Despite having a white Canadian mother and visiting my grandparents in Ontario every summer as a child, growing up in the British international schooling system meant my exposure to the genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada came much later in life. I heard my first land acknowledgment at the age of 22 after moving to Toronto from the States and remember thinking, how have I lived in North America for 8 years and never been taught to consider the histories of the lands I’ve lived on? That was six years ago now and I have to admit I’m on a continuing journey to learn and unlearn what I’ve come to know about the tragic history of settler colonialism in Canada as well as the ongoing violence and genocide of Indigenous people across North America.
This week’s resources were heavy and very difficult to get through, and while the Canadian context is the focus of this class, I wanted to try and apply some of the concepts from the final report of the National Inquiry into Canada’s list of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls to a beautiful and inspiring documentary I recently watched called The Last of the Seawomen. In particular, I was inspired by the weight that was given to stories throughout the report and wanted to reflect on the emphasis that is placed on the necessity of relationships, reciprocity, and interconnectedness.
The documentary follows a group of older women Indigenous to Jeju Island in South Korea who are Haenyeos, also known as “real life mermaids” who dive without oxygen to harvest seafood. They are now in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, are mostly descendants of previous Haenyeos, and have been committed to the traditional practice since from a young age. The film documents the community, camaraderie, and friendship among the women, as they fight to keep the profession alive and advocate against Japan’s decision to release radioactive waste from Fukushima into the sea.
For the Haenyeo women, having clean oceans is essential to their cultural practice: a polluted ocean means less marine life, contaminated seafood, health risks, and threats to their livelihood. Their rights are connected to the rights of water and marine life, and each living thing holds a vital role in sustaining the circle of life that forms their tradition. Unsurprisingly, close relationships among the Haenyeos are also highlighted throughout the film and can be interpreted as “spaces of engagement” in which women of varying ages exchange knowledge on the various ways of knowing. As they fight to keep the Haenyeo tradition alive, the older women leaders work with a local school to provide training to the new generation, connect with a young duo of Haenyeo Tik-Tokers, and work with local activists to align around a unified goal of protecting their right to culture, tradition, and clean oceans. The community continually works to keep each other safe, both in and outside of the water.
With the devastating realities of war, violence, and conflict around the world, it’s been difficult for me to stay hopeful and think creatively about some of the realistic and tangible ways forward. And despite the week’s themes being some of the heaviest so far, the tenacity and spirit of the Haenyeos in the documentary had such strong qualities of community, determination, and interconnectedness with nature that I hope to be able to embody moving forward.
Question:
Finding Dawn was released in 2006, yet the story feels as relevant today as it probably was almost 20 years ago, especially with all the cases involving Downtown Eastside. Have there been any major, or tangible changes since, either to policy or on a social level, to bring justice to the missing and murdered Indigenous women?
Keeping in mind the impact of intergenerational trauma, to what extent, if at all, are the families of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women currently supported by the Canadian government?
This week’s content was heavy and challenging to work through, as it is most weeks in this course, however as usual I was grateful to be challenged in this way. Having difficult conversations, reading about atrocities committed by the government, these are parts of unlearning settler colonialism when it is so very entrenched in our lives here. Strangely enough, while reading I was reminded of a quote from a ‘Star Wars’ show I recently watched, where a character has created a manifesto for rebellion against oppression, “Freedom is a pure idea, it occurs spontaneously and without instruction… the need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear”. While this quote refers to the fabricated oppression of a fantasy world, the themes can be applied to our context here today. While reading through the Reclaiming Power and Place report, I couldn’t help but see how many systems and institutions the British and Canadian governments have continuously created and reformed explicitly to achieve the goal of continuing the systematic genocide of Indigenous people. Legislation existed with the express intent to destroy lives, culture, and knowledge. The RCMP was literally formed as a means of attacking Indigenous people and today, this institution is relied upon for the protection of Canadians domestically. This is dumbfounding to me. Reading through this report and watching the Finding Dawn documentary reiterated 2 important themes to me; that colonization is a process not an event (one which continues to this day) and that history is not just history, that we carry it with us always. As Canadians, we have to come to terms with the fact that the security and prosperity we enjoy today was paid for with the lives of the Indigenous people of Turtle Island.
From an academic perspective, some ideas that I was reminded of throughout this content were Fanon’s theory of double consciousness, that marginalized people are forced to not only live through their own perspectives, but through the perspective of those in power, in this case the colonizer. The Report identifies this idea explicitly, although using the terminology of ‘Two Eyed Seeing’ rather than double consciousness. I’m thinking about the emotional labour and invisible colonial violence this settler colonial imposed worldview puts on Indigenous bodies. The other theory I found myself connecting to this content was what Ian Hacking calls ‘Making Up People’ (sometimes referred to as dynamic nominalism). Hacking uses a ’10 engine’ framework:
1. Count!
2. Quantify!
3. Create Norms!
4. Correlate!
5. Medicalise!
6. Biologise!
7. Geneticise!
8. Normalise!
9. Bureaucratise!
10. Reclaim our identity!
With which he discusses the way institutions attempt to quantify, group, and flatten individuals. I found myself noticing all of the engines in action throughout history as I was reading/watching. Last week I reflected on the meaning of language, whether there was any power in naming a thing, questioning if naming and language are tools of action. This week I am inclined to say that language is a powerful tool of action which can be used to harm or help. Reading about movements like Butterflies in Spirit, or the growing conversation around MMIWG2S inspire hope in a change towards identity reclamation and Indigenous autonomy coming out of centuries of settler colonial oppression.
Honestly, this is a very incoherent reflection, I threw a lot of incomplete ideas out there, but at the moment I have many thoughts and few conclusions.
Question
If the government not only fails to protect but systematically attacks marginalized populations, how can we begin to move towards change?
Reflecting on the readings, media, and topics explored this week, I continue to find myself caught between feeling hopeful and feeling like a cynic. Similar to what I have been feeling throughout the last six weeks, there is a persistent feeling of frustration. Generations of Indigenous people, specifically women, have fought for their rights, their autonomy and their humanity to be recognized, often facing overwhelming indifference, hostility, or violence. And the response that has been generated by these women contributes to the undeniable intergenerational harm caused by these long-standing injustices.
Listening to Sisters by the Halluci Nation instilled a sense of light in me, that joy and hope still exist in communities that have failed time and time again. The music was vibrant, full of energy and filled with life, conveying a sense of power and reclaimed space. Spaces where women are typically victimized and preyed upon, like the club, for example. (side note – this really reminded me of the short film A Red Girl’s Reasoning by Pauline Johnson, where an Indigenous woman preys on a man the way she would have been preyed on, reclaiming that power). The Halluci Nation graciously and powerfully reminded us that resilience is essential in the face of oppression, showing us that even in spaces where harm has been and can be inflicted, life and hope can endure.
Finding Dawn, on the other hand, fuels the cynicism within me by highlighting how little attention has been given to the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. As the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women increased, the more these women were reduced to statistics. In politics and public policy, statistics are often used to validate arguments. Still, I think that the danger with this is that people are reduced to numbers and dehumanized even after they’re gone. Personal stories and lived experiences are so critical in creating real change. However, they’re often overlooked in favour of impersonal data.
From this documentary, I was reminded that the lack of resources for Indigenous women exacerbates these problems. Limited options often force them into situations that lead to further harm—whether it’s substance use, sex work, or other harmful circumstances. And we’re left with a system built by and for the privileged, providing few solutions that actually address the needs of Indigenous women and people.
Mavis Windsor, a Knowledge Keeper, emphasizes that the solution to ending violence against Indigenous women lies within their communities. However, how can these communities make a change when their voice isn’t seriously considered? Consulting seems like the best solution. Consulting with Indigenous groups is essential, but “consulting” can’t just be a formality. It has to be intentional, and it needs to ask Indigenous people what they want and need rather than imposing solutions from those who don’t have lived experience. Indigenous communities have been trying to address the damage caused by non-Indigenous institutions for years. However, there is still a lack of responsibility and accountability from those who inflicted the harm.
This raises important questions: Who is responsible for fixing this? Shouldn’t it be the systems that caused or perpetuated the violence in the first place? What would it look like if we truly worked together to address these issues?
There’s also the question of how we, as a society, continue to ignore Indigenous people’s deep connection to the land. In a world facing climate change, why aren’t we taking their knowledge more seriously? The wisdom embedded in their culture and their non-violent, respectful approach to the land could offer invaluable lessons.
In the end, I am left feeling torn. Cynicism is easy when you look at how much has been lost and how slowly change seems to come. But at the same time, there is a lot we can learn from Indigenous peoples—about love, hope, family, spirituality, and connection. Despite everything they’ve been through, these values still guide their lives.
More questions
• Who will be held responsible for addressing the harm done to Indigenous peoples?
• What has to change for Indigenous people to be seen as fully deserving of rights and dignity?
I was looking up the name change for The Halluci Nation (new name for A Tribe Called Red) and stumbled upon a quote from Bear Witness (a member of the band), who said, “As First Nations people, everything we do is political.” (https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/beats-against-colonialism-a-tribe-called-red). The politicization of the existence of Indigenous people is multifaceted and sneaky. We read a lot about politicized lives and activism wherein it’s obvious, but Bear Witness was referring to performing at a club.
