Issues Related to the High Number of Murdered and Missing Women in Canada

Isn't that interesting?

I went looking online for a copy of the report by the Coordinating Committee of Senior Officials Missing Women Working Group - "Issues Related to the High Number of Murdered and Missing Women in Canada" (MMWC) which was published in September 2010. It was - for a bit - available on the Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat website - but no more.

A few links of interest remain, however:

• There is a (very) short synopsis posted by the Ministry of the Attorney General in British Columbia


• here is a brief discussion which occured in the House of Commons on October 26, 2010


• and here is my personal favourite - the one in which the Canadian government announces in a press release that they care about violence against Aboriginal women in Canada and are prepared to throw $10 million at it.

So generous - except for the ~minor~ little details that they don't mention - which if one reads - critically - the press release, the above mentioned report - MMWC - in conjunction with any of the research reports provided by the Sisters in Spirit Initiative - jump out relatively quickly.

Things like the fact that while the SIS research is extremely nuanced, and recognizes that the only commonalities between all of the missing & murdered women they are researching is that they are 1. Aboriginal 2. women 3. missing or murdered 4. in Canada. (And they do note concern about non-Aboriginal women, or about Aboriginal women who die or are harmed through other causes, also - but since those are not the subject of this particular research project, they are not included in the research database)

The only commonalities between the people directly responsible for their deaths/disappearances are ...well, none, actually, beyond the fact that they were presumably in Canada long enough to commit crimes here. Offenders are not all male, nor all Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal, nor are they all serial offenders.

The report of the MMWC, on the other hand, considers Aboriginal women who are missing or murdered in Canada and who are most often

• living in poverty
• homeless, transient, and lacking in social networks
• addicted to alcohol or drugs
• involved in sex work or other dangerous practices such as hitchhiking
• experiencing mental health issues (MWWG 3)

And the offenders about which they are concerned do share a ~few~ commonalities. They are

• male
• serial sex offenders
• predators
• follow a pattern of repeated abduction, infliction of assault, degredation, torture and murder.

So - we can ~throw out~ all of those women who are not killed by strangers - that's all but approximately 17% of cases where the offenders are known, using the SIS research. We can ~throw out~ all the cases where the women are not involved in sex work (about half of the women about whom enough is known to make this determination). And hey, lets throw out any one-offs, also, because we are only interested in serial offenders.

Another very important difference between the Sisters in Spirit report(s) and the MMWG is that one is very clearly in favour of an approach with attention paid to being both PROACTIVE and REACTIVE strategies to reduce the number of missing or murdered Aboriginal women in Canada, while the other - in spite of the occassional nod towards the need to prevent these crimes in the first place, is quite clearly concerned to a very large extent with the REACTIVE side of things. Care to guess which organization advocates for which approach? Too easy?

The goals of the MWWG were to:

• Share information and expertise with personnel across Canada who are responsible for identifying, investigating and prosecuting these cases
• Develop strategies and proposals that would assist in addressing current barriers that hinder the resolution of cases involving victims of serial predators
• Promote the development of resources and training to assist personnel who are responsible for handing cases of missing and murdered persons
• Ensure that the Criminal Code and other relevant federal and provincial legislation provide the best tools for investigating and prosecuting cases of serial killers who target marginalized persons (3)

See any proactive approaches in there? Yeah, me neither. Training and changes to the Criminal Code are all well and good - and one could, I suppose, make an argument that these are proactive - but they are proactive only in the sense that they set up strategies that can be used when "these cases" happen - none of these are proactive in the sense of gee, I dunno, looking for root causes and strategies to ensure that women don't wind up missing or murdered in the first place?

But of course, we are talking about people who are up there in the judicial - and especially policing - system - of course they are focussing on cases - and so they should be. Their work, however, does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that replaces the work of the Sisters in Spirit Iniative's research or victim support work, however.

Absolutely nothing...

And yet Harper & co would have you believe that while the Sisters in Spirit did good work, they are all set to handle it from here.

Even if that were true, I would have a problem with it. We are supposedly living in a post-colonial society.

In a post-colonial society, if a group of Aboriginal peoples have proven themselves capable of researching and working on a problem that impacts on Aboriginal peoples - and motivated to keep doing so - does the state swoop in and take it over? Really?

