tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/truth-and-reconciliation-series-76974/articlesTruth and Reconciliation series – The Conversation2020-08-24T12:20:49Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1437912020-08-24T12:20:49Z2020-08-24T12:20:49ZLatin American women are disappearing and dying under lockdown<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354176/original/file-20200821-24-mmqoe6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C4%2C2687%2C1715&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Funeral for a woman and her 11-year-old daughter, both found dead inside a burnt out vehicle in Puebla state, Mexico, June 11, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/relatives-and-friends-of-gardenia-ortega-and-her-11-year-news-photo/1221065114?adppopup=true">Jose Castanares/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s a pandemic within the pandemic. Across <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/22/mexico-femicides-president-amlo-women-shelters">Latin America</a>, gender-based violence has spiked since COVID-19 broke out.</p>
<p>Almost <a href="https://www.elperiodico.com/es/internacional/20200730/peru-mujeres-desaparecidas-durante-cuarentena-8058781">1,200 women disappeared in Peru</a> between March 11 and June 30, the Ministry of Women reported. In Brazil, 143 women in 12 states were murdered in March and April – a <a href="https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/direitos-humanos/noticia/2020-06/casos-de-feminicidio-crescem-22-em-12-estados-durante-pandemia">22% increase over the same period in 2019</a>. </p>
<p>Reports of rape, murder and <a href="https://www.proceso.com.mx/642432/las-mujeres-golpeadas-por-la-austeridad-de-la-4t">domestic violence</a> are also <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wG6qya31zzz4m1YUgowZWSSH0z748HDt/view">way up in Mexico</a>. In Guatemala, they’re down significantly – a likely sign that women are too <a href="https://www.prensalibre.com/guatemala/comunitario/mujeres-escapan-de-la-violencia-en-plena-crisis-del-coronavirus/">afraid to call the police on the partners they’re locked down with</a>. </p>
<p>The pandemic worsened but did not create this problem: Latin America has long been among the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-is-better-not-to-have-a-daughter-here-latin-americas-violence-turns-against-women-11545237843">world’s deadliest places to be a woman</a>. </p>
<h2>Don’t blame ‘machismo’</h2>
<p>I have spent three decades studying <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Nrb73ZoAAAAJ&hl=en">gendered violence</a> as well as women’s organizing in Latin America, an <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexican-women-are-angry-about-rape-murder-and-government-neglect-and-they-want-the-world-to-know-122156">increasingly vocal and potent social force</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Women dressed in black and wearing face masks clash with police in Mexico CIty" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women demand justice for Mexico’s many murdered women at a protest against gender violence in Mexico CIty, Aug. 15, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-take-part-during-a-demonstration-to-protest-protest-news-photo/1228075733?adppopup=true">Nadya Murillo / Eyepix Group/Barcroft Media via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Though patriarchy is part of the problem, Latin America’s gender violence cannot simply be attributed to “machismo.” Nor is gender inequality particularly extreme there. Education levels among Latin American women and girls have been rising for decades and – <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/465074-why-american-politics-needs-gender-quota">unlike the U.S.</a> – many countries have quotas for women to hold political office. Several have elected <a href="https://theconversation.com/female-presidents-dont-always-help-women-while-in-office-study-in-latin-america-finds-91707">women presidents</a>. </p>
<p>My research, which often <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03066150.2018.1534836">centers on Indigenous communities</a>, traces violence against women in Latin America instead to both the region’s colonial history and to a complex web of social, racial, gender and economic inequalities. </p>
<p>I’ll use Guatemala, a country I know well, as a case study to unravel this thread. But we could engage in a similar exercise with other Latin American countries or the U.S., where violence against women is a pervasive, historically rooted problem, too – and one that <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4302952/">disproportionately affects women of color</a>. </p>
<p>In Guatemala, where <a href="https://www.horizons.ca/blog/2018/1/3/guatemala">600 to 700 women are killed every year</a>, gendered violence has deep roots. Mass rape carried out <a href="https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/53/2/445/1856585">during massacres</a> was a tool of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40926273?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">systematic, generalized terror</a> during the country’s 36-year civil war, when citizens and armed insurgencies rose up against the government. The war, which ended in 1996, <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/1997/02/truth-commission-guatemala">killed over 200,000 Guatemalans</a>. </p>
<p>Mass rape has been used as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/rape-as-a-weapon-of-war-what-the-law-can-do-10038">weapon of war</a> in <a href="https://theconversation.com/rape-in-syria-a-weapon-of-war-or-instrument-of-terror-8816">many conflicts</a>. In Guatemala, government forces targeted Indigenous women. While Guatemala’s Indigenous population is between <a href="https://www.censopoblacion.gt/mapas">44%</a> and <a href="https://www.iwgia.org/en/guatemala.html">60% Indigenous</a>, based on the census and other demographic data, about 90% of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/28/guatemalan-women-mass-rape-give-evidence">over 100,000 women raped during the war</a> were <a href="https://hrdag.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/CEHreport-english.pdf">Indigenous Mayans</a>. </p>
