What Does it Mean to be Canadian?

The violent history Canada has tried to ignore is being brought back out on the international stage (see the incident with the UN). Other countries are calling Canada out for human rights violations, so the question Canadians have to ask ourselves is this -- who do we want to be as a nation?

Canada has a historically difficult relationship with Aboriginal people, and this history of colonialism is evident in the modern Canadian government’s response to Aboriginal women’s issues.  Aboriginal women experience oppression in two ways: first, because they are Aboriginal, and second, because they are women. The colonial history of oppression of Aboriginal peoples is clear in the Indian Act, a legal document which continues to outline exactly who counts as “Indian” in Canada. This strips Aboriginal people of their right to self-determination, and Aboriginal women are hit even harder.

Prior to 1985 (a mere 28 years ago), if an Aboriginal woman who had status married a man who did not, she would automatically lose her status. This policy did not work the other way; men who married non-status women kept their status. With loss of status came loss of any rights to land or compensation for herself or her children. Only after Aboriginal women’s rights protests culminated in a human rights complaint filed through the United Nations did the federal government pass Bill C-31. This bill protects her status, but introduced a clause that effectively just delays loss of status for 2 or 3 generations. It is hard not to see parallels between this legislation and anti-miscegenation laws, since it limits Aboriginal women’s choices in marriage, and legally strips her or her future family’s rights to their heritage if she marries outside her legal race.

In more general terms, what Indian policy in Canada has done is stripped any power Aboriginal women had, and turned them into 3^rd or 4^th class citizens. Until 1951, 30 years after White Canadian women’s suffrage, Aboriginal women were not allowed to vote for band council. The policies concerning women in the Indian Act ignored historical practices of matrilineal descent, female members on council, and other important roles women filled in many Aboriginal societies.

Women have played a big part in Aboriginal rights movements in Canada, and they are certainly not passive victims, but they are being victimized. Aboriginal women are targeted because they are disenfranchised; colonial policy has taken Aboriginal culture away from these women in exchange for poverty and addictions. Many Aboriginal women, such as Phyllis Chelsea in Alkali Lake in 1972, have taken action to help their community rise above alcoholism, for example. But they are fighting a government and its policy rooted in colonial racism and sexism that have made Aboriginal women easy targets.  

Close to 600 Canadian women, almost 600 Aboriginal people, have become victims thanks to Canada’s sexist and racist policy, which in turn developed out of our colonial past. If the average Canadian ignores this issue the way the Canadian government is doing, we contribute directly to the loss of more and more Aboriginal women. Colonialism did not end 200, 100, 50, or even 20 years ago, but continues to shape the Canadian political landscape today. An ideology of colonialism is what motivated the federal government to reject the UN’s call for an inquiry into these missing women, and it is a sexist and racist culture grown out of colonialism that puts these women at risk in the first place.

Why should the average Canadian care that close to 600 Aboriginal women are missing or murdered? Because this number clearly reflects how we treat our minorities, and Canada needs to do better by all its citizens. Let’s live up to our reputation as a country that celebrates diversity, and let’s start by taking the missing and murdered Aboriginal women of Canada seriously.