Honestly, it seems just a ~little~ ... okay ... a LOT... colonial to me. Am I, perhaps, missing something?

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Lee-Ann Chyoweh-Pawis - Still Missing?

Awhile ago, on Facebook, I joined a group called Red Circle Alert, which was

formed by (Red Power United - Native Rights Movement) to try and help Native Families and Communities find Missing Friends and Family Members.

I have, over the course of my studies, become increasingly aware of, and concerned about, issues of violence against Aboriginal peoples - and especially women - in Canada. It upsets me. I do share the alerts as they are posted or sent to me by email, and I always hope that the person will be found safely. Some are.

Tyeshia Jones was not. Tyeshia was 18 years old and a member of the Cowichan Tribes. She went missing on 22 Jan. 2011; her body was found less than a week later, and autopsy has since confirmed that she was a victim of homicide. This was not a woman living a dangerous life-style. She had been to a party earlier in the evening, and was walking to a store to meet up with a friend from whom she had become separated. She never made it.

Aboriginal women are far too vulnerable to violence in Canada, especially in our western provinces. Although they make up only 3% of the total female population, they represent approximately 10% of the total number of female homicides. They are, too, 3 times more likely than non-Aboriginal women to be assaulted or killed by strangers. And clearance rates for murders of Aboriginal women in Canada are lower. In 2010, for example, charges were laid in 53% of cases involving Aboriginal women, compared to 84% of cases involving non-Aboriginal women.

And contrary to popular (mis)conception, not all of the women and girls who are murdered or missing in Canada have anything at all to do with the sex trade. Certainly, women who are involved in that life are at increased risk - and in some provinces, Aborginal women are seriously over-represented - interestingly enough, a very high percentage of these women are women who were removed from their home communities & families (the so-called Sixties Scoop is a misnomer - the practice of scooping is alive and well, and Aboriginal children are hugely over-represented in foster care and facilities for youth) - but before I get off on another tangent ... in cases where such information is known, turns out that only about 50% of missing or murdered women were, in fact, participating in such risk behaviours.... and even if that stat were higher, that would not negate, or mitigate, the problem.

There is a great deal more information available in the Sisters In Spirit Iniative 2010 Research Report. And there's yet another tangent that I have already been off once and will no doubt visit again .... I am so incredibly angry that the Canadian government has cut funding for the Sisters In Spirit Iniative! Here's a quote that just makes my blood boil:

Con MP Shelly Glover, Parliamentary Secretary for Indian and Northern Affairs :

"That project was finished. Don’t mix apples and oranges. That project
was finished, now we’re working with them to pursue other projects."

I have sent my letter off to a number of politicians - for all the good it does. Did get some (inane) responses though... but that's a topic for another tangent post.

Anyway ... I really do need to get back to my reading - next up is the Coordinating Committee of Senior Officials Missing Women Working Group. (2010) “Issues Related to the High Number of Murdered and Missing Women in Canada” ...which I have read enough already to know that I shall be doing some more writing about that too...

but before I shut up, I wanted to tell you what I actually set out to write about today when I first mentioned the Red Circle Alert - and that is a young lady by the name of Lee-Ann Chyoweth-Pawis.

She is missing... has been since June 2005, at which time she was 17 years old. And she went missing from Midland Ontario - a town about 10km from me. I lived here then - how is it that I have never once heard about her disappearance? I read newspapers, watch the news, see posters... lived here then... the fact that I cannot recall hearing a word makes me unhappy.

As far as I can tell, Lee-Ann is still missing: she is listed on several registries of missing persons, but does not come up at all in a search of Google news. It makes me very sad. Tomorrow, I think I will call the contact number and see if they will tell me if she is still missing - if so, will update this blog, and at least submit the info to the Red Circle Alert group.

I wish there was more that I could do....

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Theft of Indian land ... simply not true

...or is it? It all depends on whose version of events you want to go with. This week, a guest editorial in the Midnorth Monitor shared his particular (white, Eurocentric, male) version of the Robinson treaties. I won't post it here, because I'm not too interested in giving that sort of thinking a boost, but here's the link.

And here is my response, which I today submitted to the Midnorth Monitor.