<p>Testimonies from the war demonstrate that soldiers saw Indigenous women as having little humanity. They knew Mayan women could be <a href="https://www.ijmonitor.org/2018/04/the-legacy-of-rios-montt-guatemalas-most-notorious-war-criminal/">raped, killed and mutilated</a> with impunity. This is a legacy of Spanish colonialism. Starting in the 16th century, Indigenous peoples and <a href="https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates">Afro-descendants</a> across the Americas were enslaved or compelled into forced labor by the Spanish, <a href="https://www.zaoerv.de/59_1999/59_1999_2_a_497_528.pdf">treated as private property</a>, often brutally. </p>
<p>Some Black and Indigenous women <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/fractional-freedoms/0EA2CEF3959952AAE7966EC7F284E437">actually tried to fight their ill treatment in court</a> during the colonial period, but they had fewer legal rights than white Spanish conquerors and their descendants. The subjugation and marginalization of Black and Indigenous Latin Americans continues into the present day.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Colorful image of Spanish on horseback attacking Native people at a temple" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A depiction of the 1519 Cholula Massacre by Spanish conquistadors in 1519, made by Mexico’s Indigenous inhabitants.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Matanza_de_Cholula_por_conquistadores_espa%C3%B1oles_Lienzo_de_Tlaxcala.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<h2>Internalized oppression</h2>
<p>In Guatemala, violence against women affects Indigenous women disproportionately, but not exclusively. Conservative Catholic and evangelical moral teachings hold that <a href="https://www.futurechurch.org/women-in-church-leadership/women-in-church-leadership/scriptures-that-subordinate-women">women should be chaste and obey their husbands</a>, creating the idea that men can control the women with whom they are in a sexual relationship. </p>
<p>In a 2014 survey published by the <a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/insights/IO923en.pdf">Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University</a>, Guatemalans were more accepting of gender violence than any other Latin Americans, with 58% of respondents saying suspected infidelity justified physical abuse. </p>
<p>Women as well as men have internalized this view. During my research in Guatemala and Mexico, many women shared stories about how their own mothers, mother-in-law or neighbors told them to “aguantar” – put up with – their husbands’ abuse, saying it was a man’s right to punish bad wives. </p>
<p>The media, police and often even official justice systems reinforce strict constraints on <a href="https://www.prensalibre.com/tema/hombre-mata-a-su-conviviente-por-celos-en-chimaltenango/">women’s behavior</a>. When women are murdered in Guatemala and Mexico – a daily occurrence – headlines often read, “<a href="https://www.milenio.com/policia/hombre-mata-a-su-esposa-por-celos">Man Kills His Wife Because of Jealousy</a>.” In court and online, rape survivors are still accused of “asking for it” if they were assaulted while out without male supervision. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A newspaper front page with blurred out image of a murdered woman's mutilated body, reading 'Burnt Alive!'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Mexican newspaper exclaims ‘Burnt Alive!’ to tout a story about a murdered woman, June 7, 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/newspapers-front-page-reads-burnt-alive-under-the-bridge-news-photo/479356448?adppopup=true">Omar Torres/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How to protect women</h2>
<p>Latin American countries have made many creative, serious efforts to protect women. </p>
<p>Seventeen have passed <a href="https://www.cepal.org/en/pressreleases/eclac-least-2795-women-were-victims-femicide-23-countries-latin-america-and-caribbean">laws</a> making <a href="https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/77421/WHO_RHR_12.38_eng.pdf?sequence=1">feminicide</a> – the intentional killing of women or girls because they are female – its own crime separate from homicide, with long mandatory prison sentences to try to deter this. Many countries have also created <a href="https://www.crimejusticejournal.com/article/view/891">women-only police stations</a> , produced statistical data on feminicide, improved <a href="https://www.latinamerica.undp.org/content/rblac/en/home/library/womens_empowerment/del-compromiso-a-la-accion--politicas-para-erradicar-la-violenci.html">reporting avenues for gendered violence</a> and funded more <a href="http://cedoc.inmujeres.gob.mx/documentos_download/101219.pdf">women’s shelters</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Eight pink wooden crosses mark a mass grave at a construction site" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C2681%2C1765&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Latin America has long been one of the world’s most dangerous regions for women. Crosses mark where the corpses of eight missing women were found outside Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/wooden-pink-crosses-are-seen-in-the-place-where-the-corpses-news-photo/1228095222?adppopup=true">Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Guatemala even <a href="https://cgrs.uchastings.edu/sites/default/files/Hector%20Ruiz_Guatemala%20VAW%20Article_2017.pdf">created special courts</a> where men accused of gender violence – whether feminicide, sexual assault or psychological violence – are tried. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2018.1534836">Research</a>
I conducted with my colleague, political scientist Erin Beck, finds that these specialized courts have been important in recognizing violence against women as a serious crime, punishing it and providing victims with much-needed legal, social and psychological support. But we also found critical limitations related to insufficient funding, staff burnout and weak investigations. </p>
