unworthy bodies: the exclusion of indigenous peoples … · the coloniality of power, a...
TRANSCRIPT
Unworthy Bodies: The Exclusion of Indigenous Peoples from Canadian
Consciousness
Katherine Torrez –
There has been what can be perceived as an increase in media attention on Indigenous
issues within Canada, with the focus placed on movements such as Idle No More and Sisters in
Spirit. However, I use the word perceived because while these movements have been given some
mainstream media coverage, the coverage itself is often superficial, dismissive and aims to
2
discredit. For example, in the case of Idle No More, the public saw Chief Theresa Spence
become the “poster boy” for the movement and was quickly discredited with an array of scandals
concerning the financial mismanagement of the Attawapiskat tribe, as displayed in the January 9,
2013 cover story in the National Post (Partland). Upon an initial analysis it would be easy to
extract that these voices cannot be contained within dominant Canadian discourses as they
necessarily go against this discourse. This is a point that I would like to make in regards to the
hundreds of Indigenous women in Canada who have gone missing without any apparent concern
by the state, judicial, or policial institutions.
The treatment of Indigenous bodies in Canada is very telling of their position in this
society and the unwanted nature of their bodies. Not only are their bodies devalued on the basis
of their racialization but also because their presence impedes Canadian national narrative. What I
mean to say is that Indigenous bodies conflict with Canadian ideals of being a peaceful, kind,
racist - free country. Essentially, these missing Indigenous women in Canada are not reported on
because they go against Canadian consciousness and so they must be ignored, undermined, or
hidden. Their bodies are indigenous and therefore undervalued and they are not seen as
productive and so do not align themselves with global capitalist value. My main research
question in pursuing this research was to analyze this issue from a Canadian context but also to
link the issue to global structures of power. How is the treatment of Indigenous bodies in the
Canadian context reflective of larger global systems of power which are at play? How can the
Coloniality of Power account for the way in which Indigenous bodies are treated in Canada and
around the world?
However, it is imperative to go further, and so I will posit that Canadian discourses and
stereotypes around indigenous women and their existence in Canada can be analyzed through the
3
Coloniality of Power to unpack the way in which these discourses not only uphold Canadian
consciousness but also global systems of economic, social and political power. In order to
unpack this statement I will define and examine the importance of Anibal Quijano’s Coloniality
of Power and by extension the Coloniality of Knowledge and Being. I will then draw a necessary
link between the subordination and dehumanization of Indigenous women in the Global North
and the Global South. This link is essential to in order to come to the realization that the
Coloniality of Power is informed by a racial hierarchy which privileges white bodies and created
Indigenous bodies as the unwanted other. I will also look at the ways in which the media covers
the cases of missing Indigenous women, in order to extract assumptions and stereotypes and
analyze how they influence the creation of identities needed to perpetuate and reinforce social
and economic hierarchies and structural power within the Canadian state but also on a global
level.
The Coloniality of power, a theoretical-analytical approach introduced by Anibal Quijano
that would later be further developed by Mignolo (2009, 2011), Lugones (2008, 2010),
Grosfoguel (2007) and Maldonado-Torres (2007) in a variety of their works. This model of
power is one which began with the conquest and colonization of the Americas and can be seen
today as surviving through the discourse of globalization (Quijano, 2000, 533). Quijano
maintains that the two essential axis of power created during colonialism where the
establishment of the mental category of race and world capitalism (2000, 216). It is however also
important to note that this system of power is not limited to the Americas, as Quijano explains, it
develops into a global system of power through these established institutions during the conquest
of the Americans. He states,
4
“Alongside the expansion of colonial domination by a single ‘Race’ (whites - this
term was in invention of British colonial America - or ‘Europeans’ from the 18th
century on ) of the rest of the world’s population over the last 400 years, the same
criteria were applied to impose a new social classification of the world population
on the global scale. (2000, 217)
In addition, it is important to make the distinction between colonialism and coloniality.
Colonialism is most easily understood as a period of direct colonial rule in which European
empires came to the Americas to “conquer” the continent. It can be said that there is a clear
beginning and a clear ending that is often associated with certain dates. In contrast, coloniality is
noted as “outliving” colonialism, and is the way in which modernity is inherently colonial or
informed by hegemonic social relations during colonialism (Quijano, 2000, 533). In order to do
so, European colonizers had to establish a new set of hierarchies and systems of power which
could place them in a position to dominate and colonize. While Quijano pinpoints these new
created structures as racism and capitalism, other scholars have sought to expand on the theory.