I was interested to read Mr. Best’s perceptions of the Robinson Huron and Robinson Superior treaties; there are many other perceptions and interpretations available, of course, including, even, those on the Canadian government’s own Indian and Northern Affairs site, which offer entirely different depictions of the process and of the violence and hostilities that preceded it. Rather than offering a study of the many different viewpoints of the history of these events, however, I thought I might draw attention to a few key facts.

First of all, if the Natives involved truly, as Mr. Best himself writes “felt they had no other option,” how is it possible that they also “freely” signed the treaty, as he claims? These two claims, obviously, are in complete opposition to each other. Also, he argues that “it was territory that the Indians had never, in any real sense, effectively possessed in the first place.” And here we have a lovely demonstration of the sort of white-guy colonialism that we here in enlightened Canada have supposedly moved beyond in these supposedly post-colonial times.

It is true, of course, that Aboriginal people in Canada and elsewhere around the world, had – and have – different principles when it comes to the ownership of land and resources. In keeping with those principles, land is not subject to ownership but rather to collective and co-operative use. So no, the Aboriginal peoples of this land did not write up deeds, or build fences and put up “No Trespassing” signs. They did not, by colonial standards, “effectively” possess the land. But when are we going to wrap our (white, Eurocentric, male) heads around the fact that our (white, Eurocentric, male) ways are not the only ways? Aboriginal law was centred around principles of collective collaboration and cooperation; we (white, Eurocentric, male) societies favour individualism and adversarial and punitive systems. Mr. Best, apparently, is rather too fond of his (white, Eurocentric, male) principles and systems to consider that perhaps there might be other ways of interpreting history – and even more importantly – other ways of doing and being.

When I look at the horrendous damage our (white, Eurocentric, male) ways cause not only Aboriginal peoples in Canada, but also women, the poor, and many, many others, and the environment as well, I often wonder why we even bother to cling so desperately to our (white, Eurocentric, male) ways. It is time, I think, to consider unclenching our fingers and challenging our (white, Eurocentric, male) ways ....because they are simply not true.

Don't know if they'll print it, but hey...what can it hurt?

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Canadian Outrage

A couple of weeks ago, in one of my classes, we watched a film called American Outrage, about the Dann sisters, elderly Shoshone women whose animals got in the way of a gold mine. The US government subjected them to repeated harassment, charging them with trespassing (on SHOSHONE land as per the Treaty of Ruby Valley) and rounding up and stealing their stock, and spending millions of dollars in their campaign against them. The Dann sisters fought back - took it all the way to the Supreme Court and the United Nations....and even though they won - over and over again - nothing much has changed. Almost 30 years of fighting for what is RIGHT. Ludicrous.

I wish I could say that such things don't happen in Canada. After all, we Canadians have apologized to our native peoples, eh? So we must be ever so much better than the U.S. right?

NOT.

We apologized...but that doesn't mean that we have stopped behaving badly.

How long before we apologize for depriving the Algonquins of Barriere Lake of the money the Canadian government has been withholding since 2001? For once again imposing our will on them and engaging in deliberate attempts to undermine them at every turn?

When are we going to apologize to our missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada? We cut the funding for the Sisters in Spirit Initiative research - do you know why? I do. The same reason we are ending the long form census in Canada.

The Canadian government does not want us to know how many Aboriginal women go missing, or how many children live in poverty, or how many Canadian women work without wages or....

If we don't know about any of the problems they do not exist. The Harper government strategy for everything. Vanish the statistics. Ta dah! Problem solved. Magic!!!!

We can point to the apology that Harper made to our Aboriginal peoples all we want - it means NOTHING if the abuse does not stop.

It is not enough to close the residential schools and apologize if we turn around and find other ways to abuse our Aboriginal peoples. Five new prisons! And Aboriginal peoples are the fastest growing population in our prisons - a trend that we EXPECT to continue according to everything I have read.

Why do we expect it to continue? Why is it so acceptable that even the Human Rights Commission, in their 2005 report "A Matter of Rights", just presents it as fact, without even questioning it, or, gee, I don't know - maybe suggesting that THIS IS A PROBLEM?

Aboriginal people are already over-represented in our prison populations - and now we're planning to build new prisons to lock up more of them and that's okay cuz hey, we only promised to end residential schools.

We can talk about decolonization all we want - it is only talk. And it is an outrage.

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