lexis Nexus provided one article I

For the past forty years, women have been reported murdered or missing along the highway 16 corridor in Northern British Columbia. The 724- kilometer stretch of road from Prince George to Prince Rupert was given the name “the highway of tears”. In the documentary Highway of Tears by Matt Smiley, the focus of the documentary was to set out and find the root cause of the disappearances and murders and to shed light on the real issue of violence against women and systematic racism in the justice system. The documentary looks at true stories of women who have gone missing or have been murdered along the highway of tears. The documentary focuses on how the highway of tears is the core of a much larger problem of how the indigenous population has been treated since colonialism. (Smiley, 2015) This essay will focus on summarizing the documentary, showing the correlation between the injustice the women and their families have faced and the mainstream and critical theories of victimization, and provide a critical reflection.

In Canada, there has been an on going concern in the matter of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Although many First nations individuals have many barriers placed upon them by society, the government and many other institutions. Indigenous women face many of these barriers very harshly. Aboriginal women are vulnerable to many different forms of abuse because of not only being female but also due to issues such as poverty. First nations citizens have been faced with extreme difficulties throughout every aspect of their lives. These difficulties ultimately include the discrimination they face daily from police services, lack of resources in order to assist their need, etc. There have been many problems which have lead up to the social problem of missing and murdered Indigenous women which include the historical upbringing of our First nations population, and unfortunately through recent factors as well. Theories like the feminist theory assist in the debunking of this problem and give us a brief insight into the situation. To this day, the very serious issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women is a key issue, which has been left with many cases unsolved. This in part clearly demonstrates the lack of efforts put in place by Canadian police in order to combat this problem. A case, which raised serious problems in North America, is the case of Lisa, a young Metis woman who at the age of fifteen disappeared walking home from a shopping trip, to which she was never found.

Since the colonization of Canada First Nations people have been discriminated against and assimilated into the new culture of Canada through policies created by the government. Policies created had the intentions of improving the Aboriginal people’s standard of living and increasing their opportunities. Mainly in the past hundred years in Canadian Society, policies and government implemented actions such as; Residential schools, the Indian Act, and reserve systems have resulted in extinguishing native culture, teachings, and pride. Policies towards the treatment of Aboriginal Canadians has decreased their opportunities and standard of living because of policies specified previously (Residential schools, the Indian Act, and reservation systems).

Throughout history, women have been the victims of oppression in society. In specific, Aboriginal women have suffered through racism, sexism, domestic violence, and over-representation. Through the implementation of the Indian Act, Aboriginal women have been forced to abandon their culture in order to assimilate into Canadian society. The effects of colonization has changed the way Aboriginal women are treated; emotionally and physically, and therefore are the source of oppression today.

The Government of Canada preaches about being a free nation for equality for all yet they continue to ignore the 1200-4000 missing and/or murder Indigenous women in the past 30 years. These women are trapped in a cycle of poverty, abuse and fear and this will only continue to get worse.

Aboriginal women face disproportionate challenges throughout their incarceration which impacts their successful community reintegration. Over the last ten years, inmate assaults involving Aboriginal women have exponentially grown, almost doubling, while use of force incidents have more than tripled. Rates of self-injury involving incarcerated Aboriginal women are seventeen times higher than that of non-Aboriginal women. To agree with Baldry, Carlton, and Cunneen, using Indigenous women as a focus point is beneficial because their "experiences embody and exemplify the intersections between colonial and neocolonial oppression and the multiple sites of gender and disadvantage and inequality that stem from patriarchal domination." Cunneen highlights that Indigenous women actually live in "many prisons"; the prison of misunderstanding; the prison of misogyny; and the prison of disempowerment. Patricia Monture insists that one way women can resist oppression and facilitate social change is by telling their own stories. The Task Force for Federally Sentenced Women developed a report called Creating Choices, which attempted to relocate the power to make choices in womens' lives out of the hands of prison officials and back to the women themselves because, according to the findings of the Task Force, it is only when people are treated with respect and when they are empowered can they take responsibility for their actions and make meaningful decisions. Monture-Okanee reflects on the irony of the final report

How often do we stop to think about the minorities of this country and how they become involved and are treated in the criminal justice system? I surmise; only some of us will concern ourselves with such details. For some like myself; we might work with individuals of the Aboriginal community or have interacted with members of this group whether through school or work. Canada “had an Aboriginal identity in 2011 of 4 % or 1.4 million people” (Kelly-Scott and Smith, 2015). Of this total there is a gross overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in Canada’s Criminal Justice System. This overrepresentation of Aboriginals in the CJS comes as a result of socio economic factors, sentencing reforms, systemic discrimination, education and employment and victimization of Aboriginal women. In partial fulfilment of this course, this paper will address the leading factors which has led to the overrepresentation of this group in the CJS.

