In Wally Oppal’s “Forsaken” report on the Missing Women, he identifies that “a disproportionate number of the missing and murdered women were Aboriginal: while 3% of BC’s population consists of Aboriginal women, they comprise approximately 33% of the missing and murdered women from the DTES” (94). With an over-represented proportion of Aboriginal women involved in the sex industry, Oppal addresses a number of important questions regarding the broader colonial process that must be factored in to understanding this imbalance, which is often not addressed in the dominant narratives portrayed in the media.
What social and historical circumstances have led to this over-representation? Furthermore, do life narratives offer a means of counter-framing these dominant narratives to speak to the broader colonial process at work? The intersection of Oppal’s commission inquiry report and life narrative offer important considerations in examining this broader historical context.
Oppal addresses the conditions that led many aboriginal women to the Downtown Eastside as part of the broader colonial legacy in Canada. Specifically, the Indian Residential School Policy that systematically removed Aboriginal children from their homes as a means of attempting to assimilate them into Canadian society has had lasting devastating impacts on First Nations communities. Even though most of the aboriginal women involved in sex work did not directly attend residential schools, the inter-generational impacts are widespread and largely misunderstood.
A key example of this is the assault on the family unit that resulted from removing children from their homes. Because many residential school students failed to grow up in a nurturing familial environment as they were forcibly removed from their homes and families, “as adults, many of them lack adequate parenting skills and, having only experienced abuse, in turn abuse their children and family members” (Indigenous foundations). This has led to cyclical physical, sexual and emotional abuse within First Nations families, and subsequently unstable familial environments for future generations.
This example illustrates that even if efforts like the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission have exposed the vast human rights abuses that residential school students faced, these effects have perpetuated inter-generationally as well. Therefore, misinformed Canadians or media representations often fail to make the connection of this past oppressive policy of the previous century to the current issues that face Aboriginals, one being prostitution.
As a result of this disconnect, the portrayal of Aboriginal women in sex work by the media and members of the uninformed public place the blame on the women, often portraying them as childlike and dependent on the state. Jiwani and Young’s work illustrates this, indicating that media often portrays “aboriginals who are sex workers as deserving of violence” and “degenerate bodies” that society views as disposable (900). By portraying these women as victims or as deserving of their fate, this places the burden on the sex workers, rather than the historical, colonial circumstances that have led to issues of isolation, abuse, and the destruction of their families.
While these dominant narratives are often misinformed, I think life narrative writing offers great potential in counter-framing some of these representations. As Maggie de Vries has done with Missing Sarah, by drawing attention to the media’s portrayal of issues like sex work and by telling stories that are often marginalized or simply not told, life narrative has the potential to change the conversation or at least counter the dominant discourse. While I do think these life narratives require the right historical moment or potentially the cultural capital for people to listen, there is certainly potential to change people’s attitudes towards sex workers, both in general and in relation to aboriginal women.
Works Cited
Jiwani, Yasmin, and Mary Lynn Young. “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Communication 31 (2006): 895. Print.
Oppal, Wally. “Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry Volume I.” .. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2014. <http://www.ag.gov.bc.ca/public_inquiries/docs/Forsaken-ES.pdf>.
“The Residential School System.” Indigenous Foundations UBC . N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/the-residential-school-system.html>.