Those who have expanded on his work have also examined other created institutions and
structures and analyzed how they survive today. For example, Lugones has introduced the term
the Coloniality of Gender in response to what she sees as Quijano’s biological approach to
gender in his work, which she sees as a mistake (2008, 5). She states “sex, he understands, as
biological attributes that become elaborated as social categories” (2008, 5). This is problematic
for Lugones because through the Coloniality of Gender she analyzes the creation of gender as
being an imposed framework brought to the Americas by colonizers. In addition she highlights
that there are two sides to the Coloniality of Gender, a dark side and a light side. The idea of
these two sides can be noted in the following quote - “Under the imposed gender framework, the
5
bourgeois white Europeans were civilized; they were fully human. The hierarchical dichotomy as
a mark of the human also became a normative tool to damn the colonized. The behaviors of the
colonized and their personalities/souls were judged as bestial and thus non-gendered,
promiscuous, grotesquely sexual, and sinful” (Lugones, 2010, 743). In other words, accepted,
western, normative notions of gender are seen as the light side while the dark side is the side of
gender that the colonizers aimed to obscure and eliminate. Mignolo has also advanced the idea
of the Coloniality of Knowledge while Maldonado - Torres has contributed to ideas of the
Coloniality of Being which will be discussed in the following pages. In this way coloniality can
be seen as surviving colonialism, because although the structured direct colonial rule is no longer
present, the repercussions and established institutions of colonialism (race and racism,
capitalism, patriarchy etc.) still live on and give privilege to the dominant and repress racialized
others (Mignolo, 2009, Maldonado - Torrez, 2007 & Martinez - Salazar, 2012). It is therefore
essential to understand the condition in which Indigenous bodies survive in Canada through the
use of the Coloniality of Power and its underlying formulations of power. The Coloniality of
Gender in particular allows us to understand the way Indigenous women’s bodies are
conceptualized in western ideology and as such why they are so prone to violation, but also why
these violations are not necessarily perceived as such.
Additionally, it is also important to link different European colonizing projects as
Mendoza makes clear “from the colonial experience of Latin America, modernity, capitalism,
nation building, and democracy are understood as organically linked with colonialism, as parts of
the same historical movement of European expansion and domination over modern or colonial
world systems, evolving from the discovery of America in 1942 by Spanish colonizers to British
and U.S. colonial regimes” (2006, 935 – 936). Additionally, this draws to the inherent problem in
6
post-colonial theory which is encapsulated in the fact that these theories do not aim to reflect on
themselves with language produced outside of colonialism and also that colonialism is not seen
as global. As Mendoza reflects on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s (2000) work, she notes that Latin
American knowledge and colonialism fails to appear in his analysis and as such his notions of
citizenship are informed by 18th
century British colonialism (2006, 932). This demonstrates the
importance of linking colonial projects because as she later points out the projects are inherently
linked and to truly understand and analyze them we must see these connections.
What this means is that we cannot simply analyze the Coloniality of Power as being
limited to Latin America or Spanish colonialism but rather it was a starting point for all colonial
projects. Mignolo comments on the processes of “sixteenth century, “modern” imperial
colonialism (that is European: Spanish, Portuguese, French, British)” and how this was a time of
“messy historical configuration” (2009, 70 - 71). The colonizing projects that were to come after
would in fact rely on those very same established rules, which Mignolo sees as the international
legal system (2009, 85), and would be encompassed by what would come to be known as
Eurocentrism. Quijano states that Eurocentrism explains how Europeans/Whites came to feel
superior to everyone else in the world in every way and perceived it to be a natural order (2000,
341).
The introduction of race is important because it created a system of hierarchy which was
clearly distinguishable due to it being based on phenotypic traits and because it was entrenched
in science, the preferred epistemology since this time (Quijano, 2000, 534). Race would serve as
a function for social classification and also the production of new “historical social identities”
such as Black, Mestizo, Indian (Quijano, 2000, 534). Race was therefore highly validated and
would come to be seen as natural and those deemed as inferior on the basis of their physical traits
7
would be seen so in all other aspects, including cultural features (Quijano, 2000, 535). Quijano
states “the conquered and dominated peoples were situated in a natural position of inferiority
and, as a result, their phenotypic traits as well as their cultural features were considered inferior.6
In this way, race became the fundamental criterion for the distribution of the world population
into ranks, places, and roles in the new society’s structure of power (Quijano, 2000, 535). In
other words, observable difference would become a basis for and justification for domination and
would create new social identities, which could not be refuted as they were entrenched in
science.