In March 2006, the same year Finding Dawn was released, 500 Indigenous leaders from BC gathered with families of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and produced the Highway of Tears Symposium Recommendation Report. The first two recommendations in the Report detailed a plan for the province to provide shuttle bus service between communities to reduce hitchhiking, as the only bus service made only one trip per day with no return route and cost about 50 dollars. It took eleven years and three provincial elections for a bus service to be restarted on the Highway of Tears. In those 11 years, 21 women disappeared off the Highway of Tears. Instead of heeding 32 of the 33 recommendations in the Report, the provincial government funded billboards along the highway about the dangers of hitchhiking. This was recommendation #9, but is ineffective without the infrastructure to prevent the need to hitchhike – like a shuttle bus. If someone needs to go to a medical appointment, or a job interview, or is fleeing domestic violence – a billboard will not turn them around. And if it does, what kind of prohibitively and artificially constrained versions of health, wealth and safety are being imposed upon them by the constant threat of violence? It’s instinctive to look at 2006 and think of what has not changed since then, but I am thinking more of the quote in Nason’s article from Sarah Winnemucca – “the mothers are afraid to have more children’s or fear that they shall have daughters”. 241 years later, are we still in that same place?
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) conducts reviews of reports from countries that are party to the Convention. Canada’s review was last week. Expert members of the committee receive reports from civil society organizations, individuals, academic institutions, Indigenous nations, etc. in advance of the review, and on the day, the Canadian government gives a presentation bragging about how good at gender equality they are. This presentation is followed by hours of pointed questions from Committee experts, informed by the Convention and all the reports received in advance.
I was able to attend in person and I’m not going to lie, it was super dope watching brilliant women from around the world absolutely grill the federal government on everything from wage inequality to Indian Act provisions to the balanced federal Cabinet to Canada’s ability to mobilize men for gender equality. Questions were well-informed and the experts did not back down, frequently saying, “I noticed you did not answer my question and I would like for you to do so now” when the state government was being evasive (something we could all take into practice). Despite all of this, what stood out on the day for me was a question asked along the lines of, “beyond responses to historic events, what preventative actions are being taken by Canada to ensure that MMIWG does not recur?” And I remember thinking, “what do you mean recur? It never stopped!” Canada’s answer was satisfactory for the Committee and I watched some of my colleagues in the room type out messages to the committee members they were supporting, asking them to adjust the question and ask it again – to no avail.
I feel like typically my reflections are pretty optimistic; I believe in the value incremental change and find joy in the work and in the personal and all that. But with this, I am just kind of pissed off. It feels like the gaps between policy and the communities those policies are meant to serve are so vast, but not very deep. They could be – but are not – filled. Solutions to these problems feel so close, and maybe they are. Yvonne House saying in Finding Dawn that it made her feel good that “it’s our people who are out there searching.” Instinctively, made my stomach turn. No one should have to do that and it certainly should not fall on friends and family to carry out search and rescue services. Thinking about it now though, I think I understand better what she meant. Resistance will always find a way. When the gaps are not being filled by the state, or by whoever claims the legitimate ability to fill gaps – resistance finds a way. Communities step up. Indigenous women demonstrate the love they hold by taking to the streets and the fields and the search parties, and this is an act of resistance.
Questions
1. How can hope and love, as driving forces, create solutions to persistent and violent problems?
2. How can problem-solvers who claim a monopoly on legitimacy – like states – be held accountable for problems they can but will not solve?
3. What changes for you/us/me when the violence we study happens down the street? Does it matter that Canada is consistently identified among the “safest” countries in the world?
The documentary ‘Finding Dawn’ reveals the stark inequality in how cases of missing Indigenous women are handled compared to women from more privileged background. Indigenous women, who often lack societal power or resources, receive little attention from law enforcement or the media. Marginalized communities who lack strong support systems are particularly vulnerable to being denied legal protection, making it difficult for them to access justice. A message in the documentary keeps echoing in my mind: if the victim had high social status and resources, they would likely receive faster legal protection and more accessible justice than Indigenous people.
Another key thought I had while watching the documentary is the silence surrounding the cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, which I believe is a form of violence in itself. This silence underscores how media coverage and public discourse often overlook these cases, further perpetuating the invisibility of Indigenous women in society. It raises important questions about why these cases fail to gain public attention, leading to broader concerns about whose stories are deemed important and why the suffering of Indigenous women is so frequently marginalized.
The violence and systemic neglect of minorities, particularly Indigenous women, are deeply rooted in colonial legacies. This violence is not just individual but institutional, shaped by a colonial history that devalues Indigenous lives. As Nason explains, colonial systems of oppression normalize hatred toward Indigenous women, particularly their culture of care and love, making them disproportionately vulnerable to violence while society largely ignores their suffering. It makes me clearly see that colonialism is not just a historical event but a continuing structure that still affects how certain lives are valued or devalued. The normalization of violence against Indigenous women, as discussed in the report, mirrors the documentary’s portrayal of how societal apathy perpetuates ongoing violence and erases their stories.
In the report, the concept of power is highlighted as something relational, shared, and rooted in community rather than something exerted over others, which contrasts with the colonial and patriarchal system that seeks to dominate both people and the land. The documentary also reflects this idea by showing how Indigenous communities, despite facing systemic violence, continue to fight for justice and reclaim their power through grassroots advocacy. Indigenous women, as keepers of culture and community, are central to these efforts, and both the report and the documentary call for centering their leadership in the fight against violence.
Question:
How can Indigenous women’s leadership be better supported and centered in efforts to combat systemic violence?
The impacts of settler colonialism within the context of what most people in the present-day refer to as “Canada” are the most important issue to learn about when one tries to fully understand Canadian policy-making. The modern-day country of Canada has artificial borders enforced upon people that have lived here since time immemorial from European colonizers and many Canadians still need to learn about the history of how Canada was built. The history of modern-day Canada since European “discovery” and colonization of British North America on Turtle Island has always revolved around forced, bloody, and brutal colonization. Alongside institutional, systemic, and overt discrimination against peoples native to Turtle Island by the hands of colonial governments, policies were another instrument that said governments used to continue the genocide that they led unto peoples that lived here prior to European arrival.
A lot of my undergraduate education was led by Indigenous scholars and other Professors who were incredibly vocal about Canada’s genocidal and colonial past, so much of the information through this week’s readings was not new to me personally. However, having said that, listening to Indigenous women talk about their personal experiences growing up under genocidal and racist colonial policy and its effects on their lives was still incredibly difficult. Even though I had prior knowledge about policies such as the Indian Act, “The Numbered Treaties”, banning of cultural practices, residential schools, etc., listening again about experiences on the Highway of Tears was eerie and depressing. Lots of quotes from Indigenous women stood out to me, and the first one was when a speaker at a walk for a missing Indigenous woman said that she showed up because she knew over fifty friends on the missing women’s list. That number absolutely shocked me. I could not begin to fathom how that feels. I tried imagining it, it was still impossible to do so.
The final report we read through used a word that stood out to me as I thought it was incredibly accurate in how it described the effects of historical colonial policy. When describing how violence against Indigenous women feels for Indigenous women, scholar Sarah Hunt used the words “widespread dehumanization” (2019, p. 230). I have not described the policy of historical settler colonialism within this country this way before, but I think they are best suited as opposed to how I described them earlier.
My question for this week is, and it stems from a feeling of “jadedness”, and it is: What should Canada do next to best reverse the effects of racist colonial policies? Whenever I think about this question, I always arrive to the conclusion that some things cannot be undone. Generations that were lost due to policy set on genocide cannot be brought back no matter what a government attempts to do. I know that the Canadian government has apologized over a decade ago for its role in colonialism. I know it has increased spending on Indigenous priorities. Has it made any significant difference, though?
I want to first start this week’s comment thanking the women, men, and individuals that shared their stories with us this week.
Sweetgrass is one of the four sacred plants, along with tobacco, sage, and red cedar, deeply revered by Indigenous, Inuit, and Metis peoples. It is interpreted to signify the relationship humans have with Earth, thus emphasizing the need for care, respect, and gratitude in the means of its harvesting. Moreover, because it is a gift to us, it should only be gifted to others. I bring this into my reflection because i remember distinctly in highschool, the generosity of a guest visiting to tell us about his community’s experiences within the residential school system. Recognizing indigenous knowledge models, where a gift’s value is in its ability to create relationships and responsibilities, I write this in deep gratitude to us being entrusted with such pain, grief, devastation, and anger. Unlike our private property economy, where ownership is exclusive and value is tied to possession, in Indigenous gift economy practices, a gift’s value increases as it is passed on and shared with others. As we pass these stories amongst each other, I wish to center these values in our community: reciprocity, gratitude, and abundance.
In the braiding of sweetgrass, the sweetgrass is split into three strands—symbolizing interconnection, balance, and unity. The three strands are often said to represent the mind, body, and spirit, or alternatively, love, kindness, and honesty. Metaphorically it reinforces the idea that strength comes from unity, where different elements come together to create a stronger whole, reflecting the values of interconnectedness between people, communities, and nature.
