Mistreatment Of Aboriginal Canadian 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

The number of aboriginal women in Canadian prisons is on the rise, women of aboriginal descent now make up more than 35 per cent of the female prison population, and Aboriginal women represent about four per cent of the general population. The overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system has long captured attention in Canada. Many factors such as finically poor, instable housing, households with only mothers with children, low education and disordered social network systems are associated with the commission of crime in neighbourhoods. This paper will argue that the over-representation of Aboriginal women can be explained by their underprivileged position in both socioeconomic

“A nation's culture resides in the heart and soul of its people” quote by, Mahatma Gandhi. Before reading the book Red Wolf I had held an understanding that aboriginals were a cruel type of people and they had no feelings but when I started reading Red Wolf it educated me on because the way you think, you act the way you think and that's where the government got residential school. A few weeks later we saw the documentary on “the secret path” and what really popped out to me is that chanie wenjack had died because of residential school.That says that residential schools have a negative impact on the aboriginal society.

The residential school system belittled aboriginal culture and forcibly tried to

Borrows, John. (2013). Aboriginal and Treaty Rights and Violence against Women.. Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 50.3 : 699-736.

Residential Schools: A Case of Aggressive Assimilation The Canadian government assumed that it was accountable for the care and education of Aboriginal children. The Residential School system was developed to ensure the assimilation of every Indigenous child in Canada. These schools were terribly unsafe for children and exhibited horrible living conditions, including abuse, malnutrition and isolation. Conditions in residential schools continue to negatively impact communities, generations later, contributing to violence, alcoholism and surprising statistics seen from Aboriginal communities.

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”.

Based on the historical relevance of suppression of Indigenous people, Option 2 has been the deemed the best option to enhance Indigenous health. This appendix will evaluate each option and why the other two options were not chosen based on current research about Indigenous people. Option 1 Option 1 is allowing the Indigenous people to determine when they are ready to start the transfer of health policy and begin to self-government. Currently, only British Columbia has taken initiative to accept health transfer by establishing the First Nations Health Authority (FNHA). Although this health authority has had many positives such allowing Indigenous people to make decisions related to health, there had been some barriers with communication, division

This is a result of having fused with mainstream culture from their smaller villages there has been a bad transition, which has led to a massive amount of frustration among natives, "strong feeling of disenfranchisement, which manifests itself as violence amongst men and against women." (Robinson, 3). A lack of education for both the indigenous and the other citizens of Canada lead to uneducated assumptions about the aboriginals. There is also an issue with lack of enforcement by Canadian police. The police will often delay responses domestic violence calls or ignore completely, "Most societies prohibit such violence- yet the reality is that too often, it is covered up or tactically condoned."(“The Facts on Violence against Women”, 2). The transition of indigenous people has been poorly planned and executed which has led to frustrations among everyone that has come out in the form of violence. Another big part is that the citizens of Canada see them as foreign and people who should be treated differently along with the indigenous people not getting proper educations that lead to limited opportunities and lower standings in the government and social lives. The last part of why this dilemma persists is that the Canadian police force hasn’t enforced domestic abuse laws, not responded to calls, and let abusers off the hook for severe crimes. Generally, an incomplete transition by the Canadian government and a lack

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).

Today in Canada, the lives of Indigenous women are affected by colonization every day. Since the moment of contact, settlers have used Indigenous women as key objects to oppress and assimilate Indigenous people as a whole. As a female, non-Indigenous university student, I strongly feel that in moving forward trying to stop allowing there to be missing and murdered Indigenous women, we must discuss where these problems originated and why the origin is still relevant today. Indigenous women were oppressed and used by Europeans as a tool to assimilate all Indigenous Peoples and erase Indigenous culture through forcing women into ‘traditional’ western gender roles; which has had lasting impacts on Indigenous women today through being stereotyped and dehumanized in their forcedly assigned gender roles. Firstly, I will discuss how western gender roles were involved in the colonization of Indigenous women and how women were targeted specifically in the attempted erasure of Indigenous Peoples. Next, I will examine the effects of colonization on Indigenous women who were forced to take on not only the same but even further dehumanizing gender roles that European women assumed. Finally, I will argue how the imposition of these gender roles has affected and still affects Indigenous women today.

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,

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.

Residential schools are still having long term and intergenerational effects on Indigenous people culturally, physically and emotionally/mentally. In the 19th century the Canadian government established a program to assimilate Indigenous people into the Canadian society and christianity. During this dark time in Canada's history, many Indigenous children were forced to attend residential boarding schools where they suffered various forms of abuse and neglect. Many children left these schools broken and no longer capable of living a normal life. Although these schools have all been closed down, the trauma caused has been passed down through the generations and is still affecting Indigenous people today.

The government’s introduction of reserve land, in regards to status and non-status Indians and who could reside there drastically affected Aboriginal women with disastrous results. A direct result of colonial policy was the forcible displacement of Aboriginal women off reserve land. By altering the traditional matrilineal descent, kinship systems, and post marital residency patterns, which had been practiced and in place for generations Aboriginal women lost the rights to live on territory which they had strong ties to, and became displaced. (cite)