Several friends and colleagues of mine took part in this inspiring and necessary conference in Saskatchewan whose title “Missing Women: Decolonization, Third Wave Feminism and Indigenous People of Canada and Mexico” says it all.
Travel and work conflicts prevented me from being there physically, but I can tell you that I’m emotionally shaken and stirred by the good work that has come out of it, which you can read about here.
I’ve always personally tried to make it a priority to highlight the strong matriarchy that exists in so many of our Indigenous nations. We were the FIRST feminists which is often forgotten in a lot of mainstream feminist dialogue, and it’s a shame especially when you consider what’s happened to many of the women in our communities today.
More than 500 Aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered over the past 15 years and we have the highest rates of sexual assault and domestic violence against our women than any other race. However what we need to be focussing on now is the things that are happening to prevent these statistics and what we are doing in our communities ourselves to effect positive change.
Where we’ve come from is this strong, ancestral lineage of woman-power culture. Sadly we’ve now arrived at is this consistently prejudicial place where many of us wonder whether, if any of these victims were White, would people care more or do more to seek justice?
A youth patch for the quilt of hope by the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition
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three comments
Hey Jessica,
As far as I understand it, where gender-based violence is concerned class/occupation has a huge impact on a given communities reaction to death or disappearance.
To put it bluntly women who are poor and stuck, who are drug-users, who perform high risk sex-work, or have gender variant lifestyles are targets for gender based violence. I tend to think that the "ignoring" that goes on around the deaths of women who do not succeed at performing gender according to a standard of let's say middle class values, are the ones who get ignored.
Race definitely plays a part to be sure, but I kinda think women get ignored because they are not performing their "womanhood" correctly. Thus their death cannot be portrayed as a "senseless crime".
I have noticed this especially around the news when men who have been harassing or assaulting prostitutes get picked up. It's never as big a deal on behalf of the women, it's always "oh that guys a sick jerk" no-one ever interviews sex workers or says "Sex workers safe (plus ou moins) again in Montreal".
It pisses me off to know that women who don't fit, for reasons of race, class, or simple life experience get ignored at times when support is what is needed most.
Posted by miriam
August 20, 2008, 12:49 PM
Hey beautiful!
I had a feeling I'd find you here. As always, you're right on the money.
See you soon, my friend.
Posted by Jeanette
August 20, 2008, 2:18 PM
Hey Miriam,
I think you are right to consider how incorrectly performing "womanness" could raise the ire of a patriarchal society. However I also don't think we need to make Race compete with Gender for which makes a woman at higher risk for violence. You also have to consider that the concept of "woman" differs greatly from culture to culture.
Indeed this is way feminism sometimes fails women of colour - it crafts a movement that responds to the pressures white women face without recognising that those pressures may only apply to white women, those pressures are very connected to race; and in that way it doesn't speak for women of colour.
I think it's really important for all feminists to recognise that violence affects women of colour (particularly Aboriginal/indigenous women) poor women, disabled women (...) disproportionately.
I was reading a great article recently about violence against black women in the US and how it's met with indifference. http://www.racialicious.com/2008/08/1...
I liked the article but I didn't totally agree with the suggestion that all white women's lives are more valued than all black women's lives. The stats for violence against women are horrifying and clearly affect all sorts of women. The fact that violence against women is so epidemic shows that all kinds of women experience violence and not enough people care.
For example, the media definitely wouldn't pick up a story of a white sex worker being raped and murdered, but if that happened to a middle class white school girl in a nice neighbourhood they would.
It's just always important for us to stress the intersections of race, class, sexuality, gender, ability...
Posted by Thea
August 21, 2008, 6:10 PM
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