Throughout this week’s readings I thought about the relationship we have to each other, but also to the institutions we look to protect us. Sometimes those two things meld into each other—the community is the protector, when normative security models fail us. It inspired me to see how community and reciprocal relationships of care mobilized individuals in the documentary. The Women’s Memorial March or the coordinated search and rescue groups, were excellent examples of this. Grief was extended into a material to be shared, identified with, and upon which relationships were built. A community effort organized as a method of mutual aid. Further, these were events for love to echo through. I was incredibly moved by one speaker at the march, citing 50 friendships lost and recognizing her presence was tied to a duty to these friendships she had, as they once committed to helping her “hang on and get a better life”. Even in death, love acts in reciprocity; you cared for me once, I still care for you, and I will continue. Every year, love finds itself in that room, almost like a physical metaphor to a capitalistic holiday that celebrates love as commodity, rather than reciprocity.
In the conclusion of the Reclaiming Power and Place report, they cite the need to reinvent relationships. Trusting relationships are upon which we might protect and respect justice in Indigenous communities. But for me, I wonder how we might transform our own perceptions of relationship to prioritize love and care. There must be a means through which we can see the loss of a life, as a loss to us all. That we are never safe, at peace, or secure until we all experience it.
“Profound love of the kind that moves nations, starts movements, and inspires action does not go away; it deepens and becomes stronger with time.”
Questions:
How can we, as individuals and communities, transform our understanding of relationships to center love, care, and reciprocity, especially in the context of acknowledging and sharing the grief and pain of others, as seen in Indigenous practices and in responses to systemic injustices?
It was a profound movement in my heart to learn in detail about the atrocities faced by Indigenous women and how they remain invisible in a system where their identity, place, and time dictate their survival. It is so disheartening to learn about the missing women, beginning with the case of finding Dawn. The battle led by Dawn’s brother and the solidarity shown by people toward these missing women on the highway were deeply moving. I have been to the Downtown Eastside many times, but my next visit will remind me of Dawn and the others who were supposed to live happily, but who disappeared without a trace. There was a celebration of their love and identity; they could have been loving mothers and sisters. It weighs heavily on my heart to think about these situations, and even today, many are still missing.
The report on Reclaiming Power and Place pointed out the voices quite well and focused on 231 calls to action, covering several community-led interventions aimed at improving healthcare, justice, housing, and education. While these recommendations are practical, the specific voices of the victims and their families call for a reality check that Indigenous women are still invisible,missing and this is the unfortunate reality. While the specific actions and recommendations are laudable, the spread of the love and justice these women deserve can be further enhanced through movements like #IdleNoMore. Many such special thought provoking days shall be earmarked to show our solidarity to these women.
This content also made me reflect on the unnoticed atrocities against Adivasi women in India. In the context of Naxalism (a left-radical communist ideology advocating against the government), atrocities against Adivasi women were central. The conflict between the Naxals and the police caused immense suffering for women, as many were stripped and humiliated during interrogations in the name of extracting information. These atrocities were often hidden from the media, as the interrogations took place deep in forests without connectivity, rendering these women invisible. As a woman and an aspiring feminist, I cannot help but think about the invisibility that surrounds fellow women simply because of their birth identity.
The questions that I have:
What value can an intersectional lens add to Indigenous women who are invisible, and will they ever truly become visible? How many lens are required to see them as our beloved sisters and mothers?
Aren’t we tired of the soft approaches to these problems? Can we think of stronger, more coercive forms of justice for Indigenous women who deserve all the love in the world?
A line that I found extremely impactful in the documentary was one woman interviewed named Janice describing how she was abused in the past but thought it was normal, thought “that’s the way you treat Indian women”. When she said this, it made me emotional. The thought of how internalized these images and portrayals of Indigenous women were and how much this would affect one’s views of themselves. How this was so ingrained in her consciousness it becomes a barrier to her safety. In the same scene, Janice speaks about one of the reasons she ended up on the street, she followed the footsteps of her older sisters. She remembered admiring their ability to afford nice clothing and she wanted the same luxury. Growing up in a poor family, with limited opportunities, prostitution was a way to gain economic independence. There are many parts of this documentary, including this one, which made me think about structural conditions that force people into dangerous situations. For Janice, one of the only options she saw growing up was that of prostitution. Women who hitchhike along Highway 16 know the risk, but for them is a necessary risk. Without access to transpiration, it’s the only way for them to get to work, see their families, or have means of mobility.
Nason (2013) writes “this love has made Indigenous women targets”. This line is in reference to the love that Indigenous women have for their families, land, and nations which is the core of their power to resist and protect their values and cultures. The framing their love in this way drew parallels to the concept of gender anxiety written about by Daggett in her article on petrol masculinity. Indigenous women claiming power does not only threaten gendered hierarchies but also colonial ones. This to me speaks to what could be part of what is at the root of violence against indigenous women.
How can we dismantle both social and institutional conditions that perpetuate violence against Indigenous women?
Once again, I find myself wondering if we’d be better off if a meteor hit Earth. What I shared in last week’s reflection on how difficult it is to be optimistic about the future in the face of so much violence remains true.
I watched “Finding Dawn” for the first time in one of my GRSJ courses titled “Gender, Race, Social Justice and the Law” back in undergrad. It was probably one of the first introduction to the history of Indigenous people in so-called Canada. The course was basically about understanding how the different aspects of the law, including who writes it, who implements it, who interprets it, serve as a tool for the settler-colonial power. One of the articles we read for that class was “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George” by Sherene Razack, a feminist critical race scholar. In this article, she talked about the case of Pamela George in the mid 90’s. Pamela George was an Indigenous woman of the Saulteaux (Ojibway) nation, who was murdered by two white male university students in Regina, Saskatchewan. Part of the what Razack argues is that for the trial and for the eventual conviction that did not match the crime, the Canadian judicial system (jury, judges, the defense, and even the Crown) viewed Pamela as belonging “to a space in which violence routinely occurs, and to have a body that is routinely violated, while her killers were presumed to be far removed from this zone, the enormity of what was done to her remained largely unacknowledged.” (93).
In a different chapter by Razack, and along the same lines of what is expressed in Chapter 2 of the Final Report, both mention how the notion of universal rights is inherently flawed. How can rights be universal if some people are seen as having them while others (because of their race, gender, sexuality, etc) are not? Furthermore, if we consider rights as an important aspect of peace processes and they are entrenched into the settler-colonial framework, how can we uphold the premise behind universal rights without legitimizing the violence of the system in which they are inscribed?
In understanding the histories of violence committed against the Indigenous peoples in Canada, I feel like it is necessary for me to also reflect on the history of Indigenous peoples in Mexico considering that is where I grew up. For many reasons, the way we learn about Indigenous peoples in Mexico is way different than in Canada; it is not perfect by any means, and it definitely erases the current violence that the State is inflicting upon the Indigenous populations, particularly in terms of the environment and access to health services and education. But one thing that is not talked about that often, is how in Mexico (and also true about other countries in Latin America who share similar historical contexts) is that what we learn about Indigenous peoples is as if they are from the past. Indigenous peoples and their languages and their cultures and their ways of life, are alive and that in itself is an act of resilience. I don’t know how to finish this reflection so I think I might just go into the questions.
How and why are acts and movements of resistance and resilience by Indigenous peoples seen as disruptive?
How are performative actions (like saying the Land Acknowledgement) reinforcing the settler-colonial system?
Razack’s writings if anyone is interested:
Razack, Sherene H. “Gendered racial violence and spatialized justice: The murder of Pamela George.” Can. JL & Soc. 15 (2000): 91.
Sherene Razack, Chapter 1: ‘The Cold Game of Equality Staring’, in Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms (University of Toronto Press, 1998) 23-35.
This was definitely a difficult set of materials, and it’s taken me a while to make my way through them with the care that I think they deserve. A couple of themes emerged as I was reading the report, which I think were also reflected in the other videos and reading.
Firstly, I was once again drawn back to Elena’s question from the third week; where is war? In ‘Finding Dawn’, I began to see the Highway of Tears as a warzone for Indigenous women, and in reading the report, I was once again reminded how in these warzones, gendered and racialized bodies experience war and violence in everyday encounters and interactions. This could even be seen in how mothers, sisters, and other family members fighting for justice were ignored or denied. Dr. Barry Lavallee said it best in the report, distinguishing between vulnerability, and targeted violence, “…to be vulnerable to murder because of your colour, and your positionality and just being Indigenous is targeting. It is an active form of oppression of Indigenous women” (p.125).
I think that the stories from this week really emphasized that this issue isn’t about overcoming vulnerability. It’s about allowing Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people to reclaim their power and place, as women and girls are sacred and important, for not only their loved ones but communities. I think a big step in recognizing this sacredness and power is in resisting the dehumanization that Indigenous women face, especially those involved in sex work. Finding Dawn illustrated how these women become numbers and statistics, not being understood as entire persons. After reading the report, and the reading by Dory Nason, I began to understand how this dehumanization of individuals, beyond just being an abject disregard for human rights, stands in stark contrast to Indigenous worldviews. In the report, Shawn Wilson says we are defined by our relationships to others, including the earth and future generations; “we are not just one person; we are the sum of all the relationships that shape our lives” (p.95). This was emphasized by the words of Mona S, speaking of her daughter Michelle, saying that “I’m here also just to remind [you] my daughter wasn’t just a working girl…. She was loved, you know. She has a lot of people that still cry for her, you know” (p.109).
