GRSJ224/Historical Treatmet of Aboriginal Women

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Land acknowledgement

This Wiki was written on the traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Watuth) nations. [...]

Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Canada. In the city of Vancouver, there is a strong connection between poverty and being Aboriginal, which can be seen in the overrepresentation of First Nations people living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES). This is true for both men and women with Aboriginal women living in the DTES experiencing disproportionate homelessness and violence. The situation for Aboriginal women in the DTES is not an anomaly, nor has it arisen in a vacuum. Instead, the marginalization of Aboriginal women in the DTES reflects the discrimination and the marginalization that Aboriginal women face all across Canada.

Background

First Nations women are among the most disadvantaged segment of Canadian society with violence being too common.  This violence comes in the form of physical violence, such as domestic violence, child abuse or the violence experienced by sex trade workers. For instance, according to Brennan, in 2009, 67,000 Aboriginal females fifteen or older in Canada reported being the victim of violence in the previous twelve months, which is three times higher than non-Aboriginal females.[1] Aboriginal women are also three times as likely to be the victim of sexual assault that non-Aboriginal women.[2] In Canada, whereas Aboriginal women make up only 4% of the female population, they represent 22% of all female homicide victims.[2] Moreover, Aboriginal women between the ages of 10 to 44 have mortality rates four times higher than non-Aboriginal women.[3] In addition, Aboriginal women are victims of male partner violence more than three times as much as non-Aboriginal women.[2] Moreover, even though Aboriginal women make up only 4% of the Canadian population, they represent 42% of Canada’s female prison population.[2]

One of the most egregious examples of discrimination against Aboriginal women in Canada is the missing women’s situation with over 4,000 Aboriginal women either murdered or missing since the 1980s.[4] These numbers are a result of racism and discrimination, which results in the undervaluing of the lives of First Nations women. Up until 2015 with the launch of the national public inquiry into the disproportionate victimization of Indigenous women and girls, the Canadian government ignored calls from Indigenous groups to investigate the missing and murdered Aboriginal women crisis.[5] However, the Canadian government has been accused of ignoring this situation even after the damning final report of The National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Woman and Girls[5], which deemed the treatment of Aboriginal women in Canada as genocidal.[6] Since the report’s release, the Canadian government has failed to act in any meaningful way, resulting in no change to rate of Aboriginal women being murdered or going missing in Canada.[5] This failure to act can be seen by the fact that while 84% of murders are solved in Canada, this percentage drops to 53%.[7]

Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES)

Vancouver’s DTES is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Canada. In the city of Vancouver, there is a strong connection between poverty and being Aboriginal, which can be seen in the overrepresentation of First Nations people living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES). According to the Downtown Eastside Local Area Profile, whereas 2% of Vancouver’s overall population identifies as First Nations, Métis or Inuit, this percentage is 10% for the DTES. The percentage changes depending on the DTES neighbourhood with the percentages being Gastown, 11%; Oppenheimer, 13%; Industrial, 2%; Victory Square, 31%, Chinatown, 8%, and Thorton Park, 5%, and Strathcona, 4%.[8] In fact, 70% of Vancouver’s Aboriginal population lives in the DTES.[9] What is more, 40% of the homeless populating in the DTES is Aboriginal.[9]

In relation to poverty and low income, whereas the median household income in the DTES was $17,051 in 2015, the city average was $72,662[10], which makes the DTES, particularly the Victory Square neighbourhood which has the lowest average income, the poorest area in Vancouver.  Furthermore, while 21% of the population of Vancouver lives on or below the low income cut-off line, this percentage rises to 53% for the entire DTES. A breakdown of the DTES neighbourhood reveals that there is a correlation between the percentage of the population who is Aboriginal and the percentage of the population living at or below the low income line with this percentage being 70% for the Oppenheimer neighbourhood and 79% for theVictory Square neighbourhood.[8] These percentages confirm that poverty impacts Aboriginal people disproportionately.  

In terms of health outcomes, “Downtown Eastside residents continue to experience worse health outcomes than the general population, with many complex health challenges and barriers to accessing care."[8] All health indicators for residents of the DTES are significantly worse than the city average. The rates of suicide, alcohol-related deaths, deaths from medically treatable diseases, and drug-induced deaths are 1.95, 2.3, 3.16, and 4.27 times higher respectively. For instance, DTES Aboriginal women are three times more like to die from HIV/AIDS infections than other Vancouver women.[11] These indicators are just a sample of the health issues people in the DTES face.

