Idle No More Native People Challenge Summary

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.

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.

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.

Imagine a normal day. You wake up, you get ready, you probably see your mom, wife or sister. You say goodbye and head on your way. Once home, you sit down with them and talk about your day. When sad they comfort you, they love, support, care for you. Now imagine you wake up one day and they have disappeared without a trace. Gone. You are heartbroken. This is a sad reality for many Indigenous families, many women are vanishing without a trace. Between 1200-4000 Indigenous women have been missing or murdered in the last 30 years. These women are often targeted and treated as being worthless leading to little support from police and the public. After being immersed into this issue I learned lots, but I was left feeling sad,

The film Highway of Tears brought to light many issues faced by Indigenous persons however, its main focus was the missing and murdered women found along Highway 16 in Northern British Columbia. Majority of the women who are missing as well as those who were murdered are Indigenous women. This film displayed that although there are ways to prevent and possibly end the violence against Aboriginal women, no action was being taken by police or other government agents to do so. It was discussed how this as well as other wrongs done to Indigenous persons and communities, is a result of past and present colonialism.

In her novel, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, Deborah A. Miranda theorizes that the underlying patronage of her father’s violent behavior arises from the original acts of violence carried out by the Spanish Catholic Church during the era of missionization in California. The structure of her novel plays an essential role in the development of her theory, and allows her to further generalize it to encompass the entire human population. “In this beautiful and devastating book, part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir, Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems.” Patching together every individual source to create the story of a culture as a whole, Miranda facilitates the task of conceptualizing how Societal Process Theory could play into the domestic violence she experiences growing up as the daughter of a California Indian.

INM originated when four women — Nina Wilson, Sylvia Mcadam, Jessica Goredon and Sheelah Mclean — organized a work shop focused on how the conservative omnibus bill, Bill C-45, would affect first nations people. This bill proposed changes to various acts and regulations that would directly affect Aboriginal sovereignty. These include; the Indian Act, the Navigable waters protection act, the environmental assessment Act and the Fisheries Act (Graveline, 2013: 293). These proposed changes mobilized aboriginals and non-aboriginals across Canada to come together in solidarity and form the largest movement for indigenous rights in Canada since Oka in 2002. With an excellent campaign strategy involving social media such as Facebook and Twitter, the INM movement has been inspiring youth and women to come together collectively to demand change. Through rallies, protests, round dancing and road blocks, the INM movement has gained national coverage in the news media (not all of which has been sympathetic to the INM cause). In particular, the six week hunger strike of Chief Theresa Spence gained immense news coverage, and put pressure on the Prime Minister to quickly organize meetings with chiefs of first nation tribes (Graveline 2013: 293). While exposure in the news media, is necessary in order to win the

In the article “Domestic violence against indigenous women is everybody’s problem” domestic violence is depicted as a serious social problem that involves “unspeakable acts of violence” that leaves victims experiencing fear and despair (Taylor 2014). More specifically, the social construction of domestic violence will be discussed with an emphasis on Aboriginal women and a typology of intimate partner violence. The social construction of domestic violence has serious implications for victims of domestic abuse because there is a failure to address the processes that perpetuate the violence. Instead, domestic violence is addressed through the illusion of social support. What is evident is that domestic violence is a social problem that requires comprehensive services, particularly for indigenous women, to address the complexity of the interaction between the individual’s social location and the causes that lead to the violence.

In the article Colonialism and First Nations Women in Canada by Winona Stevenson, the author explains the struggle First Nations women had keeping their culture alive. Upon arriving in America the Europeans suffocated the natives with their rationalisation of female subjugation. Reluctant to give up their traditions and honour the native-American women put up a fight, but their efforts would not be strong enough to triumph over the European missionaries. Stevenson chronologically explains their contact with the ‘colonial agencies'.

For decades, when a Native American woman has been assaulted or raped by a man who is non-Indian, she has had little or no recourse. Under long-standing law in Indian country, reservations are sovereign nations with their own police departments and courts in charge of prosecuting crimes on tribal land. But Indian police have lacked the legal authority to arrest non-Indian men who commit acts of domestic violence against native women on reservations, and tribal courts have lacked the authority to prosecute the men.

During the mid 20th century, The government of Canada held a conference to tackle what was then referred to as the growing “eskimo problem”. This constituted the lack of proper health, growing dependency on welfare, and unstable economy among the indigenous people in the northern

‘After the Last River’ depicts the obstacles faced by the Indigenous reserve of Attawapiskat over the course of four years. Linking many of these obstacles to the government-sanctioned construction and operation of a De Beers diamond mine adjacent to the reserve, the filmmaker highlights how Canada continually neglects and exploits its Indigenous population with a neo-colonialist agenda. What makes this film unique is that it addresses an oft-ignored issue in a very comprehensive manner. Indigenous people are very seldom in the public eye and when they are there is a tendency for the media to disparage them and the challenges they face, often ‘otherizing’ Indigenous people and portraying them and their interests in opposition to the rest of urban Canada’s. This film does an excellent job of bridging this fabricated gap by humanizing the residents of the Attawapiskat community: filming their everyday lives with their families, all while trying to improve their communities.

Idle No More is a grassroots movement. Idle No More was sparked by a group of from Saskatoon who started talking online about the passing of Bill C-45 (Talaga, 2012). The Idle No More movement officially started by a group of native and non-native women on November 10, 2012 (Talaga, 2012). Idle No More “is a responsibility – a responsibility to live up to the sacrifices of our ancestors, to the duty we have as guardians of the earth, and to the expectations that our children and grandchildren have of use to protect them” (Palmater, 2015 p. 79). The heart of the frustration of Idle No More for Indigenous people are issues that are decades old (Talaga, 2012). Idle No More is a movement against the unilateral actions by the Harper

This paper is going to examine the social movement of Idle No More. An explanation of how the movement started, its goals, and its progress will be explained. Different sources of media interpreted and portrayed the movement differently; this essay will show how the movement was visualized in a much more positive light from insider and alternative media then that of the corporate media. This essay will examine both the difficulties I would have in participating in Idle No More and the strengths I have that could be used to help with the movement.

Indigenous people have been oppressed since colonization in the 1500’s, which resulted in the Indian Act of 1876 and Residential Schools, that lasted many generations. As a result, this created negative outcomes such as sexual assault and psychological abuse, leading to substance abuse, mental health, and suicide problems. The Canadian government’s, overall goal, was to Westernize Indigenous people in different parts of Canada. Due to this, Aboriginal people feel disconnected, deprived, lost and traumatized. As well as, being stripped out of their identities, with the lasting effects of inter-generational trauma passed to generations, with its present effects on the 21st century. As Frideres (2008) stated, “the new generation of Aboriginal people has grown up without assigned roles or groups that anchor Aboriginality so that identity can no longer be granted.” Many of them feel that in order for true healing to start the identity catastrophe must be settled first. This has brought me to wonder if the creation of social media has helped revive the Indigenous identity (Frideres, 2008). Through social media’s present effects and strength in this current day and age, social media has given marginalized groups a voice to be heard, allowing Indigenous people to use social media towards their advantage. The main question of my research is how does social media affect the Indigenous Identity? More specifically, the paper will focus on the research question, has social