Both Dory Nason’s writing and the report convey that Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people are whole individuals, but also integral and important to entire communities. As Nason said, “…as mothers, aunties, sisters, grandmothers, our concern is for the safety and well-being of all peoples.” I saw that Khayria mentioned Braiding Sweetgrass – that book changed my worldview. The contributions and value of Indigenous storytelling, practices, and ecological knowledge is so important for not only Indigenous communities, but the planet as a whole. The implications of truly implementing the principles of respect, reciprocity and interconnectedness in our laws and governance remind me of our discussions in previous weeks about the transformative potential of feminist scholarship. I’ve actually heard the song “Sisters” before, and have always been struck by the power and resilience you can feel in the music. It gives me hope going forward, but it’s clear that there is a lot of work to be done.
Questions:
What would it look like to integrate principles of reciprocity, respect, and interconnectedness in governance in a settler-colonial state? Is it possible under our current system?
How does framing violence against Indigenous women, girls 2SLGBTQQIA people as “targeted oppression,” rather than an inherent vulnerability, shift our understanding of the systemic nature of this violence, and potential policy responses?
Something that I found myself reflecting on during these readings is how we conceptualize time, and the ways in which we (Settlers, Westerners, Academics, Workers, …) fall short in our conceptualizations of time when engaging with harm.
One quote that stood out to me from the Reclaiming Power and Place report was the quote from Mona S, who shared her memories of her daughter Michelle S, who was murdered, where she expressed that “she has a lot of people that still cry for her, you know” (115). Colonial systems love to put a timeline on things that cannot have timelines applied to them- whether it’s a 5 year grant funding cycle, the requirement to wait 2 days before reporting a person missing, or the expectation that with a public apology all harm will be resolved, so often things are considered in a linear way, as if we are steadily marching away from harm, rather than recognizing the ways that harm is produced and reproduced in relationships, as the report stresses. Also, are we going to pretend that grief (among other feelings and experiences) is something that ever really goes away, rather than becoming integrated into who we are as people, and like Judith Butler says, we become transformed by it to the point of being unrecognizable. How is a 5 year grant application going to capture this. I will answer that for us- it won’t.
Mona S’s words reflect the report’s discussion of conceptualizations of trauma (112), including “soul wounds” on both personal and community levels, which are interconnected. This reminded me of this concept I read about in undergrad from Sara Ahmed called “overing” (I can’t find the article right now but I remember loving it). As far as I understood it, the concept of overing refers to the ways in which a state, community, person (etc) might declare a conflict “over”, seeking to “draw a line under” something, end a chapter, and “move on”- but this so often declares a chapter “closed” without meaningfully dealing with both the harm and the underlying systems driving harm. Something that bothers me about Truth and Reconciliation is that when it’s being practiced as a means to gain political clout, tick boxes, or assuage personal guilt, it seems like it could just be a way to “Over” the entire cultural genocide and colonial systems driving harm. In one of my first classes at UBC one of my classmates shared a comment made to him by an elder who I unfortunately don’t know the name of and can’t credit, but it was along the lines of “sure, now you’re suddenly ready to reconcile- but what if we’re still angry?”. Relationships take time, commitment, care, integrity, and a genuine willingness to change. I think we’ve seen how the concept of prior informed consent has been butchered in “consultations” for land management and extractivism, and my worry is the ways that Truth and Reconciliation is similarly butchered. A lot of what came through in this report to me was the issue of time- it seems an incredible amount of time and care went into this report, and particularly an incredible amount of time spent bearing witness to personal and community experiences. This brings me back to our conversations last week, and Ojeda et al’s question of listening across harm- and to me, this stresses the importance of time.
I talked a bit about time in terms of conceptualizing projects and harm, but the content for this week also stressed time in terms of memory, memorialization, and strength- Janice Acoose shared in Finding Dawn that “I started to rebuild myself as a result of remembering”, and references the importance of relations, stories of relatives, the women in her family, ceremonies, beliefs, values, and languages. I was incredibly moved by Mattie Wilson’s description of her powerful and enduring love for and memory of her daughter Ramona, and the ways in which she will continue to show up and memorialize her daughter and continue to seek justice for her: “We will always be here- if it’s not me, it will be my children, if it’s not my children, it will be my grandchildren […]”. To me, this stressed that while our conceptualizations of time fall short of accurately capturing harm and reconciliation, they also fall short in capturing love, memorialization, and strength- and I think that is an equally important part of this picture.
My questions for this week:
What does it mean to de-individualize trauma? What are the implications for this in how we do our work?
What would it look like to conceptualize time differently in our work (safety, security, anti-violence work, etc).
“What worries me the most is that some of them are so used to it that they don’t feel that they deserve more… That it is alright that people treat you like that, or that you deserve it. And there becomes a destruction of your own self, and some people go on for years like that” (Obomsawin, 1987, 3:00). Indigenous filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin and the quiet power of listening | CBC Radio
Renowned Abenaki documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin puts the victim-blaming, self-pathologizing nature of colonial institutions and ideology into clear terms, a common thread which connected much of the harms endured by Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA people as detailed in the National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Dr. Janice Acoose reaffirmed this internalized normalization of violence when speaking about her own sexual assault experience in Finding Dawn, saying that she “didn’t call it rape then. I used to think that was normal, that’s the way you treat Indian women” (Acoose, 2006, 45:40). Violence is not just encompassed by the physical, but it can be committed against culture, language, spirit, mind, and environment which people call home.
When the colonizer “needs to make acceptable the practice of hating Indigenous women” in order to legitimize the colonial project, the false narratives constructed around Indigenous women are not just contained to colonial audiences (Dory, 2013, para. 4). From the denial of Indigenous women and gender-diverse people’s respected and kinship-based authority in their communities, to the lack of acknowledgement of Indigenous women as leaders, healers, providers, and protectors, I can’t imagine how devastating the erasure of so many significant roles and responsibilities would be for Indigenous communities.
A quote that particularly stood out to me was from Bonnie F. in regards to the adoption of First Nations and Métis children which was pushed by the government in Saskatchewan during the Sixties Scoop:
I was saddened to read about my mother fighting for me in a letter she wrote to get me back. On the other hand, I was so happy she did because the letters proved her love for me after all these years I had been told that she hated me and that she wanted me dead. (Bonnie F., 2018, pgs. 281-282)
This past weekend, I spent a day with my two nieces and my cousin’s daughter, all of them toddler-aged or younger. They were all on my mind as I did the readings. No child deserves to feel this way. It tears your heart in two to think that any child would grow up not only thinking they were unwanted, but that the people who were supposed to love her the most on this planet wanted her dead. How much shame must a child feel when they’re told this repeatedly? And still, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis women persist and resist. They create art, sharing their culture through dance and music as in A Tribe Called Red’s Sisters music video. They are strong activists, advocates, educators, family members, friends, protectors, and so much more than the stories that colonial history has tried to paint about them. So, my question for this week is: how do we, as non-Indigenous allies, help to build an environment that is free of shame for Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA people to share their stories? How can we listen better?
This week has me thinking about sisterhood. I started the readings by watching the music video, “Sisters,” which showed a number of domestic scenes where three sisters, presumably, were hanging out together, having a good time. And then to move from that into the documentary, where many women told stories of sisterhood. Lorraine telling stories of her missing sister Dawn, Anne Marie and Donna Lee speaking about their missing mother, Janice telling us she followed into the footsteps of her four sisters onto the streets…
I know personally just how strong of a bond sisterhood can be. I have a younger sister and she is the single person I am most protective of in the whole world. My mother always told me growing up about the responsibility I carried as an older sister to set a good example, to look out for my sister, and to care for her and love her. I can’t imagine having to live on this earth without my sister. I can’t imagine having to wonder where she is, if she is alive. I would trade my life for hers without question if that ever were necessary.
To think that so many people go through the pain that for me is unimaginable is heartbreaking. And worse, that it is normalized, accepted… As Dory Nason put it, “Violence against Indigenous women is so normalized in settler society, it even becomes a category of desire in the public consciousness.” As we saw in the documentary, police seem to take cases of missing people much less seriously if those missing people are Indigenous women. This is a blatant example of a lack of institutional will to change and maintaining the status quo that makes violence possible, which is one of the four pathways that maintain colonial violence as described in the In The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (111).
I know these discussions are heavy, and sometimes leave us feeling hopeless. So I went where I normally go when I feel hopeless: I found some poetry and sat with it for a while (maybe a little too long, I acknowledge this reflection is coming late). I’d like to share a poem from Hope Matters by Lee Maracle, an Indigenous woman of Salish and Cree ancestry, a member of the Sto:loh Nation, born in Vancouver, mother of four, grandmother of four:
never again for anyone
I dream that one day soon the whole country will rise and
sing to the world that I, that we, Indigenous women are hu-
man beings worthy of being alive!
That we are worthy of facing the same beautiful trial and tri-
umphs of the human experience that others are free to face
That we are worthy of being free from the arms of such an
unnatural and murderous disappearance from life just be-
cause we are Indigenous women
And the people they will rise to the truth of their war-song
of love and justice for all and they will make it so
They will wage war against and defeat the cold soulless
shadow-cloaked hunters
And when the war is won, the killers in the shadows gone,
we will sing, Never again, never again will we be the hunted ones.
-Lee Maracle, Hope Matters, 50
My questions for this week are:
How would our approach to injustices change if we were able to see ourselves as tied through kinship to those beyond our nuclear families?
What are the ways in which I have perpetuated violent systems under the guise of maintenance of the status quo?
