Violence Against Indigenous Women
Summary
In Canada, 15% of Indigenous women reported experiencing domestic violence, compared to the 6% of non-Indigenous women.[1] In 2009, 13% of Indigenous women over the age of 15 were violently victimized, which means that nearly 67 000 Indigenous women and girls.[1] Amnesty International reports that in Canada, Indigenous women between the ages of 25-44 are 5 times more likely to die from violence than non-Indigenous women.[1] Indigenous women are 6 times more likely to die of homicide than Non-Indigenous women.[1]
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
In March 2010, the Sisters in Spirit Initiative estimated that 582 Indigenous women had been missing or murdered in the last 30 years in Canada.[1] Of the 582 Indigenous women, 88 % of these cases were mothers.[1] PhD candidate from U of O, Maryanne Pearce, conducted research and created a database in 2013. Her findings from 1946 – 2013 were out of 3 329 missing and murdered women, 824 were Indigenous.[1] The RCMP in 2014 documented 1181 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women between the years of 1980-2013, and 1017 of those cases were murdered, while 164 were still actively missing. This documentation shows that Indigenous women make up 16 percent of female homicide victims in Canada, while they make up only 4.3 percent of the population.[1]
Indigenous women in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side
Towards the end of the 1990’s, women were reportedly going missing in the DTES of Vancouver, and a disproportionate amount of these women were Indigenous.[1] It is believed that 58 percent of these women were Indigenous.[1] Furthermore, 69 women disappeared from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver between 1997 and 2002.[2] The cases of women who went missing weren’t taken seriously, as they were labeled as “Aboriginal…transient and… drug-addicted sex-workers”.[1]In 2003, the number of women missing in the DTES was an estimated 61.[1] In 2002, Robert Pickton was arrested with 33 DNA of different missing women from the DTES were found on his pig farm, with 12 of those DNA files being Indigenous women.[1] Pickton was tried and found guilty on 6 counts of second-degree murder in December 2007. He wasn’t tried or convicted of the other 20 women that he had pled not guilty to murdering, which upset many of the victims families.[2] In the aftermath of the Robert Pickton horrors, the police force, and other law enforcement have been – and continue to be – scrutinized for the racism, gendered and biased aid to Indigenous women.[3]
Highway of Tears
The Highway of Tears, which is highway 16 in northern BC that stretches between Prince George and Prince Rupert for 724 kilometres is the location of where between 18-40 women and girls went missing over the past 40 years.[1] Within the years 1988-1995, at least 5 Indigenous women disappeared on the Highway of Tears, but the law enforcement in the area, (RCMP), didn’t take these claims and cases seriously until 2002, when a Non-Indigenous woman went missing in the same area.[1] In September 2012, the RCMP linked DNA from an Oregon convict to the 1974 murder on the Highway of Tears of Colleen MacMillen.[1]Present day, the majority of these cases go unsolved.[1]
Transportation, or the lack thereof, is one of the excuses given by the colonial state as to why Indigenous women are at higher risk on the Highway of Tears, and the Government has recently enacted a signage campaign on the Highway to discourage Indigenous women from hitchhiking.[1] However, the Billboards use language that is very gendered and dehumanizing. They refer to Indigenous women strictly as “girls”, thus taking away any sort of agency and power Indigenous women have.[4] This could be the billboards solely targeting young Indigenous women, but it also exacerbates paternalism and heterosexism.[4] Furthermore, the usage of statements such as “Don’t hitchhike” stigmatize behaviour that is frequently used out of necessity because the highway is unserviced, many communities due to poverty struggle with reliable mobility options.[4]
Activism
National Inquiry
The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was initiated in order to bring attention to the over-representation of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada.[5] The Inquiry was initiated in 2015, when Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, called for an answer to all the calls from the Indigenous communities to address the problem of disproportionate number of Indigenous women and girls being victims of violence.[5] The Chief Commissioner of the Inquiry is British Columbia Judge, Marion Buller.[5] However, it took quite a lot of work and enthusiasm to get the Inquiry started and off the ground.[5] Indeed, without the urgent pressure from Indigenous women across Canada, the Inquiry would have been halted for much longer.[5] The issue with the National Inquiry is that it entirely focuses on Indigenous women and doesn’t dissect the effects of colonialism and the violence enacted on Indigenous 2 Spirit and Indigenous men because of active colonialism.[5]
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 Monchalin, L (2016). The colonial problem: an indigenous perspective on crime and injustice in Canada. University of Toronto Press.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Craig, E (2014). "Person(s) of Interest and Missing Women: Legal Abandonment in the Downtown Eastside". McGill Law Journal / Revue de droit de McGill. 60 (1).
- ↑ Hetoevėhotohke'e Lucchesi, A (2019). "Mapping geographies of Canadian colonial occupation: pathway analysis of murdered indigenous women and girls". Gender, Place & Culture. 26(6).
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Morton, K (2016). "HITCHHIKING AND MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF BILLBOARDS ON THE HIGHWAY OF TEARS". Canadian Journal of Sociology (Online). 41(3).
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Hansen and Dim (2019). "Canada's missing and murdered indigenous people and the imperative for a more inclusive perspective". International Indigenous Policy Journal. 10(1).