gender equality

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gender equality social justice

• Aboriginal Rights and the Colonial Canadian State

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• Processes of Decolonization Post WWII
• Canada?
• To be a canadian subject is to be defined, in
  large measure, by the cruelty and injustice of
  colonization?

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Oh Canada

• So, we produce ideas about canadianness at the
  level of identity, and we exist under Canadian
  law as subjects of the state. By participating
  both culturally and legally in canada we
  willingly and unwillingly participate in a
  racist, colonial past and present.
• But isnt this a natural was of ordering people?
• The idea of the nation, and of defining community
  based on shared nationality is a relatively new
  idea, one that didnt really emerge until the
  18th century!
• Example King Louis 14th of France I am the
  state

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Becoming Canada

• Two major legal events mark the creation of the
  state of canada, around which we tell stories
  that become a part of canadian national
  identity.
• The first moment is Confederation in 1867, which
  demarcated federal and provincial territories.
• The Second is the repatriation of the
  constitution in 1982
• The Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
• From the outset, the British had to negotiate
  their desire for a colony, first, and nation,
  later, with the peoples that already lived on
  these lands.

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The Indian Act

• The Indian Act was the principal legal document
  that organizing this relationship between the
  native inhabitants of this land and the
  colonialists.
• The Indian Act become official legislation in
  1876. It outlined the legal relationship between
  first nations people and the new Canadian
  government. They were organized into reserves and
  tribal bands, and were to be an administered
  people, ruled under the Minister of Indian
  Affairs and Northern Development. From the
  outset, this was a forced and contentious legal
  packaging of native peoples.

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Whats in that Indian Act?

• The Indian Act defines who is an "Indian" and the
  legal rights for registered Indians.
• The Indian Act created the category of Indian,
  which meant that the Indian Act was principally
  about outlining who qualified for what. It was a
  buy off and one that employed some pretty
  insidious legal techniques to disenfranchise
  aboriginal people from their homes.
• Three distinct groups are recognized Indians,
  Métis, and Inuit.
• The Indian Act was imposed upon native peoples,
  and redefined their lives indefinitely.
• The Indian Act homogenized aboriginal people.
• Tribes that lived across US and Canadian borders
  were given right to cross borders but this is
  regularly challenged.
• Nomadic peoples were forced into legally set
  boxes or reserves.
• The Indian Act is war by legal document. Such
  documents are essential tools of colonial
  take-over and rule.
• All rights, all notions of citizenship, humanity,
  family, community are framed by the colonizers
  culture/language/laws.

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• In 1982, with the repatriation of the
  constitution, the Indian Act recognized the 8
  major treaties that the First Nations signed. For
  many First Nations people, these treaties were
  problematic and they wanted to renegotiate them.
  But the Canadian government under Trudeau
  reaffirmed these 100 year old treaties that most
  First Nations people found to be problematic,
  treaties that were never fairly negotiated.
• Nonetheless, Trudeau as part of the repatriation
  of the constitution, pushed through the inclusion
  of the treaties in the legislation.
• So, as Canada gained a constitution, aboriginal
  peoples were again marginalized and
  disenfranchised.

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BOTH/AND

• So, when everyone voted yes to the constitution
  act, they also voted yes to re-inscribing and
  reaffirming these racist and problematic legal
  documents that shape life for First Nations
  people.
• Colonizers gained rights and first nations moved
  father away from their efforts to gain rights.
• Today, many tribes are disputing the reserve
  boundaries as they were assigned during treaty
  negotiations.

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The Treaties

• Major Treaties Between First Nations and
  Britain/Canada
• signed after confederation.
• (between 1871 1921) Some of these treaties are
  over 100 years old. Many contain language and
  structure that are racist and that natives
  themselves didnt understand because they didnt
  speak the language. Some treaties were negotiated
  by RCMP (rather than government), with people
  that werent necessarily representing native
  peoples in any kind of democratic way.
• Challenging the treaties became as increasingly
  exhausting process after 1982 because now first
  nations are required to make constitutional
  amendments to change the treaties, and this is a
  very long and arduous process.
• Thus, First Nations have huge legal barriers to
  overcome to update legal documents that they were
  coerced into up to 100 years ago.

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In the Name of the Father

• Even the concept of First Nation is built on a
  European Colonial notion of Nation that forces
  aboriginal peoples to frame their struggles in
  the legal language of the colonizer that sees
  lands as property for ownership, governed by a
  nation state.
• Also notion of family key.
• Prime Minister/Daddy
• Patriarchal State/Family
• Transformed gender relations among native people.