Despite having a white Canadian mother and visiting my grandparents in Ontario every summer as a child, growing up in the British international schooling system meant my exposure to the genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada came much later in life. I heard my first land acknowledgment at the age of 22 after moving to Toronto from the States and remember thinking, how have I lived in North America for 8 years and never been taught to consider the histories of the lands I’ve lived on? That was six years ago now and I have to admit I’m on a continuing journey to learn and unlearn what I’ve come to know about the tragic history of settler colonialism in Canada as well as the ongoing violence and genocide of Indigenous people across North America.
This week’s resources were heavy and very difficult to get through, and while the Canadian context is the focus of this class, I wanted to try and apply some of the concepts from the final report of the National Inquiry into Canada’s list of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls to a beautiful and inspiring documentary I recently watched called The Last of the Seawomen. In particular, I was inspired by the weight that was given to stories throughout the report and wanted to reflect on the emphasis that is placed on the necessity of relationships, reciprocity, and interconnectedness.
The documentary follows a group of older women Indigenous to Jeju Island in South Korea who are Haenyeos, also known as “real life mermaids” who dive without oxygen to harvest seafood. They are now in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, are mostly descendants of previous Haenyeos, and have been committed to the traditional practice since from a young age. The film documents the community, camaraderie, and friendship among the women, as they fight to keep the profession alive and advocate against Japan’s decision to release radioactive waste from Fukushima into the sea.
For the Haenyeo women, having clean oceans is essential to their cultural practice: a polluted ocean means less marine life, contaminated seafood, health risks, and threats to their livelihood. Their rights are connected to the rights of water and marine life, and each living thing holds a vital role in sustaining the circle of life that forms their tradition. Unsurprisingly, close relationships among the Haenyeos are also highlighted throughout the film and can be interpreted as “spaces of engagement” in which women of varying ages exchange knowledge on the various ways of knowing. As they fight to keep the Haenyeo tradition alive, the older women leaders work with a local school to provide training to the new generation, connect with a young duo of Haenyeo Tik-Tokers, and work with local activists to align around a unified goal of protecting their right to culture, tradition, and clean oceans. The community continually works to keep each other safe, both in and outside of the water.
With the devastating realities of war, violence, and conflict around the world, it’s been difficult for me to stay hopeful and think creatively about some of the realistic and tangible ways forward. And despite the week’s themes being some of the heaviest so far, the tenacity and spirit of the Haenyeos in the documentary had such strong qualities of community, determination, and interconnectedness with nature that I hope to be able to embody moving forward.
Question:
Finding Dawn was released in 2006, yet the story feels as relevant today as it probably was almost 20 years ago, especially with all the cases involving Downtown Eastside. Have there been any major, or tangible changes since, either to policy or on a social level, to bring justice to the missing and murdered Indigenous women?
Keeping in mind the impact of intergenerational trauma, to what extent, if at all, are the families of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women currently supported by the Canadian government?
This week’s content was heavy and challenging to work through, as it is most weeks in this course, however as usual I was grateful to be challenged in this way. Having difficult conversations, reading about atrocities committed by the government, these are parts of unlearning settler colonialism when it is so very entrenched in our lives here. Strangely enough, while reading I was reminded of a quote from a ‘Star Wars’ show I recently watched, where a character has created a manifesto for rebellion against oppression, “Freedom is a pure idea, it occurs spontaneously and without instruction… the need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear”. While this quote refers to the fabricated oppression of a fantasy world, the themes can be applied to our context here today. While reading through the Reclaiming Power and Place report, I couldn’t help but see how many systems and institutions the British and Canadian governments have continuously created and reformed explicitly to achieve the goal of continuing the systematic genocide of Indigenous people. Legislation existed with the express intent to destroy lives, culture, and knowledge. The RCMP was literally formed as a means of attacking Indigenous people and today, this institution is relied upon for the protection of Canadians domestically. This is dumbfounding to me. Reading through this report and watching the Finding Dawn documentary reiterated 2 important themes to me; that colonization is a process not an event (one which continues to this day) and that history is not just history, that we carry it with us always. As Canadians, we have to come to terms with the fact that the security and prosperity we enjoy today was paid for with the lives of the Indigenous people of Turtle Island.
From an academic perspective, some ideas that I was reminded of throughout this content were Fanon’s theory of double consciousness, that marginalized people are forced to not only live through their own perspectives, but through the perspective of those in power, in this case the colonizer. The Report identifies this idea explicitly, although using the terminology of ‘Two Eyed Seeing’ rather than double consciousness. I’m thinking about the emotional labour and invisible colonial violence this settler colonial imposed worldview puts on Indigenous bodies. The other theory I found myself connecting to this content was what Ian Hacking calls ‘Making Up People’ (sometimes referred to as dynamic nominalism). Hacking uses a ’10 engine’ framework:
1. Count!
2. Quantify!
3. Create Norms!
4. Correlate!
5. Medicalise!
6. Biologise!
7. Geneticise!
8. Normalise!
9. Bureaucratise!
10. Reclaim our identity!
With which he discusses the way institutions attempt to quantify, group, and flatten individuals. I found myself noticing all of the engines in action throughout history as I was reading/watching. Last week I reflected on the meaning of language, whether there was any power in naming a thing, questioning if naming and language are tools of action. This week I am inclined to say that language is a powerful tool of action which can be used to harm or help. Reading about movements like Butterflies in Spirit, or the growing conversation around MMIWG2S inspire hope in a change towards identity reclamation and Indigenous autonomy coming out of centuries of settler colonial oppression.
Honestly, this is a very incoherent reflection, I threw a lot of incomplete ideas out there, but at the moment I have many thoughts and few conclusions.
Question
If the government not only fails to protect but systematically attacks marginalized populations, how can we begin to move towards change?
this was another tough one, lets get into it:
Reflecting on the readings, media, and topics explored this week, I continue to find myself caught between feeling hopeful and feeling like a cynic. Similar to what I have been feeling throughout the last six weeks, there is a persistent feeling of frustration. Generations of Indigenous people, specifically women, have fought for their rights, their autonomy and their humanity to be recognized, often facing overwhelming indifference, hostility, or violence. And the response that has been generated by these women contributes to the undeniable intergenerational harm caused by these long-standing injustices.
Listening to Sisters by the Halluci Nation instilled a sense of light in me, that joy and hope still exist in communities that have failed time and time again. The music was vibrant, full of energy and filled with life, conveying a sense of power and reclaimed space. Spaces where women are typically victimized and preyed upon, like the club, for example. (side note – this really reminded me of the short film A Red Girl’s Reasoning by Pauline Johnson, where an Indigenous woman preys on a man the way she would have been preyed on, reclaiming that power). The Halluci Nation graciously and powerfully reminded us that resilience is essential in the face of oppression, showing us that even in spaces where harm has been and can be inflicted, life and hope can endure.
Finding Dawn, on the other hand, fuels the cynicism within me by highlighting how little attention has been given to the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. As the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women increased, the more these women were reduced to statistics. In politics and public policy, statistics are often used to validate arguments. Still, I think that the danger with this is that people are reduced to numbers and dehumanized even after they’re gone. Personal stories and lived experiences are so critical in creating real change. However, they’re often overlooked in favour of impersonal data.
From this documentary, I was reminded that the lack of resources for Indigenous women exacerbates these problems. Limited options often force them into situations that lead to further harm—whether it’s substance use, sex work, or other harmful circumstances. And we’re left with a system built by and for the privileged, providing few solutions that actually address the needs of Indigenous women and people.
Mavis Windsor, a Knowledge Keeper, emphasizes that the solution to ending violence against Indigenous women lies within their communities. However, how can these communities make a change when their voice isn’t seriously considered? Consulting seems like the best solution. Consulting with Indigenous groups is essential, but “consulting” can’t just be a formality. It has to be intentional, and it needs to ask Indigenous people what they want and need rather than imposing solutions from those who don’t have lived experience. Indigenous communities have been trying to address the damage caused by non-Indigenous institutions for years. However, there is still a lack of responsibility and accountability from those who inflicted the harm.
This raises important questions: Who is responsible for fixing this? Shouldn’t it be the systems that caused or perpetuated the violence in the first place? What would it look like if we truly worked together to address these issues?
There’s also the question of how we, as a society, continue to ignore Indigenous people’s deep connection to the land. In a world facing climate change, why aren’t we taking their knowledge more seriously? The wisdom embedded in their culture and their non-violent, respectful approach to the land could offer invaluable lessons.
In the end, I am left feeling torn. Cynicism is easy when you look at how much has been lost and how slowly change seems to come. But at the same time, there is a lot we can learn from Indigenous peoples—about love, hope, family, spirituality, and connection. Despite everything they’ve been through, these values still guide their lives.
More questions
• Who will be held responsible for addressing the harm done to Indigenous peoples?
• What has to change for Indigenous people to be seen as fully deserving of rights and dignity?
I was looking up the name change for The Halluci Nation (new name for A Tribe Called Red) and stumbled upon a quote from Bear Witness (a member of the band), who said, “As First Nations people, everything we do is political.” (https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/beats-against-colonialism-a-tribe-called-red). The politicization of the existence of Indigenous people is multifaceted and sneaky. We read a lot about politicized lives and activism wherein it’s obvious, but Bear Witness was referring to performing at a club.
