GRSJ224/aboriginalwomen

ABORIGINAL WOMEN: AT THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER AND RACE

Aboriginal Women as Stereotypes

Aboriginal women in Canada live at the intersection of gender and race (or indigeneity) and their past and present conditions can be best understood as resulting from institutionalized racism and sexist in Canada's settler past. When settlers first arrived in Canada, they were overwhelmingly male, and they came from a society (Victorian England) which kept women in an inferior and silent position. The aboriginal women, who were equally involved in the lives of their communities, seemed like an odd and dangerous reality that settlers sought to suppress. The results of years of settler colonialism are highly visible on the position of aboriginal people in Canada, a position of isolation (living on reserves), poverty, overwhelming incarceration rates, academic under achievement and substance abuse issues. Aboriginal women face systemic problems which make them particularly vulnerable to issues such as poverty, homelessness, disease, substance abuse, and violence (Kuokkanen, 2015).

The image of aboriginal women has been overwhelmingly stereotypical, fluctuating between the "Indian princess" and the "dirty squaw." The images that we have in our minds about indigenous people can be traced back to settler ideologies and their stereotypical and simplistic understanding of these people whose lands they were stealing. For example, the word "squaw" comes from the Indigenous terms "squa" or "ussqua" which just means "woman" but it has taken on a life of its own and many derogatory meanings (Parezo & Jones, 2009, p. 376). It became "an English loanword," which was used "neutrally or colloquially to refer to all Indian women regardless of tribal affiliation," a word which "assumed that all Indian women had similar roles, duties and personalities" (Parezo & Jones, 2009, p. 376). In the beginning, the term "squaw" was associated with strong, independent women, who worked and were the economic leaders of their households (Parezo & Jones, 2009). However, later, the term was expanded to refer to, for example, homosexuals, two-spirited individual, and even heterosexual males who were considered "weak" or "cowardly" (Parezo & Jones, 2009, p 378). European men who chose to marry Indigenous women and went to live within Indigenous communities also came to be called "squaw," and "the racial implications were transparent" (Parezo & Jones, 2009, p. 378). What is more, the offspring of interracial marriages also became "exoticized" and racialized, and it was assumed that these children "combined the supposed worst vices of each race or ethnic group" and came to be seen as examples of "cultural devolution" (Parezo & Jones, 2009, p. 379). Finally, after Hollywood picked on this image of the exotic yet odd woman, the "squaw" came to be depicted as "denigrated, overworked, or passive drudges," or "faceless Indian females," and their talk became "squaw talk," which was seen as "foolish, untrue or frivolous speech" (Parezo & Jones, 2009, p. 379). By the 1850s, Aboriginal women were often victims of abduction and rape at the hands of gold seekers or other travelling European males, and the word "squaw" became associated with "sexual violence" (Parezo & Jones, 2009, p. 380). In movies and literature, the "squaw" became an umbrella terms but also a weapon which was used to "dehumanize and homogenize Indians," and to "insinuate that European Americans were racially and culturally superior" (Parezo & Jones, 2009, p. 381).

Before Canada became a land of settlers, Aboriginal women held a lot of power, respect and important "economic, social, and spiritual contributions" in their families, and many First Nations groups "operated within matriarchal and matrilineal structures" (Daoud et al., 2013, p. e281). After the settlers came, they refused to negotiate with women, and Band Councils were forced to eliminate the women from leadership roles (Daoud et al., 2013, p. e281). The results have been disastrous.

Aboriginal Women in Post-Colonial Canada

Canada is a settler nation, which is technically not post-colonial, because the Aboriginal people on this land still live under colonial-like conditions. However, the fact that Aboriginal people have been given the right to vote and equal rights under Canadian law - along with citizenship - it is possible to look at Canada's Aboriginal women through a post-colonial, intersectional lens.

Kuokkanen (2015) rightfully notes the particularly difficult and precarious situation of Aboriginal women as they are more than "victims of gendered violence in their own right," but also "become simply the means by which discrimination against indigenous communities at large can be recognized" (p. 272). Thus, "efforts to address various forms of violence tend to ignore how indigenous women must both confront the racial bias and challenge their status as instruments, rather than beneficiaries of the indigenous rights struggle" (Kuokkanen, 2015, p. 272). What Kuokkanen (2015) is pointing at is how aboriginal women suffer abuse and violence both in their communities and outside of their communities, but also they cannot turn against their identity and community appurtenance, to denounce their brothers and sisters, when they see that the system overall is calibrated to promote overall discrimination of aboriginal individuals. For example, often chiefs and council members are males, and they tend to side with the male partner in the case of domestic abuse situations (Kuokkanen, 2015). When women are chased out of their homes and communities, where do they end up? They most often end up in urban centers (cities) living destitute and homeless, perhaps forced to turn to prostitution or other illegal activities in order to survive. These survival crimes are judged as real crimes under Canada's legal system so these victims end up in jail, thus the cycle of abuse is perpetuated both within their communities and outside their communities.

Aboriginal Women and Systemic Violence

              In Canada, violence against aboriginal women is a major health concern, because the prevalence of said violence is between 22% and 80%, while among non-aboriginal women, the rare is around 3.5% (Daoud et al., 2013). The rate of homicides against aboriginal women is 8 times higher than that against non-aboriginal women (Daoud et al., 2013). To say that violence against aboriginal women was a reality before colonialism is a mistake, because all tribes had laws and protections in place so the community protected women against the occasional partner violence (Daoud et al., 2018). Increased partner violence is actually another horrible effect of colonization. Colonization brought different economic and social conditions, making all aboriginal people dependent on a system that was not set up to benefit them. Secondly, colonization brought new gender roles to aboriginal communities, due to the "imposition of European and Christian patriarchal values that destroyed balanced power relations and communal relations between men and women" (Daoud et al., 2013, p. e278). A low socio-economic status, another result of colonization, displacement and dispossession is also associated with higher risk of suffering from domestic abuse (Daoud et al., 2013, p. e281).

In 2005, the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) started an investigation which led to the project known as “Sisters in Spirit” (Anderson, 2016). The investigation revealed 600 cases of missing and murdered women over the past 20 years, a number which reveals “the alarmingly high rate of racialized and sexualized violence against Indigenous women in North America” (Anderson, 2016). Between 2000 and 2008, 153 Aboriginal women were murdered in Canada, which represents about 10% od all homicides, when Aboriginal people represent less than 4% of Canada’s population (Anderson, 2016).

               The reality of violence against aboriginal women has gained international recognition. In 2012, the UN held its first conference on “Combating Violence against Indigenous Women and Girls,” which led to resolutions asking the indigenous leadership and institutions to focus on women’s rights and human rights (Kuokkanen, 2015).

References

Anderson, S. G. (2016). Stitching through silence: Walking with our sisters, honoring the missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada. Textile, 14(1), 84-97.

Daoud, N., Smylie, J., Urquia, M., Allan, B., & O’Campo, P. (2013). The contribution of socio-economic position to the excesses of violence and intimate partner violence among aboriginal versus non-aboriginal women in Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 104(4), e278-e282.

Kuokkanen, R. (2015). Gendered violence and politics in indigenous communities. The cases of aboriginal people in Canada and the Sami in Scandinavia. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 17(2), 271-288.

Parezo, N. J., & Jones, A. R. (2009). What’s in a name? The 1940s-1950 “squaw dress.” American Indian Quarterly, 33(3), 373.