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Sexism in the Indian Act

• Prior to European Colonization of the Americas,
  many First Nations cultures were egalitarian, in
  terms of gender
• though this differed from tribe to tribe
  remember, there was no nationalized idea of
  gender relations for indigenous tribes.
• Missionaries and other Church officials
  discouraged matriarchal or egalitarian aspects of
  first Nation societies and encouraged the
  adoption of European norms of male dominance and
  control of women. Being civilized meant being
  patriarchal.
• With the establishment of Canada in 1867,
  federal Indian Affairs policy reflected a
  patriarchal bias in many areas. For example,
  federal legislation from 1869 to 1985 imposed
  patriarchal rules for determining Indian status,
  band membership and rights to reserve residency.

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Sexism in the Indian Act

• colonization processes have taken their toll on
  all Aboriginal peoples but perhaps their greatest
  toll on women. Aboriginal women face the double
  discrimination of racism and sexism, which are
  fostered and perpetuated through statutory
  mechanisms such as the Indian Act.

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Bill C-31 (Amendment to the Indian Act)

• (usually referred to as) Bill C-31
• The pre-legislation name of the 1985 Act to Amend
  the Indian Act. This act eliminated certain
  discriminatory provisions of the Indian Act,
  including the section that resulted in Indian
  women losing their Indian status and membership
  when they married Non-Status men. Bill C-31
  enabled people affected by the discriminatory
  provisions of the old Indian Act to apply to have
  their Indian status and membership restored.
• Go to the document.

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Nation and Gender

• Nation states are formed through profoundly
  gendered ideologies.
• Gender inequality can be changed at the level of
  the state legislation, but we continue to impose
  notions of citizenship, family, nationality that
  are racist, gendered, and classed.

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Colonialism by Child-Welfare Policy
The Ultimate Betrayal
Claiming and Re-Claiming Cultural IdentityTamara
Kulusic

• There are two key systemic practices of the
  Canadian state that have operated through certain
  understandings of family. These were aimed at
  assimilating aboriginal peoples into a national
  identity.
• In truth, states are rarely interested in
  assimilating first nations people, but rather of
  killing their strength and self-identity slowly
  but brutally.
• Residential Schools
• The 60s Scoop

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• From the beginning of the colonial invasion until
  the 1970s, the government of canada attempted
  to force first nations societies to assimilate
  into the white, colonial, patriarchal nation
  state. p. 24
• Education was key! a network of Church run
  residential schools was established in the mid
  1800s. 24 READ
• In what has come to be known as the sixties
  scoop, thousands of Aboriginal children across
  Canada were removed from their communities in the
  1960s and placed in care of white parents through
  adoption and foster case programs. p. 23
• In 1959 only one percent of children in
  government care were Native. By the end of the
  1960s, however, this had increased to thirty to
  forty percent of all children in care being
  Native. p. 25
• What were the reasons for apprehending Aboriginal
  children?
• What are some of the complications of these
  adoption practices as outlined by Kulusic?
• Poem

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Anna HunterFor and By Men Colony, Gender and
Aboriginal Self-Government

• Aboriginal culture has been permanently changed
  and altered by processes of colonization that
  were deeply racist, and patriarchal. There is no
  going back.
• For this reason, First Nations people must use a
  variety of tactics to try and regain the health
  of their communities after projects of genocide,
  and oppressive assimilation. There are many
  different ideas, different approaches, different
  positions, and different strategies for doing
  this.
• First nations people are as diverse as any other
  group. There is no homogenous tribe, or
  homogenous group of indigenous people. They are
  forced to behave and think of themselves as one
  because of colonial nation-state ideology.
• Under these conditions, the notion of Aboriginal
  self-government has developed in and through
  European patriarchal influence.
• Hunter, in this piece, is arguing for a
  reconceptualization of Aboriginal that
  self-government that unites the theory of
  self-government with the practice. This means
  that the communities would be self-governed by
  all of its members, women and men.

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Aboriginal Self-Government - SOVEREIGNTY

• Aboriginal self-government includes the right to
  make economic and social policy, administer
  taxes, pass laws, manage land and natural
  resources and negotiate with other governments.
  It means giving Aboriginal people the right to
  heal their communities, and determine their
  destinies.
• Aboriginal self-governmentpeople. p. 107
• Why is self-government the way to approach
  aboriginal rights for Hunter?
• How can this happen within a nation state model
  of Canada?
• What are some of the challenges of
  self-government?
• Why is gender-based analysis in Aboriginal
  relations so important?
• Example Child Welfare policies How can
  implementing the mainstream models of child
  protection without tailoring the programs and
  policies to the particular needs of the community
  and its members be considered progressive?
  (110). What is Hunter speaking to here? Hint
  Internalized colonialism.

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• By now a picture of the formation of Canada as a
  nation-state with strong racist and sexist
  assumptions and policies emerges from the
  seemingly separate pieces of historyWe may thus
  come to see racism and sexism as the very
  foundations of Canadian nationalism. Roxanna Ng

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Keepers of the FireChristine Welsh