Quijano’s second structure of power within the Coloniality of Power is Capitalism or as it
is known as today, neoliberalism. Capitalism would become a way in which labour could be
controlled and would be based on race to create a hierarchy of labour. The Indigenous would be
confined to serfdom, the Blacks to slavery, and paid wage labour for European colonizers: this
system would become the Coloniality of Labour control (Quijano, 2000, 537). The capitalist axis
is important to the Coloniality of Power because it established Europeans at the center of the
global capitalism and also made them the controllers of the commodities and wealth that were
being produced by the bodies of Indigenous and Black people (Quijano, 2000, 539). As Quijano
states:
“based on the idea of ‘race’ and in the ‘racial’ classification of world
population - expressed in the racial distribution of work in the imposition of
new ‘racial’ geocultural identities, in the concentration of the control of
productive resources and capital, as social relations, including salary as a
privilege of whiteness [is what is referred to as the Coloniality of Power].
(2000, 218)
8
The Coloniality of power gives us the tools through which we can understand the
subjugation of Indigenous bodies and how they become unwanted in a system that
applauds productivity, cleanliness, whiteness, civility etc. others are naturalized as being
the exact opposite. This has the effect of placing all others in a naturalized position of
inferiority on a racial, economic and social level. Indigenous bodies represent what
white bodies are not and therefore become worthless and unwanted bodies.
The Coloniality of Knowledge and Coloniality of Being are two important extensions of
the coloniality of power which further cement just how pervasive the current model of power is.
To garner an understanding of the Coloniality of Knowledge I will draw on the Works of Angel
Rama and Frida Schiwy. Additionally, to highlight the Coloniality of Being I will draw on the
work of Walter Mignolo and Nelson Maldonado Torres. The coloniality of knowledge is
essentially the monopoly held over the creation of knowledge by European/whites. Quijano
explains that through the conquest of the Americas “an entire universe of new material relations
and intersubjectivities was initiated… a new space/time was constituted materially and
subjectively: this is what the concept of modernity names” (2000, 547). This is to say that
Europe, particularly “north central zones of Europe”, would become the hegemonic center of the
world as well as the “center of hegemonic conceptualization. This serves to demonstrate how the
Coloniality of Power is linked to the concentration in Europe of “capital, wages, the market of
capital, and finally, the society and culture associated with those determinations” (Quijano, 2000,
548). This is precisely the process which would allow European colonizers to establish a code of
conduct different from their own lands, and as such would establish them as the creators of
knowledge. As the creators of knowledge they were granted the privilege of epistemic creativity,
which in turn would devalue other ways of knowing and understanding. As Schiwy explains, the
9
way in which colonial knowledge was founded worked through “the subalternization of varied
and multiple material and embodied forms of signifying”, which include among various things
included storytelling, dance, rituals etc. (2008, 32 - 33). The retention of power would also be
cemented in a turn towards the scientific or the “lettered” as is expressed in Angel Rama’s the
Lettered City. He argues that an important part of the social order which was produced by
colonialist lied in the social order which was produced through writing (Dowdy, 2010, 1).
Furthermore, bureaucratic letrados who were literate were the ones creating texts which would
delineate and control social norms creating hierarchies. The “others” who were not literate would
be left out of the creation of knowledge and left out of the public sphere in general (Dowdy,
2010, 2). Although, Rama’s ideas focus solely on literacy, it highlights the power which comes
with a monopoly over creating epistemes and ways of knowing. As will be discussed below,
creating knowledge gives great power in producing narratives and directing ways of knowing
and being. This undoubtedly allows for those in power to create knowledge which benefits them
and subjugates others.
The Coloniality of Being is very much linked to the Coloniality of Knowledge in that the
Coloniality of Being is informed by hegemonic western epistemology. Maldonado Torres
encapsulates the important connection between the two by dissecting the Cartesian quote “I think
therefore I am”. He argues that the statement presupposes two important dimensions which are
not explicitly stated, for example, if the “I” thinks, there can be others who do not think.
Similarly, if the “I” is, it can be logically deduced that there are others who are not and those
others who fall out of the scope of being (2007, 252). Essentially, in the same logic which
manifested the empowerment of the colonist, was also the logic to strip the epistemic creativity
of the racialized other and pull them out of the realm of humanity.
