Mamawipawin

Caitlin Tolley, a soon-to-be lawyer, describes her encounters with violence. In her community of KitiganZibiAnishinabeg Nation, a Police officer killed her grandmother when she was just a child. She explains that her family continues to cope, even though there was no justice. Despite Caitlin’s inspirational story of achievement, she still was affected by violence.

Bella Laboucan-McLean, a 25-year-old Cree woman with aspirations to go to Europe and pursue her dream in fashion, died in 2013 when she fell off a balcony in Toronto. Police have deemed her death to be suspicious. Again, despite the ambitious dreams for Bella to make her mark on the world, she too was tragically affected by violence.

Rinelle Harper, a 16-year-old teen from Garden Hill was left for dead near the Assiniboine River last year after being attacked twice. Rinelle had been attending Southeast Collegiate in Winnipeg and despite her endeavours to do her part in increasing the 36% First Nation’s graduation rate, she could not avoid the increased risk of violence just because she was an Indigenous woman.

We must not forget these women or the stories of Helen Betty Osborne, CherisseHoule, Claudette Osborne and the more than 1200 cases for which most have had little justice or remain unsolved.

So how can we not view this as a sociological phenomenon when the very fact that if a person is an Indigenous woman, they are three times more likely to be killed by a stranger than a non-Indigenous woman?

And how can we not have this ‘high on our radar’ when the very lives of so many people in this country are being taken away? We must not forget the more than 440 children who have lost their mothers, the parents who have lost their daughters, or the communities coping with a loss of one of their own. The efforts by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike to raise awareness and take action against this epidemic have been extraordinary.

I do know Mr. Harper has compassion, just not for Indigenous women. For instance, he reached out to the family of Rehtaeh Parsons, acknowledging the issue of cyber bullying and offering his condolences publically. Last year, when MalalaYousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize, Harper responded by stating that “our Government is committed to giving girls a strong foundation to succeed in life by promoting equality, education and good health in a safe, secure environment.” Yet when so many families go out of their way to ask Mr. Harper for a roundtable meeting about the issue and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, he dismisses them.

It’s this patriarchal lens with which he runs the Canadian government that drives a perpetual cycle of violence against far too many of our most vulnerable women and girls.

The good news is that regardless of Harper’s decision, or any government for that matter, Indigenous peoples are heroes. Our very own existence demonstrates the failure of years of colonial control and for that, we are all victors of colonization. Knowing this along with the help of all Canadians, I am certain that the cycle of violence will end for Indigenous peoples.

Many have likened our Treaties to the beginning of a relationship, a new partnership, and even a marriage. However, given the way the Crown historically chose to ignore (at best) and ‘implement’ (at worst) the treaties according to their own values and mandate, I think it is fair to say that this marriage has been a bad one right from the start.

Speakers today at the University of Manitoba Sharing Dialogue on Treaties, with special guest David Suzuki, included Ovide Mercredi, David Courchene, Charlie Nelson, Harry Bone, and Jamie Wilson. All of these outstanding leaders had much to say about our tragic treaty relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the newcomer European settlers, and shared impassioned remarks about the necessity of recognizing the treaties as agreements concerning the on-going relationship with the Crown. Suzuki suggested he had a “difficult time with the treaties”, and described them as having origin in an “alien group with an alien system, working in a foreign language”. I take exception, with respect to Mr Suzuki, to characterizing the notion of treaties as being foreign to Aboriginal peoples. The problem is not that we were duped or were incapable of treating – treating was not a new practice to the First peoples, as Ovide Mercredi explained. The real problem is that our side of the partnership – the Aboriginal side, has been systematically eliminated from consideration. The problem is that traditional practices, including our ways of governance, have been decimated by the Indian Act and other legislation, and was designed to protect (us from ourselves), civilize and assimilate us into the Canadian political and legal landscape. On this point, I wholeheartedly agree.

However, I have a question that I’d like each of these leaders to answer, even Mr Suzuki as one with “Haida relations”, as he puts it. As benefactors of the colonial state’s upheaval of women from Aboriginal governance structures, I think this all-male panel may have something further to share with us. What I would like to know from each of these leaders is, in light of the call for discussion with the Crown about our treaties, what are you personally doing to ensure that we do not simply replicate settler-state forms of governance? I’d like to hear, for the benefit of other Aboriginal men, what is each of today’s panel members doing to ensure that space is made for women to assume their place as leaders, and to restore Indigenous governance structures that put women front and centre? Or are they content to go it alone?

A number of years ago, I gave a talk at the University of Saskatchewan entitled ‘When rights are not enough’. I remember it because it’s the same title of my masters thesis which I wrote there years prior – a thesis which in the end was largely (re)written in a few weeks simply to jump through the remaining hoop and get the ‘hell out of dodge’. The talk which I gave there was largely a response to this thesis, and to the political and legal discourses of ‘rights talk’ which have been overtaking ‘Indian country’ post 1982 and the recognition of Aboriginal and treaty rights in section 35 of the Canadian Constitution.

Aboriginal peoples have rights as provided under the constitution. But these are not rights provided by the Canadian government or the Crown – as all other rights are in Canada (be that the rights of governments, corporations, or individuals). As the constitution states, Aboriginal rights are simply recognized and affirmed by the constitution and not created within. This is because such rights are vested in, and created by the legal, spiritual, political, constitutional, economic, territorial and cultural traditions of indigenous nations. Many are derived from the nations’ original covenant(s) and their treaties with other nations (both human and non-human).

