Missing 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

From the late 1800’s to 1996 more than 100,000 aboriginal children attended residential schools in Canada. At a majority of these government operated schools there were reports of emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual abuse along with punishment for cultural activities. Residential schools were implemented to liberate aboriginal people from their savage ways in order for them to survive in the modernizing society.1 To a majority of the current Canadian population, impacts of residential schooling are a part of a distant past, disassociated from today’s events, this misconception. Long lasting impacts as a result of residential schooling include minimal education leading to poverty, stigmatization by the non-aboriginal public, abuses of aboriginal rights in areas such as land and the environment and the growing loss of Indigenous cultures in younger generations. With the continuing misconception of the history and lasting impact of residential schools conflict between Indigenous people and the Canadian Government has not ceased, but increased.

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.

Over the past decades, Aboriginal people (the original people or indigenous occupants of a particular country), have been oppressed by the Canadian society and continue to live under racism resulting in gender/ class oppression. The history of Colonialism, and Capitalism has played a significant role in the construction and impact of how Aborignal people are treated and viewed presently in the Canadian society. The struggles, injustices, prejudice, and discrimination that have plagued Aboriginal peoples for more than three centuries are still grim realities today. The failures of Canada's racist policies toward Aboriginal peoples are reflected in the high levels of unemployment and poor education.

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.

The sociological effects that Aboriginal peoples in Canada face are vast. Residential schools, stripped people of their identity, enforced a cultural genocide, abused (both sexually and physically) children and created an unjust line of intergenerational trauma. Kinship ties, for the majority were lost during the residential school period, sometimes leaving entire communities displaced. The Canadian Government fails to recognize the treatment of Aboriginal peoples during the residential school period and there hasn’t been much done to help those who are affected.

Violence against Aboriginal women is rarely understood as a human rights issue. Aboriginal women are often known to be the main victims of racialized, sexualized violence. To the extent issue, violence against women are more frequent, to be described as a criminal concern or a social issue, but it is a human rights issue to be discussed furthermore. Aboriginal women and girls have the right to be safe and free from violence. Woman are being targeted for violence because of their gender or because of their Aboriginal identity. In this essay, I will be discussing the discrimination between these two following readings, “Orientalism” and “Stolen Sisters, Second Class Citizen”.

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.

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.

Residential schools in Canada were present for over 100 years and were created by the government to eliminate the Indigenous culture. These schools successfully separated families while creating huge cultural barriers between children and their Native culture (COHA, 2011). These children were forcibly removed from their families and taken to residential schools because Canadians saw Indigenous peoples as “backwards” or “savage” (COHA, 2011). They also believed that they were inferior to Natives and that these schools would help “civilize” aboriginals by replacing their Native traits with Western values (COHA, 2011).

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.

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.

History has unveiled the early contacts of colonization from the Europeans that set motion to cultural oppression and exclusion of the Aboriginal communities (Kirmayer, Tait, Simpson & Simpson, 2009). The introduction of the residential school system was meant to eliminate the indigenous people’s cultural heritage and way of life, creating a historical trauma. As a result, survivors of the residential school system left the majority of the Aboriginal population without a sense of cultural heritage, lack of self-esteem, and depression (Gone, 2010). Aboriginal culture was suppressed, breaking the connection of traditional knowledge from parent to child (Kirmayer, Tait, Simpson & Simpson, 2009). Trans-generational trauma of the Aboriginal people has left psychologically and physically damage towards their own heritage (Gray & Nye, 2001).

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.