Aboriginal Women in the DTES

The national mistreatment of Indigenous women is salient in the DTES where 45% of the female homeless population is Aboriginal.[7] In a DTES safety audit, 87% of the women surveyed reported feeling unsafe, while 48% of those interviewed reported that they had been the victim of violence in the previous two years.[7] In addition, The issues that Aboriginal women in the DTES face, including "vulnerability to abusive relationships, sexual assault, child apprehension, exploitative work conditions, unsafe housing, food insecurity, poor health, and social isolation", are connected to poverty with 36% of Aboriginal women in the DTES being impoverished.[7] In an audit carried out in the DTES, 57% of Aboriginal women reported that they carried out an activity that they were uncomfortable with in order to secure money.[7]

An extremely problematic finding is that only 15% of women interviewed in the DTES reported that they would go to the police if they felt unsafe.[7] The fact that Aboriginal women make up 21% of the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) street checks of women[7] illustrates the mistrust which exists between Aboriginal women and the police. There are many reasons for this mistrust. In a survey conducted by the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, Aboriginal women reported considerable harassment from the VPD, including "detention, arrests, search and seizure, bylaw tickets, use of force, extortion of information, use of police dogs, escalation during a mental health crisis (a majority of police-shooting deaths in B.C. involve individuals experiencing a mental health crisis), entry into their homes, and ‘catch and release’ as a form of intimidation – often without legal cause." [7] This mistrust of the police is also connected to the failure of all police forces in Canada to treat cases of murdered and missing Aboriginal women seriously. As the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre states, "B.C. has been devastated by a number of high-profile murders of Indigenous women by serial killers Clifford Olson and Robert Pickton, the Alley Murders, the Valley Murders, and the Highway of Tears. Each sister taken had a unique story and her own dreams. Each sister taken was a sister, mother, daughter, auntie, or cousin. Each sister taken had her inherent, constitutional, and internationally protected Indigenous rights violated."[7] The Robert Pickton guess represents a complete failure of the VPD, as the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre and other organizations had warned the police that the disappearance of many women from the DTES was suspicious and looked like the work of a serial killer.[7] However, the VPD did not take these warnings seriously.[12] In fact, Robert Pickton was known to the police and was even charged with the attempted murder of a prostitute in 1997.[13] However, this case never went to trial and most likely launched him into his serial killings. Although Pickton was only found guilty of killing six women, it is likely that he killed close to 50, the majority of whom were Aboriginal.[13]

History of Discrimination

"Indigenous women in the DTES are stigmatized as having ‘high-risk lifestyles’ and blamed for violence committed against them, when in fact colonial poverty and patriarchy are the highest risk factors in Indigenous women’s lives."[7] Understanding how Aboriginal women are discriminated against today requires understanding the history of oppression and discrimination that Aboriginal women have faced from the settler society.

Discrimination and Marginalization of Aboriginal Women in Canada: Creating the Discourse

Historically, Aboriginal women have been the most oppressed and mistreated segment of Canadian society. Prior to the colonization of what would become Canada, “Aboriginal women held positions of social, political, and economic power in their traditional communities."[14] Women were respected for their spiritual and mental strength, and for their strength in bearing children. As MacDonald and Steenbeek state, “women were the centre of the community and the family, gender relations were egalitarian, and women’s work was equally valued to that of men’s.”[15] However, this all changed due to the impact of colonization and the European perspective on gender relations, as at the time of colonization, European men saw women as both inferior and as their property. Therefore, the colonial government introduced laws that specifically sought to disempower Aboriginal women. As Chappell states, “the Indian Act of 1876 denied First Nations women any decision-making powers in their local governments or band councils and stripped them of all rights to Indian status or property if they married a non-Status man.”[16] Moreover, by giving property rights to men, the colonial project destroyed Aboriginal matrilineal cultures, and completely subjugated Aboriginal women to Aboriginal men in terms of material well-being with women losing their homes and property when relationships ended, a practice which has carried forth until the present day.[17]