10
In regards to the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust Mignolo explains that the
Coloniality of Being functioned on two dimensions. In the case of the Atlantic Slave Trade the
dominant had the power to pull individuals from their community and sell them as commodities
in their own markets. In terms of the Holocaust the dominant had the power to strip individuals
legally the same as them in terms of citizenship, and expel them from humanity (Mignolo, 2009,
81). In addition, he sees epistemic racism, which can also be called the Coloniality of
Knowledge, as being behind both of these historical events and as a result, the Coloniality of
Being is a result of the Coloniality of Knowledge (Mignolo, 2009, 82). These two theories are
essential to my analysis because it demonstrates the power of knowledge and how it is used as a
tool to perpetuate and justify the position and treatment of Indigenous bodies. The informing of
beings can be seen as working on two levels. On one level, individuals are informed on their
being by the dominant group in a way which limits them and in turn benefits the individuals who
have the power to inform. On a second level, the notions of being are internalized by both groups
and make them appear to be naturalized which normalizes and rationalizes the inequalities
between both groups. Instead of it being about one group repressing another it is masked by the
fact that one group cannot be at the same level as another, and that they are inherently or
naturally unequal.
The Coloniality of Power, Knowledge and Being, are an important way through which
the position of Aboriginal women in Canada should be analyzed, because they provide tools and
a language which exists outside of hegemonic western epistemology for us to unpack issues
which are essentially the results of this very same way of knowing. It is essential to move past
the dualistic nature of western epistemology, which encourages us to homogenize, while at the
same time individualizing, all aspects of being in order to conform to either category A or B,
11
when in reality all relations exists on a more complex level. Additionally, it is important to resist
this hegemonic epistemology which constantly perpetuates the separation of discourses and
disciplines in analyzing issues which is in an effort to invisibilize the Modern/Colonial Matrix of
Power and how it functions on a global level. This is to say that this type of theoretical -
analytical approach, allows us to analyze this issues in a way which allows for the linking of
different times, issues and various types of knowledge. This serves as an important analytical
tool because it highlights the way that current issues faced by racialized others (Indigenous
violence faced by women etc.) can be drawn out from establish systems of power created during
colonization. We can come to understand how coloniality survives colonialism.
Furthermore, as will be discussed feminist discourse is not a sufficient lens through
which to analyze Indigenous women’s issues and many indigenous women being averse to
naming themselves as feminists for a variety of reasons. For example, an important concern is
that feminism and Indigenous women who are fighting for social justice do not have the same
goals in mind. It is clear that feminist discourse strives to promote and create gender equality,
and is a vision that is inconsistent with Indigenous women’s goals. They see the importance of
striving for gender harmony and believe that self - determination is essential to the empowerment
of their women, and this cannot occur outside the context of decolonialism (Grey, 2004, 13- 14).
Grey makes use of exerts from the works of Dawn Martin Hill, and Haunani-Kay Trask to
demonstrate that Indigenous women’s gender resistance is not oppositional to men and that
struggles occur laterally and not vertically:
“’Our men are our equals, our partners – we should cherish one another
mutually,’ writes Dawn Martin-Hill (2003:118), articulating a commonly-held
view among Native women who work toward restoring traditional gender
12
interaction… Haunani-Kay Trask15 (1996) states bluntly that, ‘[s]truggle with
our men occurs laterally, across and within our movement. It does not occur
vertically between white women and indigenous women on one side and white
men and [Native] men on the opposing side’ (914).” (2014, 14).
Additionally, feminist discourse is entrenched with the assumption that gender equality
is ubiquitous, and as a result proves to be alienating for Indigenous women who maintain that
their societies did not suffer from patriarchal oppression prior to the onset of colonialism (Grey,
2004, 11). As a result, Grey states that “A continued insistence on the ubiquity of male
domination, despite dissenting views, has two significant implications: it creates an atmosphere
unconducive to dialogue between feminists and Native women, based on the lack of a pivotal
shared experience and the subsequent muting of other potential commonalities” (2004, 11). This
points to the fact that due to Indigenous women’s “bicultural existence” they are forced to know
clearly the dominant culture but women from this very same culture know very little in regards
to Indigenous issues and communities (Grey, 2004, 18).
Finally and perhaps most importantly, in the eyes of Indigenous women Feminism fails to
locate the reason for their subordination; while feminist focus on patriarchy as their perpetrator,
Indigenous women see clearly their oppression as being an implication of colonialism (Grey,
2004, 19). A similar sentiment is expressed by Anderson who states that Indigenous women are
aware that their condition is the result of colonization and as a result their struggles are against
the systems and policies enforced by colonizers, and not against men or individuals (2000, 55-
56). As Anderson states, “we are also aware that we carry the struggles of the past five centuries
into the new one” (2000, 55). This statement really captures the idea that Indigenous
marginalization must be analyzed from an all-encompassing perspective which accounts for not
13
only all of the time since colonization, but also an approach that recognizes the survival of these
institutions throughout this time into today. For example, the way violence against women exists
in a normalized way in Indigenous communities, to the point where women who do not suffer
violence are seen as “the exception not the rule (Anderson, 2000, 55), cannot be explained by
simply examining gender relations in those communities. We must ask ourselves where these
gender ideals came from, who they benefit and who they deter, and also we must unpack and
learn from the way genders existed prior to colonisation.
