I’m not understanding why it’s a genocide. It’s not one entity performing these killings and it’s not organized; lots of indigenous women are just in shitty situations, that doesn’t make it a genocide. We’re talking about ~100 deaths a year here, that’s the equivalent of gang violence in some run down American cities and we don’t call that a genocide.
It's a word used to put the 'blame' so to speak on external entities, effectively the Canadian government, historically.
Given that the vast majority of the violence is perpetuated within the community itself, and the nature of the crimes ... of course it doesn't remotely fit the term 'genocide'. Obviously historical factors are relevant, but the situation is being weaponized for political reasons.
Even call out the governments officials maligned use of the term will get you in trouble, as the previous governments MP for Aboriginal affairs faced pillorying after he did the same, literally today.
The real tragedy is that $100M can go a long way to helping communities move forward and address root causes, as opposed to being used in international political fights over words and ideology.
Yeah, I feared it was a politicized term. I guess my real thought here is, what is the end goal?
So you call it a genocide and give a lump sum of money to the indigenous populations. Now what? The government already admits guilt time and time again for the indigenous problems. We already fund and subsidize their way of life. What else do they want? How many more ways do they want us to skin this cat?
There is no 'end goal' because nobody is in charge.
It's a various group of political entities.
Many people of the current political regime probably would not agree with the term 'genocide' but they're not going to speak out against it for fear of retribution.
My wild guess is that whoever's in charge wants to use the word to make a point. I'll bet there was pushback from certain quarters, but they got their way. Certainly there would have been many pushing for the use of the term.
The outcome will be totally ambiguous - it will provide political cover for more spending on reserves, but it doesn't have to mean anything specific.
As a Canadian, I'll bet that the vast majority of Canadians are perfectly fine with big investment on reserves, so long as it's fruitful. The hockey programs seem to be working well in Quebec for example, with some hiccups. But sending very expensive gear up to Iqaluit in perpetuity may not bode very well. That's a tricky one. There are remote aboriginal communities a zillion miles from anywhere - no roads - nothing. There is no economic activity. That's a tough problem to solve. But there are low hanging fruit we could work on.
Some of those issues are issues that all populations face (death from disease, government bureaucracy, policing, destruction of environment). I don't think its fair to claim that these are intentional parts of a genocide.
There definitely were some bad policies in the past (residential schools, no oversight on medical care, lack of diversity in policing), but the rest is just a culture clash between two completely incompatible cultures. That's not a genocide, it's just a shitty side effect of two cultures trying to find a way to be compatible with one another.
It's not one sided though. The colonists who brought disease over were also dying from the disease (and they didn't bring it over to explicitly wipe out the indigenous population). The destruction of the environment affects everyone, we pull our food from the same land as the indigenous peoples. And again, we didn't destroy the environment to explicitly wipe out indigenous populations. Indigenous people aren't alone in experiencing these issues, you can't just add them to your list to give weight to the "genocide".
It's extremely one-sided. Europeans showed up and assumed the land was unoccupied because the people already here related to it differently. This is the most even-handed, compassionate for both sides approach I can think of for explaining how things went so very wrong without assuming the settlers were being intentionally malicious(and I happened to write it): https://1001histories.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-little-known-...
But there comes a point past which the callous indifference that goes on to this very day, where Indigenous women are raped and murdered at some crazy high rate, like 10 or 12 times as much as other women, cannot be excused as some sort of innocent faux pas where whites, ever so sadly, simply had no idea.
Crimes do not only occur because someone did a bad thing. Crimes can also occur because people said "Eh, not my problem." and did nothing to prevent it. Criminal negligence, felony manslaughter -- these are concepts and legal standards we already have. No one needs to invent them whole cloth to talk about what is wrong with Indigenous peoples continuing to suffer so very much while so many people say "Not my problem."
I've said my piece. I don't plan to engage this further. I don't believe you really want to take the issue seriously.
Who does the raping and killing ? Is there any reliable data on that ? If it is predominantly people of European descent I will buy "genocide", otherwise, it's "just" another indigenous culture falling apart from being exposed to European culture. Oh, sorry ... we can't look at the "race" of the perpetrators, because that would be racial profiling.
I could have topd them how to prevent more murdered or missing aborigional woman and it would have cost a lot less than $ 92 million
1. Take some of that 92 million to run a bus service along the highway of tears and similar areas where lots of female hitch hikers go missing- or even just not arrest private entities who dont have state permission from running their bis service.
2. Create acess points and resources for indigenous women who want to find work on cities.
3. Actually give native people their tribal land instead of doing this thing where government cotrols sale and use of the land and natives have "fake ownership" where they get to live there. Either that or just be honest and admit youre not giving them the land and compensate with money.
4. Make native governments actual governments that people might actually care enough to vote for rather than puppet governments that have to have every decision approved by the corrupt Indian Affairs branch of government.
You got that government of Canada? You want to stop the murser of Canadian indigenous women all you have to do is stop facilitaing their deaths and creating circumstances where their deaths are inevitable. You dont have to spend 92 million on beurocratic reports that go nowhere.
What do we get for our 92 million $ report. We get crap like make native languages official languages like French. What does that mean - school kids learn every single native language on school like we do French? Every government agency has to have someone who speaks every one of the various native languages? The 92 million dollar report is fulled with quaint, unrealistic solutions that don't solve the problem. How is that going to stop these women from dying.