One important element of the colonial settler engagement with Aboriginal women was portraying them as lecherous and sexually deviant, which reflects classic Othering. As Chappell states, “the early European settlers propagated the myth that Aboriginal women were inherently more promiscuous than European women."[16] This ideas was connected to what has been called the Indian princess-squaw dichotomy. Within the societal framework Europeans projected onto Aboriginal societies, the Indian princess was the Aboriginal female who rejected her own culture in favour of European Christian civilization. This imagined princess was also virtuous, as she adhered to the almost impossible Victorian standards of chastity. Within this projected societal framework, any Aboriginal women who did not meet Victorian womanhood standards was deemed a sexually-deviant squaw unworthy of respect.[18] This was enshrined in the Indian Act through the power given the Indian Agent to determine what constituted good moral behaviour, including sexual behaviour, of his Aboriginal charges. Any sexual engagement outside of marriage could result in the woman being sent to prison or to a reformatory, even when within the Aboriginal culture in question, a divorce had been carried out, and the woman was living with a new husband.[19] As Sangster states, women were a “crucial site of sexual regulation.”[20] In fact, the Indian Affairs filing system had a file dedicated to sexual misbehaviour, which shows the power that Indian Agents had as custodians of sexual morality.[21]

The importance of understanding the impact the European sexualization of Aboriginal woman has had on Aboriginal culture and on Aboriginal women cannot be overstated. The manner in which the colonizers treated Aboriginal women and the fact that Aboriginal women were constantly subjected to unachievable Victorian morality meant these hegemonic ideals infiltrated the Aboriginal mindset. This is what happens with hegemonic ideology; that is, when a subjugated, minoritized, or marginalized segment of society constantly encounters negative stereotypes or imagined constructs about themselves, they internalize it.[22] Sangster captures the process perfectly when she describes the process as involving “both direct coercion and the indirect ‘colonization of the soul,’ with the colonized literally coming to discipline themselves.”[23] This internalized hegemony has carried forward until today with disastrous consequences for Aboriginal women, as it reinforces the mainstream misrepresentation of Aboriginal women as hyper-sexualized. This constructed deviant Aboriginal woman has remained in the mainstream Canadian discourse since its creation. This has resulted in the normalization of the violence, including sexual violence, which Aboriginal women are subjected to. The mainstream discourse suggests that it is something that Aboriginal women are used to, and implies that they are at least partially responsible, when the reality is that this misrepresentation harks back to colonial patriarchy and its construction of Aboriginal female Other.[7] The result has been the Canadian state’s complete failure to protect Aboriginal women. This can be seen in the mainstream response to a number of sexual assaults of Aboriginal women which took place in the First Union Shelter in the DTES in 2011. At this time, instead of showing sympathy, the Church's Executive Minister victims blamed the women saying, "Some women put themselves at risk because of the way they dress or undress or move around the building, they draw attention to themselves.”[7] His words were directly influenced by the long standing stereotype of Aboriginal women being deviant. He want on to state "The issues that are out on the streets will, from time to time, show themselves inside our walls."[7] This statement fits the hegemonic tenet that normalizes violence against Aboriginal women.

Dislocation and Dehumanization

Therefore, the roots of the precarious situation that Aboriginal women living in the DTES face can be traced to the imagined hegemonic construct of the deviant Aboriginal woman, which permeates the mainstream discourse; the internalization of this construct by Aboriginal peoples; and the manner in which the Indian Act stripped Aboriginal women of property rights. In relation to the latter, the Indian Act eliminated all cultural practices related to matriarchy, matrilineal bequeathment, matrimonial property, and matrilocality.[24] Thus, there are numerous  opportunities for Aboriginal women to become dislocated, especially if their marriage has ended, or if they had to flee an abusive relationship. It is often the case this dislocation brings Aboriginal women to urban environments, including Vancouver’s DTES.[25] In fact, the large majority of Aboriginal women living in the DTES came to Vancouver due to displacement.[26] Unfortunately, urban spaces, such as the DTES, are greatly gendered and racialized, which means they operate on the premise that Aboriginal women invite violence upon themselves based on the numerous stereotypes already discussed. The result of the mainstream discourse is not enough has been done to protect Aboriginal women with the 4000 missing or murdered Aboriginal women being a salient example of how the plight of Aboriginal women in Canada is virtually invisible to the mainstream. The failure of the Vancouver Police Department to recognize a serial killer was preying on Aboriginal women in the DTES is a strong example of how Aboriginal woman are still dehumanized by mainstream Canada, as numerous reports of women having gone missing, and even reports of a pig farmer being involved, were ignored. This dehumanization also manifests in economic marginalization, which makes accessing regular employment incredibly difficult. This can be seen in the fact that 70% of the DTES’s sex workers are Aboriginal women.[27]