Mignolo also uses an important term which is essential to understanding the status of
Indigenous people in Canada: bare lives and dispensable lives. He makes use of Hannah
Arendt’s notion of bare lives which she used to describe the institutionalized stripping of
citizenship from the Jews in Europe during the Holocaust (2009, 79). Dispensable lives on the
other hand are lives which are only given value on the basis of their ability of their labour and
ability to produce worth (Mignolo, 2009, 74). I see an important link which can be made here in
that indigenous peoples in Canada can be seen as being both bare and dispensable to the
Canadian consciousness. In other words, I mean to say that the way stereotypes revolving around
Indigenous peoples exist in Canadian consciousness plays a great part in making them bare and
dispensable lives. The scope of these stereotypes is beyond naming all of them but they typically
revolve around the fact that Indigenous people are seen as having a tenuous hold on “modern”
life (Razack, 2011, 1). This can best be explained by the fact that “Europeans imagine
themselves as the exclusive bearers and protagonists of modernity” and also their assumption
that time and history moved from a state of nature directly to modernity which ended in Western
Europe (Quijano, 2000, 542). In following dualistic thinking patterns, what was natural was seen
as subordinate and primitive (i.e. what was non-European) and what was modern and European,
14
was civilized, scientific, and naturally superior. Going further, there is a notion that Cree/Metis
professor Emma LaRocque explains in Kim Anderson’s book A Recognition of Being:
Reconstructing Native Womanhood, the “vanishing Indian”. As she explains this idea is based on
presumptions surrounding primitiveness which as an extension meant that Indigenous cultures
were perceived as static or frozen culture. As a result any changes in culture were seen not as
development, but instead as assimilation (2000, 25-26). Here we can note the necessary
invisibilization of Indigenous people.
Institutionally, it is evident that Indigenous people are vulnerable to becoming bare lives
through the legal structures of the Indian Act, status and disenfranchisement. In addition, the
problematic natures of these structures are many, but for the purposes of this argument it is
important to note that the power of control over the extraction from the community is what is
important. Although, being disenfranchised does not necessarily remove one from Canadian
citizenship or from true Indigenous being, it does serve very powerful legal and symbolic
implications of removal. For example, certain scholars such as Bonita Laurence have found that
status is an important part of reaffirming Indigenous ancestry for individuals (Cray & Hanson,
2009 - Indian Status). Furthermore, going back to the idea that Indigenous are perceived to have
a tenuous hold on modern life and the notion of the disappearing Indian, we can extract that
people in Canada are also bare on a deeper more symbolic level. This is because this logic
suggests that there are no thriving Indigenous people in Canada; there are only those which are in
the process of perishing and are not symbolically important or citizens and those that are true
citizens are those who are no longer Indigenous. Additionally, these perishing Indigenous are
also disposable because they are not seen as having productive bodies and although they are per
say not disposed of directly, one can still draw a strong connection between the two. What this
15
discourse serves to perpetuate and reproduce is that those who do not meet these stereotypical
notions of what being Indigenous is according to Western hegemonic discourse, are in fact not
Indigenous at all. This idea that indigenous bodies are perishing or dead is also expressed by
Serene Razack in her examination of the deaths of Indigenous people in police custody. She tells
us that these bodies are seen as essentially already dead and as such are seen as beyond help
(2011, 1). These assumptions are perpetuated and justified because of the pathological frailty
which is associated with their bodies, which in addition is often linked to alcoholism. It is a
common held assumption that alcoholism is biologically linked to indigenous bodies and is often
used to “discredit” their bodies; as a result they are perceived to be responsible for their sickness
and as such undeserving citizens who are “beyond the pale” of being helped (Razack, 2011, 8).
This again further establishes the invisibility of Indigenous people in Canada: they are not only
seen as a perishing race, they are also seen as a people who are rightly perishing and here too
there is an element of naturalization.
