Indigenous Studies: The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women of Canada - Coursework Example

INDIGENOUS INJUSTICE (The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women of Canada) of (affiliation) INTRODUCTION Justice is defined as the fair treatment, maintenance, and administration especially in the adjustment and adjudication of contrasting or conflicting claims. Justice is a pretty elusive legal concept because what is considered fair by one party can be taken as injustice by another party. It can be interpreted in a number of ways despite the existence of legal standards in most civilized countries of the world. Justice can be ephemeral in the sense merited rewards and punishments is subject to change in view of social norms and political realities extant at a given time period but as time goes by what is thought of as justice may not be so fair and just after all. Modern democratic society aspires to render equitable justice at all times. However, this might not be possible all the time due to certain constraints which impinge on the delivery of just and equitable laws. The implementation of justice or equity can be haphazard, biased, prejudiced and discriminatory whenever democratic ideals are compromised. Democracy is supposed to be the rule by the majority but on the reverse side of this principle, the minority in a society can be subjected to various forms of injustice. The lack of justice can happen despite the best intentions because people can subvert the legal system to their own hidden agenda or interests. Injustice happens everywhere but it has become more widespread and rampant due to a dwindling of resources. When people compete for scarce natural resources and other necessities in life, it is inevitable conflicts will occur. When this happens, it is those in minority groups who will suffer because their democratic space and political rights are violated in favor of the greater majority. As they say, democracy is a form of oppression. It is the tyranny of the majority on the minority who are outvoted in any democratic electoral exercise and often marginalized. The United Nations has taken cognizance of the fact that certain groups are at risk for marginalization in society. These groups include people belonging to an ethnic minority, those in the female gender, the weak and the old, the very young, the uneducated, and other people who by their various or unique circumstance happen not to belong to the dominant majority group. In these instances, it is supposed to be the duty of the sate to afford them protection by the passage of appropriate laws and the full implementation of these laws for their benefit and survival. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has been considered as a huge political and social triumph by representatives of indigenous peoples worldwide. This declaration was adopted in September 13, 2007 by a large majority of the member countries (143 voted for it) but surprisingly enough, four countries namely the United States of America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand voted against (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2015). These four countries belong to the First World (with their advanced economies) but also happened to have a significant or sizable number of its population having indigenous people belonging to various ethnic tribal groups. The four nations are now controlled by the dominant white majority but history shows that its indigenous peoples had dominion over these countries before the white colonizers came along to take over their lands. There are many documented cases of human rights violations perpetrated against groups of indigenous peoples. The usual cause is the fight for control of natural resources such as water rights, forest products (timber, grazing lands, etc.), mining for precious minerals and crude oil, fishing rights in ancestral territories, and the construction of giant dams. Development for sake of progress often brings conflict into indigenous communities intent on protecting their rights. Expulsion, expropriation, oppression, violence, and intimidation are often the tools used by majority groups to control and rein in the demands of indigenous peoples for their rights to be heard and respected. Indigenous groups try to voice out their concerns through protest marches, sit-ins, and other forms of political protest such as the staging of plays in public theaters in order to raise awareness of the general public to their plight (Alvarez, Kovacs, & Ortuzar 2015). Their general idea is to muster enough numbers to force politicians and authorities to make amends or ensure survival and safety of indigenous peoples whose livelihood and lifestyles are threatened. Indigenous peoples today can be considered as an endangered species, so to speak. The plight of these at-risk groups is manifested in various ways but the causes are usually the more common ones such as poverty, exclusion, and vulnerability resulting from their marginalization. Decades of government policy, official neglect, and social apathy have made indigenous groups particularly vulnerable to the machinations of certain groups belonging to the white majority in trying to take away their indigenous rights, precious lands, and human dignity. Impoverishment rendered these people extremely susceptible to exploitation and attack (Amnesty International, 2014). However, sub-groups within vulnerable groups are often specially targeted for attack. This situation happens because on top of racism and discrimination, sub-groups such as women and young females are specifically targeted due to sexism. Tendency for male dominance and sexist stereotyping are potent factors for perpetuating a vicious cycle of violence against the female gender. Intimidation, violence, and even murder are committed against females resulting in a worldwide phenomenon known as femicide. The practice of femicide in some countries are even embedded in local cultures, social and religious beliefs, or even political acquiescence. Femicide is the deliberate killing of females, alternatively called as gynecide. It means all human beings who belong to the weaker sex are intentionally massacred for various reasons. Potential victims include adult women, young girls, or even female babies, infants or fetuses. There is an inherent bias by killers against the female gender which predisposes them to kill females. Various reasons are cited such as an intense hatred of women (misogyny), in cases of domestic violence (against a spouse or against the cruel or overly strict mother), war situations where an invading or a victorious army targets women and girls only by committing rape, or in criminal syndicates where women are often erroneous suspected as potential informants to the police, and therefore need to be silenced permanently and killed to prevent them from snitching. The common thread in femicide is the killing of females by males simply because they are female. Femicide is understood under the context of gender politics (Radford & Russell, 1992). Femicide is a gender-selective type of violence that often includes the rape, torture, and mutilation of the bodies of victims. Other than misogyny, there are other motives for the killing of females which includes pleasure, anger, revenge, malice, jealousy, arguments, separation, sexual assault, robbery, and the exuberant feeling of finally being dominant and triumphant over a female (for males who felt they had been oppressed by females like a mother, sister, wife, etc.). The reasons why this is so can be quite varied ranging from gender