References

  1. Brennan, S. (2011). Violent victimization of aboriginal women in the Canadian provinces, 2009. Statistics Canada. Retrieved from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2011001/article/11439-eng.htm
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Stats about Indigenous Women in Canada (2019). Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter. Accessed at https://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/blog/stats-about-indigenous-women-canada
  3. Feir, D. (2019). First People Lost: New Statistics Show Alarming Patterns in Indigenous Death Rates in Canada. Sociology Lens. Accessed at https://www.sociologylens.net/article-types/opinion/indigenous-death-rates-canada/24407
  4. Cecco, L. (2019). Decades of missing Indigenous women a 'Canadian genocide' – leaked report. The Guardian. Accessed at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/31/canada-missing-indigenous-women-cultural-genocide-government-report
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 Elliott, A. (2020). Canada Asked For a Report On MMIWG. Now It's Ignoring It. Flare. Accessed at https://www.flare.com/news/mmiwg-2020/
  6. Barrera, J. (2019) National inquiry calls murders and disappearances of Indigenous women a 'Canadian genocide.' CBC News. Accessed at https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/genocide-murdered-missing-indigenous-women-inquiry-report-1.5157580
  7. 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13 Martin, C., and Walia, H. (2019). Red Women Rising: Indigenous Women Survivors in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Downtown Eastside Women's Centre. Accessed at https://online.flowpaper.com/76fb0732/MMIWReportFinalMarch10WEB/#page=3
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 Downtown Eastside Local Area Profile: 2013. (2013). City of Vancouver. Accessed at https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/profile-dtes-local-area-2013.pdf
  9. 9.0 9.1 Benoit, C., Carroll, D., and Chaudry, M. (2003). In search of a Healing Place: Aboriginal womeniin Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Social Science & Medicine 56, 821-833.
  10. Carman, T. (September 3, 2017). Northern B.C. had highest incomes in province, Census finds. CBC. Accessed at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/northern-b-c-had-highest-incomes-in-province-census-finds-1.4288517
  11. Joseph, R. (1999). Healing Ways—Aboriginal Health and Service Review. Vancouver: Vancouver Health Board.
  12. Hutchinson, B. (2012). Vancouver police investigations into serial killer were a 'blatant failure,' and the Pickton inquiry was 'a sham' The National Post. Accessed at https://nationalpost.com/opinion/robert-pickton-inquiry-investigation-blatant-failure
  13. 13.0 13.1 Pickton escaped 1997 charge before murders. (2010). CBC News. Accessed at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/pickton-escaped-1997-charge-before-murders-1.898052
  14. Chappell, R. (2014). Social Welfare in Canadian Society. Nelson Education Ltd, 358.
  15. MacDonald, C., and Steenbeek, A. (2015). The Impact of Colonization and Western Assimilation on Health and Wellbeing of Canadian Aboriginal People. International Journal of Regional and Local History 10(1), 38.
  16. 16.0 16.1 Chappell, R. (2014). Social Welfare in Canadian Society. Nelson Education Ltd, 354.
  17. Silman, J. (1987). Enough is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak Out. Toronto: Women’s Press, 34.
  18. Green, R. (1975). The Pocahontas Perplex: The Image of Indian Women in American Culture. The Massachusetts Review 16(4), 707.
  19. Sangster, J. (2001). Regulating Girls and Women: Sexuality, Family, and the Law in Ontario, 1920-1960. New York: Oxford, 204.
  20. Sangster, J. (2001). Regulating Girls and Women: Sexuality, Family, and the Law in Ontario, 1920-1960. New York: Oxford, 312.
  21. Sangster, J. (2001). Regulating Girls and Women: Sexuality, Family, and the Law in Ontario, 1920-1960. New York: Oxford, 312.
  22. Freire, P. (2012). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 101.
  23. Sangster, J. (2001). Regulating Girls and Women: Sexuality, Family, and the Law in Ontario, 1920-1960. New York: Oxford, 315.
  24. LaRoque, E. (1996). The Colonization of the Native Scholar. In P. Chuchryk, and C. Miller (Eds.), Women of the First Nations: Power, Wisdom, and Strength (p. 14). Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.
  25. Razack, S. H. (2000). Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George. Canadian Journal of Law and Society 15(2), 99.
  26. Benoit, C., Carroll, D., and Chaudry, M. (2003). In search of a Healing Place: Aboriginal women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Social Science & Medicine 56, 822.
  27. Benoit, C., Carroll, D., and Chaudry, M. (2003). In search of a Healing Place: Aboriginal women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Social Science & Medicine 56, 824.