This example mirrors very closely, the way in which missing Indigenous women are
treated in society by the social conscious, the police and government. However, before turning
our attention to this situation I would like to first discuss the way Indigenous women’s roles in
particular have changed in their communities as a result of colonial projects. Indigenous people
as they are referred to today come from a multitude of tribes with diverse cultures and traditions
which have been homogenized into a single group as a result of colonization. There are however,
commonalities which can be noted and are important for disseminating the position of
Indigenous women before colonization. As Anderson explains, we can locate various Indigenous
cultures as being land-based and as such have commonalities in the way the earth is related to as
well as the way relationships are built and maintained (2000, 35). Furthermore, Gun Allen states
16
that tribes were joined together by the fact that they are “earth based and wilderness centered; [as
well as] ‘animalistic’, polytheistic, concerned with sacred or non-political power” (in Anderson,
2000, 35). It is clear based upon these traits that what the first colonizers saw in the relationships
between themselves and all other things, was not something that they would have ever found or
experienced in Europe. The treatment of women within these societies was varied but they are
joined through the fact that women were not seen as submissive or needy and there was no
questioning of the power of femininity (Anderson, 2000, 36). Womanhood was seen as a sacred
identity which held an important position within these cultures which were focused on the
importance of balance and practicality, and as such it was essential for labour to be divided in a
way which was based on practical needs (Anderson, 2000, 57-59). For example, although it can
be said that women mostly worked within the home and men worked out of the home; where it
was necessary and practical it was not seen as negative or discouraged if individuals of the
opposite gender engaged in the jobs of the other (Anderson, 2000, 59). In the same way one
groups work was not valued over the other, it was clear that everyone’s work was important to
the community (Anderson, 2000, 60). Women in particular were responsible for food production
and distribution, and also there was a sense that because they worked directly with the land that
they in a sense were responsible for it or “owned it” (Anderson, 2000, 61).
These dynamics would soon change with the arrival of colonizers who were shocked by
the control that women had within their communities, and would aim to reorganize these
communities to mimic European gender norms. The effects of these policies can be noted in the
Iroquois nation, as missionaries pushed to turn the men towards agriculture and that women
should remain in the home. Thus, as a result women’s economic position was lowered and they
became dependant on their men, like white women (Anderson, 2000, 63). Additionally, the
17
Catholic Church had a very big role in eliminating the role of women in spirituality in these
cultures. By using the image of Eve, Indigenous women and in turn all Indigenous spirituality
was seen as evil and sexually objectified by limiting their roles to reproduction (Anderson, 2000,
77). These notions make an important statement which must be considered about colonial
relations: they are gendered and sexualized (Smith, 2005, 8). What this means is that indigenous
bodies were made to seem as though they were a pollution which the colonial “body” needed to
purify itself from. They were seen as being polluted with sexual sin and their nakedness wrong,
making them adulterous and libidinous (Smith, 2005, 10). As a result their bodies are not seen as
worthy and because they are dirty they are “sexually violable” – sexual violence towards these
bodies is seen as no violence at all (Smith, 2005, 10). It is through these established relations that
we can begin to unpack why the Canadian imagination does not care about indigenous bodies,
why they do not care about missing, murdered and raped Indigenous women.
The Native Women’s Association of Canada has estimated that in the last twenty years
there are around 500 Indigenous women that have gone missing which goes hand in hand with
government statistics that calculate that Indigenous women between the ages of 25-44 are five
times more likely than other Canadian women to die violent deaths (Kuokkanen, 2008, 219). The
situation in Canada is starting to reach mainstream media in some senses that a report in 2004 by
Amnesty International was released denouncing the police and Canadian government’s failure to
address these issues. The report outlined, that the threat of violence towards these issues was a
result of social and economic marginalization, the frequent failure of the justice system and that
there was evidence that Indigenous women were being targeted for violence because of the lack
of attention given to their cases (Kuokkanen, 2008, 219). We can see the notions that western
discourse creates about Indigenous bodies at work here and how their bodies are not valued. This
18
situation can also be seen as upholding capitalist structures that are inherently important to the
underpinnings of the Coloniality of power. As we know, Capitalism is a structure of power
which is inherently unequal and requires the subjugation of most individuals in society for a
smaller portion to dominate. In the case of Indigenous women in Canada there is no difference,
this system has left them in an economically disadvantaged position from the time of
colonization through to the rise of globalization; they are made vulnerable by being forced into
situations of extreme poverty, homelessness, and prostitution (Kuokkanen, 2008, 220). In this
way we can see the Canadian government’s disavowal of this situation as a safeguarding
measure to protect global capitalist structures at large, and Indigenous women’s vulnerability to
sexual violence is very clearly socially constructed and exploited through these systems.
Furthermore, the vulnerability created by viewing Indigenous women as “sexually violable”
makes them targets for sex trafficking as they are perceived to have “exotic sex appeal [which]
can be used as objects of sadism and violence with relative impunity” (Kuokkanen, 2008, 221).