What native communities need to do is stop playing ball declare war and start stockpiling munitions. They need to fight back violently against the opressive tyrannical structure that has led to so many deaths in their communities. Only then do we have any hope of change. Because until they start shooting our government is going to keep this ridiculous structure that keeps natives imprisoned
"What native communities need to do is stop playing ball declare war and start stockpiling munitions. "
The aboriginal women dying, are doing so at the hands of aboriginal men unfortunately.
While historical social structures are obviously relevant, the $100M political show actually tried to move away form what the government already knows (i.e. intra familial violence) so as to somehow point the blame at external causes, which is shameful.
We should have invested the $100M in practical programs to help communities move on.
From Gov. Canada's own web site concerning victimization surveys [1] have a gander:
"Research reveals that Aboriginal women experience dramatically higher rates of violent victimization than non-Aboriginal women do (Proulx and Perrault 2000; Hylton 2002; Brzozowski et al. 2006). Violence within the domestic context is the most pervasive form of victimization experienced by Aboriginal women. Nearly one-quarter (24%) of Aboriginal women in Canada reported having been assaulted by a current or former spouse, compared to 7% of non-Aboriginal women (Brzozowski et al. 2006). Results from other studies suggest that this figure may be as high as 90% in some Aboriginal communities (Ontario Native Women’s Association 2007).
The literature shows that Aboriginal women consistently report a rate of partner violence much higher than their non-Aboriginal counterparts, even after controlling for relevant social variables. For instance, while living common law is associated with a 13 percent greater risk of victimization for non-Aboriginal women, the associated risk for Aboriginal women is 217 percent higher (Brownridge 2008).
Sexual assault against women is particularly prevalent in Northern Canada where there is a much higher proportion of Aboriginal people in each of the territories than in the provinces. In 2002, the rate of sexual assault in Nunavut was 96.1 for every 10,000 people compared to the overall rate in Canada of 7.8 in every 10,000 people (Levan 2001). Aboriginal women have also been found to be greatly over-represented as sex trade workers compared to non-Aboriginal women (Oxman-Martinez et al. 2005; Royal Canadian Mounted Police 2006). In one study of the Vancouver sex trade, 52 of 101 women interviewed were Aboriginal (Farley et al. 2005). The overwhelming majority of these women reported both a history of childhood sexual abuse by multiple perpetrators and a history of rape and other assaults while working as prostitutes."
I think you are absolutely right - but the continuation of these structures and conditions that make violence against women ripe, easy and prevalent are due to structures that the government set in place. If natives actually owned the land - they would be able to sell and mortgage it - and use the money to move off reserve or start a business or whatever.
If tribal counsels weren't just puppet governments, people might actually trust them and they might have competence to fix the situation.
Right now Natives are almost under government stewardship - that condition doesn't seem like it will change any time soon and their situation seems to degarde the longer it continues - which will lead to more deaths and victimizations.
I think to connect our points simply, we could say
1. Yes many of these women are victimized at the hands of men from their communities
2. Many of their communities are impoverished and under 3rd world conditions
3. Abuse and victimization are more likely under such conditions
4. Women are less able to escape victimization under such conditions
5. The government created these conditions and propagates these conditions
A) the land ownership issue is existential and could blow up the entire country. Every treaty is also different.
B) This is not a money problem. If aboriginal communities were given the land to sell, it would be sold to outside interests and the money would be gone in a generation.
C) The 'system' that they are pointing at are the residential schools - they were ended a long time ago.
D) Many reserves have a high degree of self governance. Self governance requires responsibility. The last government forced transparency among local aboriginal communities and it showed widespread corruption. That said - many communities were managed very well i.e. 'as diverse as the country itself'.
E) The government does not create or propagate anything: 35 million Canadians live very well in Canada, there's no reason most Aboriginals could not live off reserve and do the same things that the rest of Canadians do. Obviously, not an option for some, but for most - absolutely.
We need pragmatic studies, pragmatic programs, oversight, accountability - but in the end, there is no way that anyone else can lift the aboriginal communities out of whatever conditions. They have to do it themselves. Today we could hand them money, education, jobs - and it still wouldn't work, so there are underlying issues to work on.
Im going to respond in a limited way because I think this is leading to a big fruitless debate. But notions like limiting native ability to sell the land b/c quote "it would be gone in a generation" is paternalism and I would characterize it as racist perternalism because it assumes natives are not rational actors who can decide their fates. It assumes they need government to keep them from squandering their land. And its this kind of paternalism that has characterized the governments policy towards natives and has led to the current sad state of affairs.
Second its one or the other -either you are paternalistic and take responsibilty for the state of many Natives or you give them autonomy and they take responsibility for themselves. Wanting control because you think they cant responsibily manage their land and resourses but still blaming them for their shortcomings like tribal corruption is an inconsistent position you are taking.
5. The government created these conditions and propagates these conditions
Native leaders and the population demand a different kind self government hands off approach. The government propagates these condition by listening. The self governing model is failing here but no one will speak up.
https://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/mmiw/
https://www.daily-times.com/story/news/local/navajo-nation/2...
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Almost-500-Guatemalan-Wo...
https://www.sovereign-bodies.org/mmiw-database