Course:CSIS200/2024/Representations of Canadian Colonialism: Gendered & Sexual Oppression

About Author

Olivia grew up as an urban Michif person on treatied Tsawwassen territory and is currently studying Critical Indigenous Studies at UBC, she’s a Michif jigger, and beader. Her family comes from the Michif community of St. Boniface in Treaty 1 Territory in Winnipeg Manitoba. She takes a lot of interest in decolonial/traditional gender variations and roles within Indigenous communities and finds it empowering in thinking about liberation, understanding that through her community there is vast knowledge and perspectives that will assist in these struggles. Olivia remembers being a teen and visiting Montreal, Quebec and being disturbed by the representations of Indigenous peoples, more specifically Indigenous women that were put on display in front of a government building, hence the integration into the statues. She thought through these images, it would be a good starting point to dissect the settler-states disposal of Indigenous women.

About the Image

When looking up the history and information about the statues created to sit apart of the Quebec Parliament building, information about the artist, architecture, and the “heroes” commemorated in the display is what came up. When looking from the entry point, you can see that the individuals on the first tear are two priests, the two individuals on the second tear are colonial generals/colonizers, who assisted and headed, along with the church, in “settling” and colonizing much of Eastern Canada. Then, at the very bottom of this ordeal, not even placed on a tear on the building, but on ground level, are the “Indians”. When researching the building, there was much information about the white males commemorated in the structure, but no defining feature of who the Indigenous people were, only that they were “the Indigenous people who USED to be in Quebec”. It is clear through this display the infantilization and helpless figures that are displayed as the Indigenous peoples in Quebec area, and the narrative of domination/extinction of Indigenous peoples in Canada. But, what struck me the most is the way Indigenous women are displayed as half naked and physically and visually placed at the lowest point on the podium, even under Indigenous men crouching at the bottom of everyone. Portrayed as helpless and less than. The merging of church and state, displayed in these images, historically have and continue to try and exterminate Indigenous women's power, positions, and lives.

Moreover, even through historical and on going processes of settler-colonialism that has taken place in all of Canada, and specifically Quebec in this case, Indigenous people continue to resist and exist. In Quebec today, there are ten First Nations groups including the Abenaki, Algonquin, Attikamekw, Cree, Huron-Wendat, Mohawk, Malecites, Innus, Mi'qmaq, and Naskapi.

Introduction

The statue that is erected in front of the Quebec Parliament building serves as many indications of Canadian society and history. The statues are standing very publicly in front of a government building that represents Canadian law, society, and values, symbolically and physically showing the way that the Canadian state portrays and understands Indigenous women. The Quebec Parliament building statues put the Canadian states history and present of the oppression of Indigenous women’s gender and sexuality on full display. Through this image, ultimately we can explore how Canadian created stereotypes and views of Indigenous women are deeply ingrained in the systems and histories of Canada and directly relate to the current realities facing Indigenous women today - MMIWG2S. Canadian law, policy, and history have disenfranchised Indigenous women's access to land and culture. Such histories have severed Indigenous women from their Indigenighty through encroachment on their sexual and reproductive rights and representations and disempowered Indigenous women’s sexual and bodily autonomy.

Anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler has written that “no topic [has] appeared more frequently in archives of colonialism than that of sexuality. Why were discussions of the intimate so prominent within colonial archives? And how, exactly, did sex matter to the growth and consolidation of imperial regimes? These questions have energized scholars working across multiple fields to uncover how colonial authorities discussed and regulated sex, spurring a now voluminous body of scholarship” (Schields, 2022, pg.1). Through this statue, we can explore how the representations of Indigenous women’s sexualities and bodies as well as the violence perpetrated on Indigenous women serve the creation and expansion of the nation state of Canada. Over the past couple decades, “intellectual production ha[s] driven home the point that intimacy was a site of regulation once as important as and inseparable from those more traditional domains of power: the economy, high politics, and the law” (Schields, 2022, pg. 2).