In the same vein, it is also important to note that of the Indigenous women who have gone
missing and found, a great majority of them have been victims of sexual homicide (Gilchrist,
2010, 373)
There is also a particular aspect of Canadian imagination which must be protected and it
is one where Indigenous people do not exist and furthermore do not matter. This can be noted in
the media coverage or lack thereof missing Indigenous women. As Gilchrist’s analysis
concludes, even Indigenous women who fall within the normal parameters of whiteness, do not
receive the same media attention which white female victims do. They are not talked about in the
same way, nor is the amount of coverage they receive comparable (Gilchrist, 2010, 376). This is
very telling because female victims tend to be overrepresented in the media particularly those
19
who have died as a result of violent crimes (Gruenwald et. al. 2011, 756). It can be said that the
media generally aims to create public fear, and so it is important to question exactly why there is
a divergence in this when it comes to reporting on Indigenous women. It is very clear that
Indigenous bodies do not count, they cannot exist within Canadian imagination and this can be
noted within all areas of Canadian life. For example, in 1992 “Ontario Minister Jim Flaherty
argued that the Canadian government could boost health care funding for “real people in real
towns” by cutting bureaucracy that serves only Native people” (Smith, 2005, 12). This is very
telling of position which Indigenous people hold in Canadian society hold, but also the
conditions in which they have been able to survive. Additionally, we can note how these
attitudes are essential to maintaining racist subjugation which underpins the Coloniality of Power
on a global level.
An interesting connection can be seen in the way in which Indigenous people are
subjugated in the Modern/Colonial Matrix of Power today and the way they were during Spanish
colonialism. My intent in highlighting this important connection is to make a concrete
connection to colonial relations today. The treatment and conditions of the way Indigenous
people in Canada survive is something which is very much left out of Canadian consciousness,
the issues that face them are not something which is ever seriously discussed. When these
conversations do reach the public sphere as I have discussed, there is a particular type of
discourse used. This discourse serves to individualize the issues that Indigenous people face in a
way that marks them as biologically flawed, again perpetuating a basis of domination. On the
other hand this language also serves to eliminate the involvement of the role of the colonizer in
the making of the unequal relationship, and their implication in the creation and perpetuation of
the position of indigenous peoples is effectively hidden. In the same way that this discourse was
20
created to justify and disguise barbarity, the Spanish also had to disguise barbarity and protect
their image in Europe. Mendoza discusses that “the rights of peoples debate” was an attempt by
the Spanish Crown to control the damage to their image that was made as a result of the
spreading of the “Black Legend” – an account that had spread around Europe about the barbarity
of Spanish conquistadors (Mendoza, 2006, 937). From these talks came the decision to end
Indigenous slavery and to raise their status of that as human. It is however imperative to see how
this decision was also made with colonial interests in mind, as raising the Indigenous to human
status allowed them to embark on a civility project which involved the Christianisation of these
bodies (Mendoza, 2006, 938). Essentially, this gave them justification to save these “souls”, by
converting and civilizing them and in turn colonizing them. Additionally, the way in which
colonizers would come to treat Indigenous bodies was outside of the bounds of the normal
ethical standards which existed in their countries of origin (Maldonado –Torres, 2007, 246).
What we can see here is the need for the colonizer to justify their barbaric actions so that they
can logically self-reason that they are not uncivilized and savage like as their behavior would
normally indicate.
The Canadian government’s disavowal of Indigenous people’s issues in the international
arena, as well as its attempts to erase these issues from Canadian consciousness can also be seen
as needing to preserve a certain image. Within the international arena and Canadian
consciousness, Canada is seen as being a nation with a peaceful history. Canada is also seen as
being a multicultural nation, where racism and sexism is non-existent – to the point that it is one
of the first pieces of information that are given to new immigrants (Arat – Koc, 2012, 8).
Therefore, having the conditions in which Indigenous people survive in Canada made public is a
major concern for their identity; as a result, the individualization or ignoring of these issues
21
serves to preserve Canadian self-identity as well as their international image. In the same way in
which the Spanish justified their barbaric actions to preserve their sense of civility in themselves
and in Europe, Canada also justifies their barbaric policies and behaviors towards Indigenous
peoples. An example of this in action can be seen in the weaving of national narrative during the
Somalia Affair in a manner which adamantly denied racism. Serene Razack contends that “in a
nation where racism is so vigorously denied, the Somalia Affair posed an enormous challenge to
Canadian confidence… we believed in our national innocence yet feared we did in fact possess
‘hidden hatred’” (2004, 117). In the Somalia Affair, it quickly became a matter of focusing on
the military cover-up and that the violence had been the work of “a few bad apples”: in turn, race
and colonial relations were effectively hidden (Razarck, 2004, 120-121). It is clear in this
example of the importance of maintaining a consciousness and identity both to the community
and on an international level and we can see a strong parallel here to the manner in which
Indigenous issues are addressed both domestically and internationally. This is a clear example of
what Kate Shanley calls “present absence” in regards to the manner in which U.S. colonial
imagination reinforces the notion that Indigenous people are vanishing while simultaneously
justifying the conquest of native land (in Smith, 2005, 9).
