Canadian Aboriginal Women Add Subtle Strain to Radicals’ Law-breaking Trend in Rights Protests

The entrenched lack of human rights experienced by aboriginal women is a fundamental shortcoming in shaping Canada’s objective of a model democratisociety. Many of the problems have their roots in the culture and values of the tribal populace, much of it pre-dating European settlement of North America. The dominant male role and subjugation of women, while not universal, is widely ingrained in native bands. But contemporary poverty - ancient poverty prevailed among some tribes long before the white man arrived - takes its heaviest toll on women, who are usually left with the problem of family-rearing, without resources, when a partner has departed.

Quite generous government munificence to address this is often neutered by unwieldy administration or intervention by a male-dominated tribal power.

The spouse shed by a tribal husband, having no property rights, often loses the communal home and chattels in a tribal reserve and heads for the city’s slums. It’s not a new world problem.

The resulting homelessness, joblessness, hopelessness in cities frequently leads to dependency on alcohol or drugs and disorganised communities of mothers and children forming pockets of urban poverty. These, despite often generous municipal, welfare and social intervention, contribute to a wider problem of youth gangs and crime which too often negatively shades public opinion.

Public sensitivity has been raised of late by a trial involving horrific serial killing of native women in the urban sex trade. Some reports say as many as 500 women are missing presumed dead in unsolved cases. This has led to accusations that police are less diligent in their handling of native cases.

In the West and North, service to tribal areas where most of Canada’s 1.3-million aboriginal people live is not easy. They are generally not productive in Gross Domestic Product terms and cannot sustain themselves. Federal support is often patchy in its distribution and frequently it is the response to natural disaster - flooding, fires, pollution or widespread sickness. Remoteness of many “First Nations” communities makes them prone to such dangers and failures, and obvious subjects of media in search of human interest and shock-horror news.

These are old problems, long the frustrating failure of hundreds of programs of wrecked goodwill, and an easy target for UN HR critics, which find political advantage lambasting human rights standards in an effort to diminish Canada’s voice, reputation, and influence on the international stage.

But as most of us have learned, new problems pile easily on old ones that have not been solved. Land treaty settlements, always in the background and long neglected are this year more than most, the subject of very feisty protest. It is likely to get more rancorous as protest leaves the campfires, the boardrooms and the courts and, instead, in noisy and threatening style, faces down police and blocks trans-Canada railways, isolates residential building developments, and stalls work on pipeline projects, electricity, dams and transmission routes.

Often young tribal hotheads, sometimes dressed in camouflage green and showing weapons, and backed by dozens of noisy supporters from disparate communities, are the driving force. They have found that lawbreakers (stopping road and road traffic) can neutralise lawmakers keeping order. And politicians are anxious not to ignite the inflammable. Most of the cases this year have been to press for settlement of some of the 1,954 land claims – which mean cash settlements if not always solutions.  

The women’s rights issue, however, has taken another route. They are using the chambers of the House of Commons, where this summer they have slammed the revisions to the human rights bill supposedly addressing their concerns, and called politicians back from their summer holidays for some serious jawing. It’s a dramatic and clever change of tactics.

As Juliet O’Neill a reporter for The Ottawa Citizen newspaper wrote: “For three decades, the Native Women’s Association of Canada has been at the forefront of the battle for equal rights for First Nations women.”

“Now, on the brink of victory (securing an Act change), the association wants the federal government to slow down.”

As lawyer Mary Eberts, legal adviser to the association, says, the Conservative government’s proposed Bill C-44 to strengthen certain individual rights could jeopardise the collective rights of First Nations women and men because the bill’s focus on individual rights is likely to sap attention and resources away from “a huge, huge collective denial of human rights” in native communities across Canada.

The women’s association lawyer also objected to some of the rhetoric around the bill, which has been touted as a long-overdue process to help individuals win redress over mistreatment by Indian band councils.

“It really delights governments to picture First Nations (males) as bullies who are oppressing their people,” Ms. Eberts said. “There are some (Indian) bands that don’t get it right, but in many, many cases they are doing what they can with insufficient resources.”

Ms. Eberts cited inadequate housing, water, education and other resources as examples of collective human rights violations that could be masked by a complaints process geared toward individuals.

“It’s very complicated and that’s why simply lifting Section 67 and sending it into the courts, or the tribunals, for them to sort out is just not a good idea,” she said.

MPs on the Commons Aboriginal Affairs Committee, recalled from their summer recess are faced with a clause-by-clause study of the bill.

The Native Women’s Association is among those urging the government to include safeguards in the bill for collective community traditions and treaty rights, and to provide resources to better equip Indian bands to handle anti-discrimination complaints.

The women’s organisation appeared before the committee last June to talk about Bill C-44. In an interview, Ms. Eberts recalls a Conservative MP asking a question like this: “Well, don’t you want Aboriginal women to have the same rights as all other Canadian women?”

“Yes and no,” she replied. “No, if it means that they will lose the essentials of their aboriginal identity and their aboriginal collective existence.”

An example she cites is the land-holding provisions of the Indian Act. “It is communal, collective,” she said. “All of the lands of a reserve are held for the benefit of all of the people and that runs directly against a highly individualised concept of human rights.”

Aboriginal women’s lack of rights, while getting attention, faces a lot more talk and action before aboriginal women will stand any acceptable test of fairness.