The Indian Act and Gender Discrimination

Historically, in most Indigenous communities in so called Canada, Indigenous Nations were governed and centred around the matriarchal system. Women and 2SQ held high positions in society that were important, respected, and essential to the well being and organizations of communities. When the process of settling “Canada” took place, Indigenous women were specifically targeted in these processes because of how crucial they were to social, political, and cultural functionality. Indigenous women and 2SQ bodies “represented the lived alternative to heteronormative constructions of gender, political systems, and rules of descent. They are political systems that refuse to replicate capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and whiteness. They are the embodied representation in the eyes of the colonizers of land, reproduction, Indigenous governance, and political systems. They reproduce and amplify Indigeneighty, and so it is these bodies that must be eradicated—disappeared and erased into Canadian society, outright murdered, or damaged to the point where we can no longer reproduce Indigeneighty” (Simpson, 2017, pg. 41). This understanding of the view of Indigenous women through the colonizer's eyes brings much light to the portrayal of the Indigenous women in front of the Quebec parliament building as a very intentional display to disempower Indigenous women.

Through Canadian colonial processes during the late 1800’s, when treaties were being signed, only Indigenous men from their respective Nations were allowed to be present in this process and to sign onto treaties. Further, through treaty and status, if an individual was a mixed (Indigenous parent and non-Indigenous parent, which the majority of Indigenous people where at this time and still are) your father would have to be the Indigenous parent in order to gain rights/recognized as a status Indian. If an Indigenous woman chose to marry and have children with a non-status or non-Indigenous man, they were stripped of their treaty rights and were legally “white”, even though they gained none of the rights white settlers had. This forced many Indigenous women into urban spaces and separated them from their communities and culture. The intentional targeting of Indigenous women was the first step in the colonial project of assimilating and erasing Indigenous culture and kinship. Only in the past decade has there been some form of equity and reenfranchisement of Indigenous women and their families who lost status and community citizenship.

As Nishnaabeg scholar, Leanne Simpson writes, women and 2SQ people have been specifically targeted through colonization as “a great deal of the colonizer's energy has gone into breaking the intimate connection of [Indigenous] bodies (and minds and spirits) to each other and to the practices and associated knowledges that connect us to land, because this is the base of our power” (Simpson, 2017, pg.41). More than any other legislation in Canada, “the Indian Act has been explicitly gendered. Over the course of the act’s history, [it] has had a profound effect on Indigenous communities, it has disrupted familial relationships, [and] it has removed Indigenous women from their homes and barred them from active roles in governing.” (127, Kelm & Smith).

Moreover, the gendered implications of the Indian Act have had and continue to have long lasting effects on Indigenous women’s lives. The effects of the Indian Act “have tended to produce and codify negative stereotypes of Indigenous women. It has made them vulnerable to violence both within and outside their communities. It does not take much imagination to envision how the Indian Act has contributed to the conditions in which over 1,500 Indigenous women have been murdered or have gone missing in Canada” (127, Kelm & Smith). Through forcing Indigenous women away from their communities and land base and into urban spaces, through environmental extraction and man camps, through the violations of Indigenous women’s bodies, through unsafe sex work conditions, and through the intentional targeting of Indigenous women's Indigeneighty and bodily autonomy, the MMIWG2S epidemic continues to manifest into current day Canada. Through systems of settler-colonization and capitalism, Indigenous “land and bodies are commodified as capital and are naturalized as objects for exploitation. This has always been extremely clear to Indigenous women and 2SQ people, and it’s why sexual and gender violence has to be theorized and analyzed as vital, not supplemental, to discussions of colonial dispossession.” (Simpson, 2017, pg.14).