Abigail Andrews. Amanda Bartlett. Amber Guiboche. The list of missing and murdered Indigenous women goes on (CBC, 2016). With an independent national inquiry now underway, hope is in the air to expose the social and historical factors to decode the systemic causes of violence that these women experience, and the impacts of institutional practices and polices.

Ever since the first contact settlers had with indigenous or Aboriginal people, there has always been discrimination against these groups since they are seen at the bottom of the social class scale. This was the first time in Canadian history where a certain social group were marginalized; the white people who first settled in Canada looked at indigenous people and didn’t believe that they belonged to there society. However, in todays society we have laws that prevent decriminalization, but that does not resolve the problem since many indigenous people are constantly being murdered, assaulted, raped and treated as second class citizens. The underlying problem that help’s illustrate why there so many missing and murdered indigenous woman is due to the lack of support from the government. Many first nations people live in poverty, also Canadians are not properly informed about the deaths and missing rates of indigenous woman in Canada.

In this research paper, I will be explaining how western colonialism and racism destroyed the reputation of aboriginal peoples in Canada. The reason why I chose this topic because it shows the strong relationship to anthropology and after taking aboriginal studies 30, it also shows that I have a clear understanding about the history of aboriginal peoples in Canada, the struggles they have been through over the past decade and the challenges they still face today in modern day society. I’ll be addressing these issues in a couple of paragraphs on the discrimination and the inequalities of these “minorities” and how they had to assimilate into European culture, leaving their way of life behind them.

“These folks have been victimized twice. Once when their daughters, their sisters, their mothers have gone missing. And then, a second time when the justice system has utterly failed them in the pursuit of the justice they so rightly deserve. There can be no solution until we get to the truth in the heart of the matter, that this is a complex issue. The sources of this violence against Aboriginal women and girls is complex, but it… there’s no possibility of finding those solutions unless we actually have the truth on the table. And the resistance from this government time and time again, to have the courage and the leadership to approach this conversation and find that truth… is yet a third victimization of these families” (Pope C. & Smiley M., 2015)

Women no matter where they are in the world are too often victims of violence. They face higher rates than men both if it is sexual assault, stalking, or severe spousal abuse and usually the results are that women will end up extremely injured or dead. With young women suffering the highest rates of violence, Aboriginal women in particular face an increased risk of violence compared to non-Aboriginal women. Aboriginal women in Canada are three times more likely to experience crucial and severe violence compared to non-Aboriginal women. Most of these women end up missing and murdered. The predicaments of missing and murdered Aboriginal women has brought tremendous pain and suffering in homes, in families and throughout Aboriginal communities. Many sources and factors have contributed to hindering solving this issue. Media and discrimination have long been known to have played a huge role in this tragedy.

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

In April 1995 Pamela George, an Ojibway women, was brutally murdered in Saskatchewan. Her murderers Steven Kummerfield and Alex Ternowetsky, young middle-class white men, were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to merely six and a half years in prison. George’s story is one of the many Indigenous women who have been murdered or missing over the past years. There are over 580 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, close to half are put aside and left unsolved. Only 53% of these cases have lead to charges of homicide (Klement 8). Drastically, statistics indicate that Aboriginals are faced with more hardships throughout their life compared to the average Canadian. Indigenous groups, particularly women, suffer from a lower rate of education, higher suicide rates and an array of health risks. This paper will examine the role settler colonization history has played in perpetuating conditions for violence to indigenous women, many of which are still experienced today. This will be accomplished by first assessing the history of settler colonization and its negative repercussions. Secondly, it will use Sherene Razak’s concept of “spatial segregation,” to illustrate how state institutions have facilitated violence through space, race and the law. Lastly, this paper will use evidence from the film “Finding Dawn” to further demonstrate how violence towards indigenous women is institutionally produced.