In March 2006, the same year Finding Dawn was released, 500 Indigenous leaders from BC gathered with families of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and produced the Highway of Tears Symposium Recommendation Report. The first two recommendations in the Report detailed a plan for the province to provide shuttle bus service between communities to reduce hitchhiking, as the only bus service made only one trip per day with no return route and cost about 50 dollars. It took eleven years and three provincial elections for a bus service to be restarted on the Highway of Tears. In those 11 years, 21 women disappeared off the Highway of Tears. Instead of heeding 32 of the 33 recommendations in the Report, the provincial government funded billboards along the highway about the dangers of hitchhiking. This was recommendation #9, but is ineffective without the infrastructure to prevent the need to hitchhike – like a shuttle bus. If someone needs to go to a medical appointment, or a job interview, or is fleeing domestic violence – a billboard will not turn them around. And if it does, what kind of prohibitively and artificially constrained versions of health, wealth and safety are being imposed upon them by the constant threat of violence? It’s instinctive to look at 2006 and think of what has not changed since then, but I am thinking more of the quote in Nason’s article from Sarah Winnemucca – “the mothers are afraid to have more children’s or fear that they shall have daughters”. 241 years later, are we still in that same place?
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) conducts reviews of reports from countries that are party to the Convention. Canada’s review was last week. Expert members of the committee receive reports from civil society organizations, individuals, academic institutions, Indigenous nations, etc. in advance of the review, and on the day, the Canadian government gives a presentation bragging about how good at gender equality they are. This presentation is followed by hours of pointed questions from Committee experts, informed by the Convention and all the reports received in advance.
I was able to attend in person and I’m not going to lie, it was super dope watching brilliant women from around the world absolutely grill the federal government on everything from wage inequality to Indian Act provisions to the balanced federal Cabinet to Canada’s ability to mobilize men for gender equality. Questions were well-informed and the experts did not back down, frequently saying, “I noticed you did not answer my question and I would like for you to do so now” when the state government was being evasive (something we could all take into practice). Despite all of this, what stood out on the day for me was a question asked along the lines of, “beyond responses to historic events, what preventative actions are being taken by Canada to ensure that MMIWG does not recur?” And I remember thinking, “what do you mean recur? It never stopped!” Canada’s answer was satisfactory for the Committee and I watched some of my colleagues in the room type out messages to the committee members they were supporting, asking them to adjust the question and ask it again – to no avail.
I feel like typically my reflections are pretty optimistic; I believe in the value incremental change and find joy in the work and in the personal and all that. But with this, I am just kind of pissed off. It feels like the gaps between policy and the communities those policies are meant to serve are so vast, but not very deep. They could be – but are not – filled. Solutions to these problems feel so close, and maybe they are. Yvonne House saying in Finding Dawn that it made her feel good that “it’s our people who are out there searching.” Instinctively, made my stomach turn. No one should have to do that and it certainly should not fall on friends and family to carry out search and rescue services. Thinking about it now though, I think I understand better what she meant. Resistance will always find a way. When the gaps are not being filled by the state, or by whoever claims the legitimate ability to fill gaps – resistance finds a way. Communities step up. Indigenous women demonstrate the love they hold by taking to the streets and the fields and the search parties, and this is an act of resistance.
Questions
1. How can hope and love, as driving forces, create solutions to persistent and violent problems?
2. How can problem-solvers who claim a monopoly on legitimacy – like states – be held accountable for problems they can but will not solve?
3. What changes for you/us/me when the violence we study happens down the street? Does it matter that Canada is consistently identified among the “safest” countries in the world?
Actually I have another question!
How do we make space for optimism and anger to exist at the same time?
The documentary ‘Finding Dawn’ reveals the stark inequality in how cases of missing Indigenous women are handled compared to women from more privileged background. Indigenous women, who often lack societal power or resources, receive little attention from law enforcement or the media. Marginalized communities who lack strong support systems are particularly vulnerable to being denied legal protection, making it difficult for them to access justice. A message in the documentary keeps echoing in my mind: if the victim had high social status and resources, they would likely receive faster legal protection and more accessible justice than Indigenous people.
Another key thought I had while watching the documentary is the silence surrounding the cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, which I believe is a form of violence in itself. This silence underscores how media coverage and public discourse often overlook these cases, further perpetuating the invisibility of Indigenous women in society. It raises important questions about why these cases fail to gain public attention, leading to broader concerns about whose stories are deemed important and why the suffering of Indigenous women is so frequently marginalized.
The violence and systemic neglect of minorities, particularly Indigenous women, are deeply rooted in colonial legacies. This violence is not just individual but institutional, shaped by a colonial history that devalues Indigenous lives. As Nason explains, colonial systems of oppression normalize hatred toward Indigenous women, particularly their culture of care and love, making them disproportionately vulnerable to violence while society largely ignores their suffering. It makes me clearly see that colonialism is not just a historical event but a continuing structure that still affects how certain lives are valued or devalued. The normalization of violence against Indigenous women, as discussed in the report, mirrors the documentary’s portrayal of how societal apathy perpetuates ongoing violence and erases their stories.
In the report, the concept of power is highlighted as something relational, shared, and rooted in community rather than something exerted over others, which contrasts with the colonial and patriarchal system that seeks to dominate both people and the land. The documentary also reflects this idea by showing how Indigenous communities, despite facing systemic violence, continue to fight for justice and reclaim their power through grassroots advocacy. Indigenous women, as keepers of culture and community, are central to these efforts, and both the report and the documentary call for centering their leadership in the fight against violence.
Question:
How can Indigenous women’s leadership be better supported and centered in efforts to combat systemic violence?
The impacts of settler colonialism within the context of what most people in the present-day refer to as “Canada” are the most important issue to learn about when one tries to fully understand Canadian policy-making. The modern-day country of Canada has artificial borders enforced upon people that have lived here since time immemorial from European colonizers and many Canadians still need to learn about the history of how Canada was built. The history of modern-day Canada since European “discovery” and colonization of British North America on Turtle Island has always revolved around forced, bloody, and brutal colonization. Alongside institutional, systemic, and overt discrimination against peoples native to Turtle Island by the hands of colonial governments, policies were another instrument that said governments used to continue the genocide that they led unto peoples that lived here prior to European arrival.
A lot of my undergraduate education was led by Indigenous scholars and other Professors who were incredibly vocal about Canada’s genocidal and colonial past, so much of the information through this week’s readings was not new to me personally. However, having said that, listening to Indigenous women talk about their personal experiences growing up under genocidal and racist colonial policy and its effects on their lives was still incredibly difficult. Even though I had prior knowledge about policies such as the Indian Act, “The Numbered Treaties”, banning of cultural practices, residential schools, etc., listening again about experiences on the Highway of Tears was eerie and depressing. Lots of quotes from Indigenous women stood out to me, and the first one was when a speaker at a walk for a missing Indigenous woman said that she showed up because she knew over fifty friends on the missing women’s list. That number absolutely shocked me. I could not begin to fathom how that feels. I tried imagining it, it was still impossible to do so.
The final report we read through used a word that stood out to me as I thought it was incredibly accurate in how it described the effects of historical colonial policy. When describing how violence against Indigenous women feels for Indigenous women, scholar Sarah Hunt used the words “widespread dehumanization” (2019, p. 230). I have not described the policy of historical settler colonialism within this country this way before, but I think they are best suited as opposed to how I described them earlier.
My question for this week is, and it stems from a feeling of “jadedness”, and it is: What should Canada do next to best reverse the effects of racist colonial policies? Whenever I think about this question, I always arrive to the conclusion that some things cannot be undone. Generations that were lost due to policy set on genocide cannot be brought back no matter what a government attempts to do. I know that the Canadian government has apologized over a decade ago for its role in colonialism. I know it has increased spending on Indigenous priorities. Has it made any significant difference, though?
I want to first start this week’s comment thanking the women, men, and individuals that shared their stories with us this week.
Sweetgrass is one of the four sacred plants, along with tobacco, sage, and red cedar, deeply revered by Indigenous, Inuit, and Metis peoples. It is interpreted to signify the relationship humans have with Earth, thus emphasizing the need for care, respect, and gratitude in the means of its harvesting. Moreover, because it is a gift to us, it should only be gifted to others. I bring this into my reflection because i remember distinctly in highschool, the generosity of a guest visiting to tell us about his community’s experiences within the residential school system. Recognizing indigenous knowledge models, where a gift’s value is in its ability to create relationships and responsibilities, I write this in deep gratitude to us being entrusted with such pain, grief, devastation, and anger. Unlike our private property economy, where ownership is exclusive and value is tied to possession, in Indigenous gift economy practices, a gift’s value increases as it is passed on and shared with others. As we pass these stories amongst each other, I wish to center these values in our community: reciprocity, gratitude, and abundance.
In the braiding of sweetgrass, the sweetgrass is split into three strands—symbolizing interconnection, balance, and unity. The three strands are often said to represent the mind, body, and spirit, or alternatively, love, kindness, and honesty. Metaphorically it reinforces the idea that strength comes from unity, where different elements come together to create a stronger whole, reflecting the values of interconnectedness between people, communities, and nature.
