Violence Against Indigenous Women In Canada

Ignorance to other cultures leads to fear and throughout history this fear can lead to violence. An example is seen in any serial killer who escalates in their crimes, such as, Keith Hunter, who started with animals and worked his way up to killing many women until he finally was caught after killing his fiancée. This serial killer is not from Calgary and not learning about other cultures will drive everyone to kill; however, the more understanding we have of others the less fear there is towards other cultures. I believe the problem our country has with missing aboriginal women is in large part due to the marginalization of this culture throughout

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.

The history of Canada is the era of where colonization all began towards aboriginal peoples. Over the past decades, aboriginal peoples have been mistreated and misused by the white-Europeans. They have been oppressed by Canadian society that we are known still by today and continue to live under racism resulting in gender and class oppression. The history of colonialism has been playing a big part in the way of how aboriginal people have been constructed and impacted on how aboriginal people are treated and viewed in Canadian Society. They have been dealing with the struggles, inequality, and discrimination that we have been putting them through for over three centuries, we’ve been also failing them with Canada’s racist policies

No community in Canada comes into conflict with criminal justice system officials more disproportionately than Aboriginals (Dickson-Gilmore, 2011, p.77). Indeed, Aboriginal Canadians are often subject to both overt and unintended discrimination from Canadian law enforcement due in large part to institutionalized reputations as chronic substance abusers who are incapable of reform (Dickson-Gilmore, 2011, p.77-78). One of the more startling contemporary examples of this is the case of Frank Paul; a Mi’kmaq Canadian who was left to die in a Vancouver alley by officers of the Vancouver Police Department after being denied refuge in a police “drunk tank”. Not surprisingly, this event garnered significant controversy and public outcry amongst

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.

I believe that the Missing and Murdered Indigenous situation should be taken more serious. So, one thing i’m most not proud of is all the missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada and how the whole situation is not being taken serious. Many of the cases are just being considered suicides instead of what actually happened, and what actually happened is that the indigenous women are either going missing or being murdered. The number of the women only got up to 4,232 before it was stopped being collected. So there isn’t an actually number on how many indigenous women have gone missing or have been murdered. There is a higher chance of something happening to an Indigenous girl/women. For example, any type of abuse or violence. Many of the

Indigenous women are the most at risk group in Canada. Indigenous people make up four percent of Canadas population however, they are seven times more likely to be murdered (Emmanuelle Walter, 2015 p. 87). This is directly linked to Canada’s dark past. Indigenous people were the only ones occupying Canada until the 1600’s. During this time the Europeans came to Canada to extract resources, but soon after they realized Canada was a beautiful country they would like to live in. This resulted in the colonization of Indigenous people through the fur trade, treaties, Residential School and the Indian Act. Through these acts Europeans were able to modernize, which has contributed to health, education and safety problems for Indigenous women.

Canada is seen as a culture-embracing country, however when it comes to First Nations, Canada falls short. First Nations people face higher rates of unemployment, lower life expectancy, and have fewer high school graduates. These are only three of the many problems that First Nations people face. Although Canada has taken many positive steps toward ending the discrimination to First Nations people, there is and will always be room for improvement.

The issue of the missing and murdered indigenous women is a headache everyone in Canada should worry about. These missing women are like every other woman in Canada and the same rights that keeps the other women safe should also keep the indigenous women safe. Ignoring the issue of the missing women, the government of Canada is going back on its words as it has promised to take care of them. The indigenous people lack support or good homes and they raise their families on the reserves which are not well taken care of nor safe. It is really disturbing because the Canadian government does not see this issue as something serious which indirectly means that the indigenous people are seen as unimportant and they seem to be the Canadian government’s