The Making of the Canadian Narratives of Indigenous Women

Another clear display in the Quebec Parliament statues is the supposed moral superiority that the male priests and colonials are positioned to have. The way they are placed steps above the Indigenous people, dressed in their European wear, coming to these lands to “civilize the Indians” from their “savage ways” with European law, society, and religion. It is no coincidence that this is the chosen art to be put in front of one of the first Parliament buildings in Canada. Through the colonials' eyes, they must justify their violence as “violence without justification is indefensible. And so, just as former Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Bernard Valcourt blames [Indigenous people] for the murder and disappearance of close to two thousand Indigenous women and girls, those in power during the days of aggressive settlement created an image of Indigenous women that justified their treatment as chattel.” (Anderson, Campbell, Belcourt, Scholars, 2018, pg. 92). To uplift and continue the processes of dispositions and displacement through the settlers desire for land a profit, Indigenous women have been widely defined by sexualized stereotypes that have “been conveyed with a terrible efficiency by [colonizers] to their subsequent descendants, who, when pressed, cannot say why they believed the things they believed about Indigenous women. Through the everyday commentary of everyday citizens over the course of our modern history, this view of Indigenous women has become entrenched in the collective subconscious of Canada.” (Anderson, Campbell, Belcourt, Scholars, 2018, pg. 92).

Moreover, as the Quebec Parliament Statues attempts to promote priests and colonials as morally above and the face of just and righteousness, they are the perpetrators of the violence that has manifested itself into Indigenous women’s lives past and present. During the settling of Canada, horrifying brutality was routinely perpetrated against Indigenous women by officers of the Crown and condoned by those powers during the competition between Britain and Canada during the fur trade. To overcome aversion from Indigenous peoples to the fur trade in the 1790’s women were regularly taken from their families “to ensure payment of debts and sold to the company employees… “If the father or Husband or any of them resist, the only satisfaction they get is a beating and they are frequently not stifled with taking the Woman but their Gun and Tent likewise” wrote scandalized HBC surveyor Philip Turnor.” (Daschuk, 2013, pg.153). Traders Mackenzie and Livingstone were highly regarded by their peers once the HBC was under their management as the Indigenous peoples of the area were “modelled anew and brought under an implicit obedience to the White’s authority” NWC post master Willard Wentzel wrote to Roderick Mackenzie. That “authority” in the Athabasca included slave traffic in women.” (Daschuk, 2013, pg. 153).

To carry this into the present, portrayals like the one that stands in front of the Quebec Parliament buildings continue to be used to justify the violence against Indigenous bodies. Historical “systemic stereotyping of Indigenous women demonstrates that false stereotypes are so deeply embedded within Canadian society.” (Wilson, 2018, pg. 153). Due to these stereotypes of Indigenous women, racism, and systemic oppression there are alarming amounts of Indigenous people missing or that have been murdered. Moreover, Indigenous women continue to be sterilized without their consent in current day Canada and have birth alerts being called on their children while in governemnt run health care institutions. Indigenous families and communities have long known the alarming amount of MMIWG2S and have been at the forefront investigating and calling on the governemnt and law enforcement for action. According to a 2021 RCMP report, “1,017 women and girls identified as Indigenous were murdered between 1980 and 2012—a homicide rate roughly 4.5 times higher than that of all other women in Canada” (Khokhar, 2023, pg.1) and this does not account for the relatives who are still missing and cold cases. This RCMP report is the first time government and law enforcement have attempted to identify and address the amount of Indigenous women and girls that have been murdered or have gone missing. This has come after years of Indigenous people lobbying, calling on, and legal action being taken towards the Canadian government for their inaction on missing Indigenous women. The latest numbers “underline what Indigenous women and advocacy organizations have long been saying–that this violence requires a specific and concerted response from police and all levels of society.”(Khokhar, 2023, pg.1) This report does not include additional rates of remaining missing women “unexplained and suspicious deaths.”(Khokhar, 2023, pg.9) and does not draw any connection between colonialism, history, or intergenerational trauma. Not to mention, the RCMP have been major perpetrators of violence and sexual violence against Indigenous women and girls.

Rematriation Efforts and Resistance

Indigenous women, girls, and 2SQ have been at the forefront of activism and frontline work in the calls for justice for MMIWG2S relatives. This “violence is systemic in nature and colonial in origin, representation matters to the material history of violence and to its resistance by Indigenous peoples and their allies. Indigenous women writers, activists, and academics “contribute vital insights into the analysis of gendered colonial violence while envisioning new, nonviolent realities” (Hargreaves, 2017, pg.1). In this past year, two Indigenous women Marcedes Myran and Morgan Harris were murdered in Winnipeg, Manitoba, their bodies confirmed to be in the Prairie Green Winnipeg landfill. The Province of Manitoba and the Winnipeg police, even though feasible as confirmed by a study done in Ottawa, refused to search the landfill for these citizens bodies, refusing them and their families justice and dignity. Following this refusal, a group of Indigenous women, headed by Morgan Harris daughter, created “Camp Morgan”, an encampment at the Winnipeg landfill demanding the landfill be searched.