Throughout this week’s readings I thought about the relationship we have to each other, but also to the institutions we look to protect us. Sometimes those two things meld into each other—the community is the protector, when normative security models fail us. It inspired me to see how community and reciprocal relationships of care mobilized individuals in the documentary. The Women’s Memorial March or the coordinated search and rescue groups, were excellent examples of this. Grief was extended into a material to be shared, identified with, and upon which relationships were built. A community effort organized as a method of mutual aid. Further, these were events for love to echo through. I was incredibly moved by one speaker at the march, citing 50 friendships lost and recognizing her presence was tied to a duty to these friendships she had, as they once committed to helping her “hang on and get a better life”. Even in death, love acts in reciprocity; you cared for me once, I still care for you, and I will continue. Every year, love finds itself in that room, almost like a physical metaphor to a capitalistic holiday that celebrates love as commodity, rather than reciprocity.
In the conclusion of the Reclaiming Power and Place report, they cite the need to reinvent relationships. Trusting relationships are upon which we might protect and respect justice in Indigenous communities. But for me, I wonder how we might transform our own perceptions of relationship to prioritize love and care. There must be a means through which we can see the loss of a life, as a loss to us all. That we are never safe, at peace, or secure until we all experience it.
“Profound love of the kind that moves nations, starts movements, and inspires action does not go away; it deepens and becomes stronger with time.”
Questions:
How can we, as individuals and communities, transform our understanding of relationships to center love, care, and reciprocity, especially in the context of acknowledging and sharing the grief and pain of others, as seen in Indigenous practices and in responses to systemic injustices?
It was a profound movement in my heart to learn in detail about the atrocities faced by Indigenous women and how they remain invisible in a system where their identity, place, and time dictate their survival. It is so disheartening to learn about the missing women, beginning with the case of finding Dawn. The battle led by Dawn’s brother and the solidarity shown by people toward these missing women on the highway were deeply moving. I have been to the Downtown Eastside many times, but my next visit will remind me of Dawn and the others who were supposed to live happily, but who disappeared without a trace. There was a celebration of their love and identity; they could have been loving mothers and sisters. It weighs heavily on my heart to think about these situations, and even today, many are still missing.
The report on Reclaiming Power and Place pointed out the voices quite well and focused on 231 calls to action, covering several community-led interventions aimed at improving healthcare, justice, housing, and education. While these recommendations are practical, the specific voices of the victims and their families call for a reality check that Indigenous women are still invisible,missing and this is the unfortunate reality. While the specific actions and recommendations are laudable, the spread of the love and justice these women deserve can be further enhanced through movements like #IdleNoMore. Many such special thought provoking days shall be earmarked to show our solidarity to these women.
This content also made me reflect on the unnoticed atrocities against Adivasi women in India. In the context of Naxalism (a left-radical communist ideology advocating against the government), atrocities against Adivasi women were central. The conflict between the Naxals and the police caused immense suffering for women, as many were stripped and humiliated during interrogations in the name of extracting information. These atrocities were often hidden from the media, as the interrogations took place deep in forests without connectivity, rendering these women invisible. As a woman and an aspiring feminist, I cannot help but think about the invisibility that surrounds fellow women simply because of their birth identity.
The questions that I have:
What value can an intersectional lens add to Indigenous women who are invisible, and will they ever truly become visible? How many lens are required to see them as our beloved sisters and mothers?
Aren’t we tired of the soft approaches to these problems? Can we think of stronger, more coercive forms of justice for Indigenous women who deserve all the love in the world?
A line that I found extremely impactful in the documentary was one woman interviewed named Janice describing how she was abused in the past but thought it was normal, thought “that’s the way you treat Indian women”. When she said this, it made me emotional. The thought of how internalized these images and portrayals of Indigenous women were and how much this would affect one’s views of themselves. How this was so ingrained in her consciousness it becomes a barrier to her safety. In the same scene, Janice speaks about one of the reasons she ended up on the street, she followed the footsteps of her older sisters. She remembered admiring their ability to afford nice clothing and she wanted the same luxury. Growing up in a poor family, with limited opportunities, prostitution was a way to gain economic independence. There are many parts of this documentary, including this one, which made me think about structural conditions that force people into dangerous situations. For Janice, one of the only options she saw growing up was that of prostitution. Women who hitchhike along Highway 16 know the risk, but for them is a necessary risk. Without access to transpiration, it’s the only way for them to get to work, see their families, or have means of mobility.
Nason (2013) writes “this love has made Indigenous women targets”. This line is in reference to the love that Indigenous women have for their families, land, and nations which is the core of their power to resist and protect their values and cultures. The framing their love in this way drew parallels to the concept of gender anxiety written about by Daggett in her article on petrol masculinity. Indigenous women claiming power does not only threaten gendered hierarchies but also colonial ones. This to me speaks to what could be part of what is at the root of violence against indigenous women.
How can we dismantle both social and institutional conditions that perpetuate violence against Indigenous women?
Once again, I find myself wondering if we’d be better off if a meteor hit Earth. What I shared in last week’s reflection on how difficult it is to be optimistic about the future in the face of so much violence remains true.
I watched “Finding Dawn” for the first time in one of my GRSJ courses titled “Gender, Race, Social Justice and the Law” back in undergrad. It was probably one of the first introduction to the history of Indigenous people in so-called Canada. The course was basically about understanding how the different aspects of the law, including who writes it, who implements it, who interprets it, serve as a tool for the settler-colonial power. One of the articles we read for that class was “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George” by Sherene Razack, a feminist critical race scholar. In this article, she talked about the case of Pamela George in the mid 90’s. Pamela George was an Indigenous woman of the Saulteaux (Ojibway) nation, who was murdered by two white male university students in Regina, Saskatchewan. Part of the what Razack argues is that for the trial and for the eventual conviction that did not match the crime, the Canadian judicial system (jury, judges, the defense, and even the Crown) viewed Pamela as belonging “to a space in which violence routinely occurs, and to have a body that is routinely violated, while her killers were presumed to be far removed from this zone, the enormity of what was done to her remained largely unacknowledged.” (93).
In a different chapter by Razack, and along the same lines of what is expressed in Chapter 2 of the Final Report, both mention how the notion of universal rights is inherently flawed. How can rights be universal if some people are seen as having them while others (because of their race, gender, sexuality, etc) are not? Furthermore, if we consider rights as an important aspect of peace processes and they are entrenched into the settler-colonial framework, how can we uphold the premise behind universal rights without legitimizing the violence of the system in which they are inscribed?
In understanding the histories of violence committed against the Indigenous peoples in Canada, I feel like it is necessary for me to also reflect on the history of Indigenous peoples in Mexico considering that is where I grew up. For many reasons, the way we learn about Indigenous peoples in Mexico is way different than in Canada; it is not perfect by any means, and it definitely erases the current violence that the State is inflicting upon the Indigenous populations, particularly in terms of the environment and access to health services and education. But one thing that is not talked about that often, is how in Mexico (and also true about other countries in Latin America who share similar historical contexts) is that what we learn about Indigenous peoples is as if they are from the past. Indigenous peoples and their languages and their cultures and their ways of life, are alive and that in itself is an act of resilience. I don’t know how to finish this reflection so I think I might just go into the questions.
How and why are acts and movements of resistance and resilience by Indigenous peoples seen as disruptive?
How are performative actions (like saying the Land Acknowledgement) reinforcing the settler-colonial system?
Razack’s writings if anyone is interested:
Razack, Sherene H. “Gendered racial violence and spatialized justice: The murder of Pamela George.” Can. JL & Soc. 15 (2000): 91.
Sherene Razack, Chapter 1: ‘The Cold Game of Equality Staring’, in Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms (University of Toronto Press, 1998) 23-35.
This was definitely a difficult set of materials, and it’s taken me a while to make my way through them with the care that I think they deserve. A couple of themes emerged as I was reading the report, which I think were also reflected in the other videos and reading.
Firstly, I was once again drawn back to Elena’s question from the third week; where is war? In ‘Finding Dawn’, I began to see the Highway of Tears as a warzone for Indigenous women, and in reading the report, I was once again reminded how in these warzones, gendered and racialized bodies experience war and violence in everyday encounters and interactions. This could even be seen in how mothers, sisters, and other family members fighting for justice were ignored or denied. Dr. Barry Lavallee said it best in the report, distinguishing between vulnerability, and targeted violence, “…to be vulnerable to murder because of your colour, and your positionality and just being Indigenous is targeting. It is an active form of oppression of Indigenous women” (p.125).
I think that the stories from this week really emphasized that this issue isn’t about overcoming vulnerability. It’s about allowing Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people to reclaim their power and place, as women and girls are sacred and important, for not only their loved ones but communities. I think a big step in recognizing this sacredness and power is in resisting the dehumanization that Indigenous women face, especially those involved in sex work. Finding Dawn illustrated how these women become numbers and statistics, not being understood as entire persons. After reading the report, and the reading by Dory Nason, I began to understand how this dehumanization of individuals, beyond just being an abject disregard for human rights, stands in stark contrast to Indigenous worldviews. In the report, Shawn Wilson says we are defined by our relationships to others, including the earth and future generations; “we are not just one person; we are the sum of all the relationships that shape our lives” (p.95). This was emphasized by the words of Mona S, speaking of her daughter Michelle, saying that “I’m here also just to remind [you] my daughter wasn’t just a working girl…. She was loved, you know. She has a lot of people that still cry for her, you know” (p.109).
