At events in about 40 communities from British Columbia to Nova Scotia, Indigenous women’s organizations and their supporters will gather to demand urgent action to stop the ongoing violence against Aboriginal women.
Hoping to use the federal election campaign to spur such action, Amnesty International, the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) and KAIROS, the organizers of the events, sent an open letter to candidates calling for a national plan to address the issue.
“Our organizations are calling on all political parties to confirm that they are prepared to act by establishing a comprehensive national action plan to fully address the severity of the threat faced by Indigenous women and girls,” said the letter.
The extent of the violence against Aboriginal women has been well documented. According to a 1996 government statistic, young Indigenous women with status under the Indian Act are five times more likely than all other women to die as a result of violence.
In March 2004, NWAC and KAIROS launched the Sisters in Spirit campaign to draw attention to the high levels of violence faced by Indigenous women and what they called a “pattern of racialized sexualized violence” in Canadian cities that remains largely unacknowledged by the authorities.
Also in 2004, Amnesty International issued the report Stolen Sisters A Human Rights Response to discrimination and violence against Indigenous Women in Canada.
The U.N. Human Rights Committee said in 2005 that “Aboriginal women are far more likely to experience a violent death than other Canadian women” and called on Canada to address the issue.
According to the open letter, a joint committee of the Saskatchewan government, Indigenous peoples’ organizations, police and community groups reported that Indigenous women make up 60 per cent of the long-term, unresolved cases of missing women in that province.
Saskatchewan is the only province in Canada where such statistics have been compiled and made public. It is also the only province where the RCMP and municipal police forces have collaborated to make public a combined listing of all current missing persons’ cases.
However, “there is still no guarantee that police will record the Aboriginal identity of victims of crime or that this information will ever be made public,” the organizations say.
In recent years, governments have undertaken a number of initiatives to address violence against Indigenous women, including providing funding for research and community education through NWAC’s Sisters in Spirit Initiative.
“However, our organizations firmly believe that initiatives to date fall far short of what is required to address the scale and severity of the violence faced by Indigenous women and girls in Canada,” the letter stated.
The three organizations say the federal government has an obligation to demonstrate leadership in stopping the violence against Aboriginal women and girls, stressing that the seriousness of the situation demands “nothing less than a comprehensive national action plan.”
Such a plan would:
- Uphold and promote the rights of all Indigenous women and girls whether they live on reserve or in other communities.
- Ensure effective coordination of federal, provincial, and territorial policies, programs and services impacting upon the lives and well-being of Indigenous women and girls.
- Address long-standing and deep-rooted patterns of discrimination and impoverishment that put so many Indigenous women in harm’s way.
- Ensure that police in every jurisdiction have clear guidance on effective and appropriate responses to threats to Indigenous women's lives and safety, including missing persons protocols based on clear recognition of the heightened risk faced by Indigenous women and girls.
- Help Indigenous women escape from abusive relationships and dangerous situations by ensuring adequate, sustained funding to shelters and frontline organizations providing culturally appropriate services.