bias, misogyny (hatred of women and girls), cultural practices, social traditions, economic reasons, sexual exploitation (in human trafficking and modern slavery by prostitution), and inheritance of the family properties or assets (primogeniture or preference for the first-born male as in ancient royalty). Whatever is the real reason, femicide is a widespread global phenomenon that rightfully raises concerns. Researchers Gaspar de Alba and Guzman have advanced the idea of femicide as a form of gendercide because the only common denominator of the victims is their gender (Gaspar de Alba & Guzman, 2010). Social activists and representatives of indigenous people have resorted to calling femicide as a modern variant of silent genocide which had largely escaped attention of world leaders who are in the best position to stop and eradicate this violent practice. An example of the urgent nature of this crime is the sheer number of women killed in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez in recent years. Many of the female victims of Ciudad Juarez are actually not just prostitutes but females who dared to be independent by seeking paid work outside the traditional home. This work gives these women a limited financial independence and the males in society felt threatened by women who have money and now harder to control. It is a natural reaction for the male killers to target these women who often put on make-up and lip stick to signify their independence but again, they are not prostitutes. The women in La Frontera (referring to the frontier or the border) mentioned in the book are victims of this extreme hatred or misogyny. Unfortunately, cases of violence against women also happen frequently in Canada. This is attested by the sheer number of documented cases as well those cases which were not reported to the police at all by families of the victims. There are many instances of missing and murdered women in Canada and many cases have not been solved by the police yet. Women are rightfully apprehensive about their safety but what is quite alarming is the disproportionate number of the indigenous women who ended up as victims. Aboriginal women and girls go missing at the rate of four times than the general female population. Approximately 1,200 of them had disappeared mysteriously during the years 1980 up to 2012, according to the Royal Canadian Police. Highly-publicized cases include the so-called “Highway of Tears” murders that had the victims usually travelling along the 500-mile stretch of Highway 16 traversing between Prince George and Prince Rupert in the province of British Columbia. The disappearances and murders occurred over a period from 1969 until 2011 and official police count of victims stood at 18 only although aboriginal sources indicate the missing persons count can be as high as 40 people. The case of the missing marginalized women of Downtown Eastside in Vancouver also attracted the media attention it deserved because of the final report of a commission tasked to look into these murders of women who were incidentally also in the forefront of activist political organizing acts (Bourgeois, 2012). These criminal cases of violence against women, in particular against women who are indigenous or aborigines, are numerous enough and frequent enough to warrant a media campaign based on the hash tag of “Am I Next?” to raise public awareness and elicit action. All these cases of violence against indigenous women raised an alarm among the tribes of aboriginal people in Canada today because the pattern shows a deliberate attempt of targeting. In other words, these crimes were not random but rather form part of an overall environment of racism and sexism. The crimes form a broader and more widespread than previously thought kind of pattern of discrimination against indigenous women in Canada. At this point, speculation abounds as to the real intentions of the perpetrators and what they hoped to achieve with acts of violence and intimidation. Even the Organization of American States (OAS) through its Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has taken cognizance of the problem and the need for a solution from the highest levels of government in a final report dated December 21, 2014 in order to force the government of Canada to take official action (IACHR, 2014). Critics of the government point the lack of enthusiasm in investigating these murders. It has been pointed earlier how government policies and official apathy contributed greatly to these cases of missing and murdered indigenous women, in particular women from British Columbia. Local police units are likewise guilty of not taking appropriate actions to prevent and eliminate these crimes against indigenous women because they are under-trained in investigative protocols and accountability mechanisms to properly keep track of all these cases. Additionally, critics of the haphazard investigations posit the idea of systemic racism when aboriginal women are the victims. Media outlets were not spared as they assign lesser news value to these crimes. What is happening in British Columbia is chillingly similar to what happened in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. All these crimes form a larger global pattern of femicide that over the years endured changes in government administrations, social upheavals, and political events in almost every country of the world. It is obvious based on these cases of disappearances of indigenous women that Canada is not immune from this silent form of modern-day genocide. The lack of a sense of urgency from the Canadian government to solve these crimes and bring perpetrators to justice is not really surprising considering that Canada is one of only four countries in the world which did not sign the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada is supposed to be an epitome of liberal democracy, racial equality, assimilation and progressive economics but this paper will show how all the democratic principles and ideals esteemed by most peoples in the world are absent in Canada with regards to its many aboriginal women who continue to suffer from government neglect and political apathy. Representatives of indigenous peoples have taken up the cause of aboriginal women who disappear without a trace. References Alvarez, N., Kovacs, S., & Ortuzar, J. (2015). No mas! Actions/acciones against femicide in the Americas. Canadian Theatre Review, (abstract), 161. Amnesty International – Canada (2014). No more stolen sisters. Retrieved March 22, 2015 from http://www.amnesty.ca/our-work/campaigns/no-more-stolen-sisters Bourgeois, R. (2012, December 18). Is anyone listening to the forsaken, marginalized women of Vancouver? Retrieved March 26, 2015 from http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/robyn-bourgeois/missing-women-inquiry-reaction_b_2319073.html Gaspar de Alba, A., & Guzman, G. (2010). Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera. Austin, TX, USA: University of Texas Press. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Missing and murdered indigenous women in British Columbia, Canada. Retrieved March 20, 2015 from http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/indigenous-women-bc-canada-en.pdf Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (2015). United Nations Human Rights: Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Retrieved March 24, 2015 from http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IPeoples/Pages/Declaration.aspx Radford, J., & Russell, D. (1992). Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. Independence, KY, USA: Twayne Publishers. Read More