Morgan Harris daughter on front line efforts and what needs to happen next: https://youtu.be/xAu7Aq8_qR0?si=hn33eteSJNA3zRNq

On Camp Morgans Website it states[1]:

“Our Camp is peaceful and driven solely to recover the remains of our loved ones. As days progressed, things were made clear to us. Initially, our anger at the report that the Winnipeg Police would not search for our loved ones was overbearing. The police said it was not feasible to conduct a search. This news created a question, and the answer was that our Indigenous sisters were not important enough. This lack of police effort led to the initiation of Camp Morgan. First Nation Indigenous Warriors and the Harris family have been at the front lines each day, fighting every level of government and the Winnipeg Police to conduct the search. A feasibility study has been conducted, and the outcome states that searching at Prairie Green Landfill is feasible. Funding for the search still needs to be guaranteed. There is no feasibility study currently being conducted to search Brady Landfill. We are told that once the search at the Prairie Green Landfill starts, a feasibility study for the Brady Landfill will start. On July 5, 2023, Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson announced the Manitoba government would not fund the search, citing possible health risks to search team members. Camp Morgan is still at Brady Landfill to ensure this search is completed. If not, we must resort to further measures to ensure it is searched. We hope that we can get both Brady and Prairie to move operations to new ground, erect monuments and turn the existing landfills into areas where we can visit our relatives who are still there. Please remember that we believe there are remains there that we will not be able to locate. Remember that there are remains there that might have completely turned to dust. Remember that our people have been getting killed off for centuries. It is up to us to remember all these genocides. Say their names...”

In the past months, after the advocacy by Camp Morgan and the elections of Anishannabbe Premiere of Manitobia, Wab Kinew, the land fill has began to be search for Marcedes Myres and Morgan Harris bodies.

Citations

Anderson, K., Campbell, M., Belcourt, C., Scholars Portal Books: Canadian University Presses 2018, Canada Commons: Books & Documents, Coherent Digital (Firm), & Canadian Electronic Library (Firm). (2018). In Anderson K., Campbell M. and Belcourt C.(Eds.), Keetsahnak: Our missing and murdered indigenous sisters (First;1; ed.). The University of Alberta Press.
Canada in Records from Colonial Missionaries, 1722-1952, https://britishonlinearchives.com/collections/59/canada-in-records-from-colonial-missionaries-1722-1952/search?filters[query]=&filters[className]=document
Daschuk, J. W., Canada Commons: Books & Documents, Coherent Digital (Firm), & Canadian Electronic Library (Firm). (2013;2014;2018;). Clearing the plains: Disease, politics of starvation, and the loss of aboriginal life (1st ed.). U of R Press.
Hargreaves, A., Scholars Portal Books: Canadian University Presses 2017, Coherent Digital (Firm), & Canadian Electronic Library (Firm). (2017). Violence against indigenous women: Literature, activism, resistance (1st ed.). Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Kelm, M., & Smith, K. D. (2018). Talking back to the indian act: Critical readings in settler colonial histories (1st ed.). University of Toronto Press.
Khokhar, E. (2023, February 15). Missing and murdered indigenous women and girls: The facts. Amnesty International Canada. https://amnesty.ca/features/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-facts/
Schields, C. (2022, February 8). Intimate Interventions: Global Histories of Sexuality and Colonialism . Empire and Colonialism Author Interviews . other. (NOTCHES article)
Simpson, L. B., & JSTOR (Organization). (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance (1st ed.). University of Minnesota Press.
Wilson, K. J. (2018). confronting canada's indigenous female disposability. Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 38(1), 153-163.