Both Dory Nason’s writing and the report convey that Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people are whole individuals, but also integral and important to entire communities. As Nason said, “…as mothers, aunties, sisters, grandmothers, our concern is for the safety and well-being of all peoples.” I saw that Khayria mentioned Braiding Sweetgrass – that book changed my worldview. The contributions and value of Indigenous storytelling, practices, and ecological knowledge is so important for not only Indigenous communities, but the planet as a whole. The implications of truly implementing the principles of respect, reciprocity and interconnectedness in our laws and governance remind me of our discussions in previous weeks about the transformative potential of feminist scholarship. I’ve actually heard the song “Sisters” before, and have always been struck by the power and resilience you can feel in the music. It gives me hope going forward, but it’s clear that there is a lot of work to be done.
Questions:
What would it look like to integrate principles of reciprocity, respect, and interconnectedness in governance in a settler-colonial state? Is it possible under our current system?
How does framing violence against Indigenous women, girls 2SLGBTQQIA people as “targeted oppression,” rather than an inherent vulnerability, shift our understanding of the systemic nature of this violence, and potential policy responses?
Something that I found myself reflecting on during these readings is how we conceptualize time, and the ways in which we (Settlers, Westerners, Academics, Workers, …) fall short in our conceptualizations of time when engaging with harm.
One quote that stood out to me from the Reclaiming Power and Place report was the quote from Mona S, who shared her memories of her daughter Michelle S, who was murdered, where she expressed that “she has a lot of people that still cry for her, you know” (115). Colonial systems love to put a timeline on things that cannot have timelines applied to them- whether it’s a 5 year grant funding cycle, the requirement to wait 2 days before reporting a person missing, or the expectation that with a public apology all harm will be resolved, so often things are considered in a linear way, as if we are steadily marching away from harm, rather than recognizing the ways that harm is produced and reproduced in relationships, as the report stresses. Also, are we going to pretend that grief (among other feelings and experiences) is something that ever really goes away, rather than becoming integrated into who we are as people, and like Judith Butler says, we become transformed by it to the point of being unrecognizable. How is a 5 year grant application going to capture this. I will answer that for us- it won’t.
Mona S’s words reflect the report’s discussion of conceptualizations of trauma (112), including “soul wounds” on both personal and community levels, which are interconnected. This reminded me of this concept I read about in undergrad from Sara Ahmed called “overing” (I can’t find the article right now but I remember loving it). As far as I understood it, the concept of overing refers to the ways in which a state, community, person (etc) might declare a conflict “over”, seeking to “draw a line under” something, end a chapter, and “move on”- but this so often declares a chapter “closed” without meaningfully dealing with both the harm and the underlying systems driving harm. Something that bothers me about Truth and Reconciliation is that when it’s being practiced as a means to gain political clout, tick boxes, or assuage personal guilt, it seems like it could just be a way to “Over” the entire cultural genocide and colonial systems driving harm. In one of my first classes at UBC one of my classmates shared a comment made to him by an elder who I unfortunately don’t know the name of and can’t credit, but it was along the lines of “sure, now you’re suddenly ready to reconcile- but what if we’re still angry?”. Relationships take time, commitment, care, integrity, and a genuine willingness to change. I think we’ve seen how the concept of prior informed consent has been butchered in “consultations” for land management and extractivism, and my worry is the ways that Truth and Reconciliation is similarly butchered. A lot of what came through in this report to me was the issue of time- it seems an incredible amount of time and care went into this report, and particularly an incredible amount of time spent bearing witness to personal and community experiences. This brings me back to our conversations last week, and Ojeda et al’s question of listening across harm- and to me, this stresses the importance of time.
I talked a bit about time in terms of conceptualizing projects and harm, but the content for this week also stressed time in terms of memory, memorialization, and strength- Janice Acoose shared in Finding Dawn that “I started to rebuild myself as a result of remembering”, and references the importance of relations, stories of relatives, the women in her family, ceremonies, beliefs, values, and languages. I was incredibly moved by Mattie Wilson’s description of her powerful and enduring love for and memory of her daughter Ramona, and the ways in which she will continue to show up and memorialize her daughter and continue to seek justice for her: “We will always be here- if it’s not me, it will be my children, if it’s not my children, it will be my grandchildren […]”. To me, this stressed that while our conceptualizations of time fall short of accurately capturing harm and reconciliation, they also fall short in capturing love, memorialization, and strength- and I think that is an equally important part of this picture.
My questions for this week:
What does it mean to de-individualize trauma? What are the implications for this in how we do our work?
What would it look like to conceptualize time differently in our work (safety, security, anti-violence work, etc).
“What worries me the most is that some of them are so used to it that they don’t feel that they deserve more… That it is alright that people treat you like that, or that you deserve it. And there becomes a destruction of your own self, and some people go on for years like that” (Obomsawin, 1987, 3:00). Indigenous filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin and the quiet power of listening | CBC Radio
Renowned Abenaki documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin puts the victim-blaming, self-pathologizing nature of colonial institutions and ideology into clear terms, a common thread which connected much of the harms endured by Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA people as detailed in the National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Dr. Janice Acoose reaffirmed this internalized normalization of violence when speaking about her own sexual assault experience in Finding Dawn, saying that she “didn’t call it rape then. I used to think that was normal, that’s the way you treat Indian women” (Acoose, 2006, 45:40). Violence is not just encompassed by the physical, but it can be committed against culture, language, spirit, mind, and environment which people call home.
When the colonizer “needs to make acceptable the practice of hating Indigenous women” in order to legitimize the colonial project, the false narratives constructed around Indigenous women are not just contained to colonial audiences (Dory, 2013, para. 4). From the denial of Indigenous women and gender-diverse people’s respected and kinship-based authority in their communities, to the lack of acknowledgement of Indigenous women as leaders, healers, providers, and protectors, I can’t imagine how devastating the erasure of so many significant roles and responsibilities would be for Indigenous communities.
A quote that particularly stood out to me was from Bonnie F. in regards to the adoption of First Nations and Métis children which was pushed by the government in Saskatchewan during the Sixties Scoop:
I was saddened to read about my mother fighting for me in a letter she wrote to get me back. On the other hand, I was so happy she did because the letters proved her love for me after all these years I had been told that she hated me and that she wanted me dead. (Bonnie F., 2018, pgs. 281-282)
This past weekend, I spent a day with my two nieces and my cousin’s daughter, all of them toddler-aged or younger. They were all on my mind as I did the readings. No child deserves to feel this way. It tears your heart in two to think that any child would grow up not only thinking they were unwanted, but that the people who were supposed to love her the most on this planet wanted her dead. How much shame must a child feel when they’re told this repeatedly? And still, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis women persist and resist. They create art, sharing their culture through dance and music as in A Tribe Called Red’s Sisters music video. They are strong activists, advocates, educators, family members, friends, protectors, and so much more than the stories that colonial history has tried to paint about them. So, my question for this week is: how do we, as non-Indigenous allies, help to build an environment that is free of shame for Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA people to share their stories? How can we listen better?
This week has me thinking about sisterhood. I started the readings by watching the music video, “Sisters,” which showed a number of domestic scenes where three sisters, presumably, were hanging out together, having a good time. And then to move from that into the documentary, where many women told stories of sisterhood. Lorraine telling stories of her missing sister Dawn, Anne Marie and Donna Lee speaking about their missing mother, Janice telling us she followed into the footsteps of her four sisters onto the streets…
I know personally just how strong of a bond sisterhood can be. I have a younger sister and she is the single person I am most protective of in the whole world. My mother always told me growing up about the responsibility I carried as an older sister to set a good example, to look out for my sister, and to care for her and love her. I can’t imagine having to live on this earth without my sister. I can’t imagine having to wonder where she is, if she is alive. I would trade my life for hers without question if that ever were necessary.
To think that so many people go through the pain that for me is unimaginable is heartbreaking. And worse, that it is normalized, accepted… As Dory Nason put it, “Violence against Indigenous women is so normalized in settler society, it even becomes a category of desire in the public consciousness.” As we saw in the documentary, police seem to take cases of missing people much less seriously if those missing people are Indigenous women. This is a blatant example of a lack of institutional will to change and maintaining the status quo that makes violence possible, which is one of the four pathways that maintain colonial violence as described in the In The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (111).
I know these discussions are heavy, and sometimes leave us feeling hopeless. So I went where I normally go when I feel hopeless: I found some poetry and sat with it for a while (maybe a little too long, I acknowledge this reflection is coming late). I’d like to share a poem from Hope Matters by Lee Maracle, an Indigenous woman of Salish and Cree ancestry, a member of the Sto:loh Nation, born in Vancouver, mother of four, grandmother of four:
never again for anyone
I dream that one day soon the whole country will rise and
sing to the world that I, that we, Indigenous women are hu-
man beings worthy of being alive!
That we are worthy of facing the same beautiful trial and tri-
umphs of the human experience that others are free to face
That we are worthy of being free from the arms of such an
unnatural and murderous disappearance from life just be-
cause we are Indigenous women
And the people they will rise to the truth of their war-song
of love and justice for all and they will make it so
They will wage war against and defeat the cold soulless
shadow-cloaked hunters
And when the war is won, the killers in the shadows gone,
we will sing, Never again, never again will we be the hunted ones.
-Lee Maracle, Hope Matters, 50
My questions for this week are:
How would our approach to injustices change if we were able to see ourselves as tied through kinship to those beyond our nuclear families?
What are the ways in which I have perpetuated violent systems under the guise of maintenance of the status quo?