Is Canada Peaceful And Safe For Aboriginal Women Case Study

Harper, A. O. (2006). Is Canada Peaceful and Safe for Aboriginal Women? Canadian Woman Studies, 25(1,2), 33-38. doi:10.1.1.1010.3665 With a focus towards the inequalities aboriginal women are faced with when compared to both aboriginal men and women of non-aboriginal status, the journal argues that these conditions contribute to the current and historical treatment of aboriginal women and the current crisis of missing and murdered aboriginal women. Aboriginal women are subject to a disparity in health, educational attainment, wealth, life expectancy and standard of living in comparison to most other Canadians. The author provides evidence, with statistics showing; that in Manitoba 42.7% of the aboriginal women who live of reserves live in
The historic treatment and representation (of Aboriginal people) has a great influence on how people perceive aboriginal women today. The police are stated to view indigenous people as a community in which the public needs protecting from and instead of providing protection, disregard reports with evidence expressed in the incident where aboriginal women were being reported as missing, but the police chose to believe that the women had instead run away. The author calls for drastic change to be implemented to solve the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women, stating that a collaboration of all levels of the justice system is needed, and that gender equality for aboriginal women must be established while continuing to focus on
Examining the rates of over-incarceration, numerous deaths while in police custody and victim blaming, the author states that the police act as the instigators, perpetrators, and enablers. Groups have prioritized and struggled to publicly provide statistics and garner attention towards the crisis while facing societal racism, victims blaming and government indifference (Amnesty International and the Native Women’s Association of Canada.) Former Prime Minister, Stephen Harper called for a decrease in related funding despite the international attention (including from the UN) towards raising awareness and action demanded. The cases of Tina Fontaine (a fifteen-year-old girl in the care of the state who was overlooked multiple times by the police until she died) and Donald Marshall (the man who spent over a decade of being wrongly incarcerated) provide examples of the little that the justice system has done to protect aboriginal people. The issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada is attributed to the culture of racism and misogyny that is present throughout all institutions. Violence towards aboriginal women has been normalized by this systematic racism. Decades of discrimination and racist practices (such as Starlight Tours) have left aboriginal women fearful of