It is clear that colonial relations and models of power are still informing the world around
us today, and as a result Indigenous issues cannot be analyzed within the same framework of
hegemonic western episteme which perpetuates this relationship. In particular, feminist discourse
does not go far enough in unpacking the position of Indigenous women in Canadian society
today and prior to colonization. On the contrary, decolonial thinking provides a way of analyzing
issues which delinks from western epistemology: the Coloniality of Power, Being and
Knowledge provide us with a more complete way of examining these issues which takes into
22
account race and colonialism. Furthermore, we can see the way in which these structures have
affected the position of Indigenous women and the importance to include them in any analysis.
It is salient to unpack the manner in which Canadian imagination perpetuates the notion of the
“disappearing Indian” to disavow Indigenous issues and institutional racism in Canada. Finally,
it is essential to go further and unpack the way these same notions also uphold global systems of
power through race and the economy among other factors, and to acknowledge the continued
survival of Indigenous peoples.
Works Cited
Anderson, K. (2000). A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood. Toronto,
ON: Sumach.
Arat - Koc, S. (2012). Invisibilized, Individualized, and Culturalized: Paradoxical Invisibility and
Hyper-Visibility of Gender in Policy Making and Policy Discourse in Neoliberal Canada.
Canadian Woman Studies/Les cahiers de la femme 29(3): 6-17.
Dowdy, M.(2010). Spaces for Congregation and Creative Play: Martín Espada’s and Victor
Hernández Cruz’s Poetic Plazas. College Literature 37(2): 1-23.
Gilchrist, K. (2010). “Newsworth Victims?” Exploring differences in Canadian Local Press
Coverage of Missing/Murdered Aboriginal and White Women. Feminist Media Studies
10(4): 373-390.
Grey, S. (2004). Decolonising Feminism: Aboriginal Women and the Global ‘Sisterhood’.
Enweyin 8:9-22.
23
Grosfoguel, R. (2007). The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond Political Economy Paradigms.
Cultural Studies 21(2): 211-223.
Gruenewald, J. et al. (2013). Covering Victims in the News: What Makes Minority Homicides
Newsworthy? Justice Quarterly 30(5): 755-783.
Kuokkanen, R. (2008). Globalization as Racialized, Sexualized Violence. International Feminist
Journal Politics 10:2 June 2008, 216–233.
Lugones, M. (2008). The Coloniality of Gender. Words & Knowledges Otherwise.
Lugones, M. (2010). Towards a Decolonial Feminism. Hypatia 25(4): 742-759.
Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of
a Concept. Cultural Studies 21(2-3): 240-270.
Martinez - Salazar, E. (2012). Global Coloniality of Power in Guatemala Racism, Genocide,
Citizenship Toronto, Lanham, MD: Lexington.
Mendoza, B. (2006). The Undemocratic Foundations of Democracy: An Enunciation from
Postoccidental Latin America. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture in Society 31(4): 935-
942.
Mignolo, W. (2009). Dispensable and Bare Lives: Coloniality and the Hidden
Political/Economic Agenda of Modernity. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology
of Self-Knowledge . 7(2): 69-88.
Mignolo, W. (2011). Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing. On Transversal (De)Coloniality,
Border Thinking, and Epistemic Disobedience. Postcolonial Studies. 14 (3).
Quijano, A. (2000). The Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla:
Views from the South 1(3): 533-580.
Quijano, A. (2000). The Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin American. International
Sociology 15(2): 215-232.
Partland, K. (January 9, 2013). Theresa Spence’s carefully woven cause starts to unravel.
National Post. Accessed March 24, 2014:
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/09/kelly-mcparland-theresa-spences-
behaviour-more-foolish-than-inspirational/
Razack, S. (2004). Bad Apples and a Nation Wronged: Public Truth and the Somalian Affair. In,
Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalian Affair, Peacekeeping, and the New
Imperialism. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Razack, S. (2011). Timely Deaths: Medicalizing the Deaths of Aboriginal People in Police
Custody. Law, Culture and the Humanities: 1-23