As I understand it these are not rights. They are responsibilities. I ask those that speak their language better than I speak Cree to think about this. How do you understand law? How do you understand rights? My understanding of responsibilities is grounded in language and in the teachings of the Elders, friends and family that I have had as my teachers along the way in Nehiyaw, Nitsitapi, Anishinaabe, and Mikmaw territories. Even without language, the stories, songs, ceremonies, philosophies, laws and political systems also teach of the same.

We need leadership that understands this. We need leaders that understand that what the Canadian government or the courts understand as rights are never going to respect Indigenous nationhood, sovereignty and responsibilities. These rights are simply not enough. That’s why so many are still fighting to give voice to Indigenous laws, responsibilities and nationhood in the international realm.

Few people that visit Hawaii spend their evenings with the very people that work in the hotels that they stay in. I have had this privilege – and i mean privilege! I stay at the Kaanapali Beach Hotel for this very reason – much of the staff are related to the community leaders that I first went to meet with; community leaders that have since become family/ohana largely solidified by a fire. I also admit to staying at the hotel for personal reasons – there is nothing like waking up at kaanapali beach or ending your day with a mango ‘lava flow’ listening to live music. This is KBH. But for me it is so much more than a hotel – it is the people. Over the years we have talked story at the desk, over coffee, meals and drinks. We have attended community meetings and protests, and we have spent canoe nights together. We have talked about land, water and sovereignty and put meaning to those conversations while working with taro on the farm. They are the ohana that will keep me coming back. Back to listen. Back to be inspired. Back to offer what assistance i can with research or writing. Back to write about how community leadership is trying to restore lands and protect the water to ensure that this and future generations can actually live on the land. Back to support their resurgence and to watch with great interest as community leaders work to create a kuleana land council system; using whatever means possible to reassert their authority and their laws. To stand on their law.

I say stand on their law because I have been thinking of those few words for the past few weeks. My thinking of standing on law started when I was driving across the southern prairies – doing what I love most – thinking and singing my way across Cree and Blackfoot territories and the lands to which I belong. While driving down the number 1 highway along the south end of the qu’epelle valley, the song ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ [1] began to play as my iPhone shuffled through its some 1700 songs (I admit willingly to loving road trips and traveling too much). This is a song that has inspired much thought and of which I have written about previously.[2] The song (which has recently become a ditty for an Australian bank urging people to invest and save) tells of Vincent Lingarri who led an 8 year long walk-off and struggle against the state, claims of terra nullius and so called land owners over land rights in Australia. The song tells of he message of the struggle and what kept Lingarri and the other station workers holding strong for eight long years: “how power and privilege cannot move a people who know where they stand and they stand in their law.”[3]

It is this line that has me thinking – that always keeps me thinking. It is knowing the land and the laws – Indigenous law, political philosophy, relations with territory and understanding responsibility (not rights) – that will keep the people strong and which will provide a basis upon which to continue the battles begun by the ancestors generations ago. some say

The statement “we need more Indigenous women involved in nation-building” on the surface, seems like a good thing. Of course we need more women in Indigenous politics….just look at all those men in leadership roles on band councils, territorial organizations and of course the Assembly of First Nations. After all, only about 17 percent of “Aboriginal leaders” are women (meaning 17 percent of Indian Act Chiefs are women) and that’s ridiculously low, even if you compare it to the 25 percent of MPPs that are women in the House of Commons in the current Canadian government[1].

And yet, I find myself feeling irritated when I hear or read something of the sort because first and foremost it erases the fact that Indigenous women are already involved in in all kinds of nation building – from raising and educating children to the front lines of direct action, to professionals using their credentials to undermine and critique colonialism. Far too often, these contributions go unrecognized, unappreciated and uncelebrated. Women have always been resisting and re-building, and the vast majority of this work has been done and is being done outside of the bounds of the Indian Actand Aboriginal organizations. This unrecognized labour, inspiration and unending contribution forms the backbone of our families and communities, and family and community are the backbone of our political systems.

The problem for me then begins when we restrict our view of Indigenous political systems to the Indian Act. It is glaringly obvious that men are over-represented in Chief and Councils across Canada. But remember that this is a colonial systems that has targeted Indigenous women through blood quantum (double mother rule), sexuality (who you marry defines your identity) and gender (you’re a women so you can’t vote or run in election), so to me, this is hardly surprising. The Indian Act is designed to remove women from leadership roles. Are we going to make a dent in colonialism by replacing male Indian Act Chiefs with female ones or Queer ones? What difference does it make which gender holds up the colonial system? Don’t we need individuals, communities and nations that are no longer willing to prop up an unjust system that is designed to destroy the fabric of our nations?

The idea that “we just need more women” also makes the assumption that rather than interrogating biopower as logics of colonial power – race, gender and sexuality, all we need to do to combat evil colonial patriarchy is to add more Indigenous women and stir, and poof problem solved. Yet, we have over-whelming evidence that this kind of Indigenization doesn’t work. We know, or we should know, that we need a new system. As the Winona LaDuke bumber sticker quote says “we don’t want a bigger piece of pie, we want a different pie”.