In fact, this issue is such a big one that five of the eight analyzed news reports dealt with it. The Globe and Mail is currently investigating the large number of missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada so a fair number of their articles are focused on the issue. In Grant’s news report she looks at the effect that human trafficking has had on the murdered and missing women. She reported on the interviews conducted by the Globe on victims of trafficking and the courage and strength that it took for them to share their experiences, even mentioning that a few of them withheld their names out of fear of reprisals (Grant, 2016, para. 8). This report is fully backed up by the research done by Kuokkanen. One of the major themes of her article on the violence experienced by Aboriginal women in Canada and Sami women in Scandinavia was the fear that women deal when considering going public about the violence. Kuokkanen (2014) writes, “There are also obstacles related to the small size of the community such as a lack of privacy, fear of ostracism, intimidation and humiliation through gossip.” (para. 14). Clearly, the fear and stigma surrounding violence against women is an issue that both the media and academia are aware of. This theme was also touched on in “Ontario pledges $100-million to end violence against indigenous women”. This short article

According to information from the U.S Census Bureau there are 5.4 million American Indians/Alaska Natives in the U.S. This represents only 2% of the U.S. total population. Despite the Native population being so small, this demographic of women have the highest rate of sexual violence in the country. Indigenous women are 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual assault than other women in the U.S. ⅓ of women from this population are assaulted/raped in their lifetimes and ⅗ experience domestic violence. Most of this violence comes from non-native men. “According to the US Department of Justice, in at least 86 per cent of the reported cases of rape or sexual assault against American Indian and Alaska Native women, survivors report that the perpetrators are non-Native men.” (Amnesty USA)

Due to the past and present colonialism, these problems have shown how racism, sexism, and discrimination have elevated their risks in their role in societies. They have a higher chance of being assaulted in their group that it has affected their disappearance over the past years. More Aboriginal women have gone missing or murdered within the past decades. According to Statistics Canada, there were 408,410 women who self- identified as Aboriginal in the 1996 Canadian Census. The report confirms that five hundred First Nation women went missing between 1995 and 2005. However, the number of women disappearing are still growing because there is still very little protection around them. The government is still offering very little help to assist

Many Indigenous groups have criticized Canada for failing to respect land agreements with indigenous communities or to consult with them regularly, including with regard to resource extraction plans on traditional lands. The government has yet to pay high attention to severe poverty, housing, clean water, better sewage disposal, healthcare, and education problems in indigenous communities, particularly those in remote and rural areas. You would think the solution for this would be obvious but inadequate access to clean, safe drinking water continues to pose a major public health concern in a number of indigenous communities. Sadly, this is not all. In 2014 alone, 66% of homicide victims in Canada were Aboriginal. The rates of homicide for nonaboriginal woman has dropped since 1990 but the rates of the aboriginal woman killed have increased. In 1990, 14% of aboriginal women were killed and as of 2014, it is up to 21%. And according to CBC, aboriginal men are three times more likely than the aboriginal woman. Canada needs to be willing to establish a public inquiry and action plan for the murdered and missing aboriginal people. There needs to be budging set in place to ensure mining companies and police forces do not abuse human

I believe that the issue of the Murder/Missing Indigenous women is mainly a Canadian issue, because Canada is fully responsible for protecting its citizens. It is highly unfair for one group of people to be targeted; a group making up 4.3% of the Canadian population.In 2015 alone there were over 200 missing Aboriginal women. The number of missing aboriginal females although lower than before still seems very high and the Canadian government seems to be very lackadaisical to act. It is very shocking and sad that this has to be discussed before the government realizes it is its responsibility to find these women. Most Canadians are not paying attention to this and everyone seems to think it is none of their businesses and it is just an aboriginal

Statistic shows that “ 18 percent of racialized men report experiencing discrimination or unfair treatment when dealing with the police or courts; compared to 5.8 percent of non-racialized men in Canada”(Statistic Canada, 2009). Racism is a specific belief that human race unlikeness put them into different groups and also affect their status in society (J.S. Frideres, February 2006). History of racial discrimination foundation in Canada is long, has many different aspects and begins in 18th century. On that time, European began to colonize territory of today’s Canada and build friendly relationships with native population. They help each other to build new, intelligence society; however, even if colonizers collaborated with aboriginal people, First Nation was, for them, no more than “noble savages”. Then, when time of their partnership had gone, Europeans betrayed indigenous people and put them in a special area with ban to go somewhere else. From that time, racism began to progress