<p>There is also an enormous linguistic and cultural gap between judicial officials and in many parts of the country the largely Indigenous, non-Spanish-speaking women they serve. Many of these women are so poor and geographically isolated they can’t even make it into court, leaving <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-domestic-abuse-and-anti-gay-violence-qualify-as-persecution-in-asylum-law-98354">flight as their only option of escaping violence</a>. </p>
<h2>The collective body</h2>
<p>All these efforts to protect women – whether in Guatemala, elsewhere in Latin America or the U.S. – are narrow and legalistic. They make feminicide one crime, physical assault a different crime, and rape another – and attempt to indict and punish men for those acts.</p>
<p>But they fail to indict the broader systems that perpetuate these problems, like social, racial, and economic inequalities, family relationships and social mores. </p>
<p>Some Indigenous women’s groups say gendered violence is a collective problem that needs collective solutions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women and a child in traditional Indigenous clothing look at a crime scene where a home was burned" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gendered violence in Guatemala disproportionately affects Indigenous women.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-look-at-rubble-after-a-house-was-burnt-in-an-attack-news-photo/1228096531?adppopup=true">Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>“When they rape, disappear, jail or assassinate a woman, it is as if all the community, the neighborhood, the community or the family has been raped,” said the Mexican <a href="https://www.congresonacionalindigena.org/2017/11/27/palabra-marichuy-neza-las-mujeres-los-feminicidios">Indigenous activist Marichuy at a rally</a> in Mexico City in 2017. </p>
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<p>In Marichuy’s analysis, violence against one Indigenous woman is the result of an entire society that dehumanizes her people. So simply sending the abuser to prison is not sufficient. Gendered violence calls for a punishment that both implicates the community and the offender – and tries to heal them. </p>
<p>Some Mexican Indigenous communities have <a href="https://nacla.org/article/indigenous-justice-faces-state-community-police-force-guerrero-mexico">autonomous police and justice systems</a>, which use discussion and mediation to reach a verdict and emphasize reconciliation over punishment. Sentences of community service – whether construction, digging drainage or other manual labor – serve to both punish and socially reintegrate offenders. Terms range from a few weeks for simple theft to <a href="http://www.rachelsieder.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Justicias-Indigenas-y-Estadointro.pdf">eight years for murder</a>. </p>
<p>Stopping gendered violence in Latin America, the U.S. or anywhere will be a complicated, long-term process. And grand social progress seems unlikely in a pandemic. But when lockdowns end, restorative justice seems like <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10714839.2017.1373970">a good way to start</a> helping women and our communities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143791/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynn Marie Stephen receives funding from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and a variety of sources at the University of Oregon including the Center for the Study of Women in Society, her Philip H. Knight Chair, and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation. </span></em></p>Reports of rape, domestic abuse and murdered women are way up in Brazil, Mexico, Peru and beyond since the coronavirus. But Latin America has long been one of the most dangerous places to be a woman.Lynn Marie Stephen, Philip H. Knight Chair, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Graduate Faculty Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1203832020-02-20T19:39:49Z2020-02-20T19:39:49ZResidential school literature can teach the colonial present and imagine better futures<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316027/original/file-20200218-10991-1soriwn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C2%2C907%2C313&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A detail of the book cover for 'Seven Fallen Feathers' by Tanya Talaga.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://houseofanansi.com/products/seven-fallen-feathers">(House of Anansi Press/'Seven Fallen Feathers,' book cover art by Christian Morrisseau)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a <a href="https://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/aec/pdfs/TRC_reading_and_film_list.pdf">growing body of literature</a> — novels, memoirs, poetry, graphic novels, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/10-books-about-residential-schools-to-read-with-your-kids-1.3208021?fbclid=IwAR0LEVr_3rBdkjArQgpm2Qga2-9ouDLWDrAfkinHAZiR9ekBGG3_UIN_ch0">picture books</a> — through which <a href="https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/honouring-the-strength-of-indian-women">Indigenous writers are giving voice and agency</a> to the experiences and histories of Indian residential schooling in Canada. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://projectofheart.ca/">ethical teaching of residential school narratives</a> can be thought of as a relational process that requires consultation and accountability. </p>
<p>Rather than view residential school literature as primarily concerned with past history, I want to advocate for the importance of teaching these narratives as stories that probe our colonial present and the possibility of a more just future. </p>
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<span class="caption">Cindy Blackstock speaks at Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sept. 15, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span>
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<p>Former prime minister Stephen Harper, in his 2008 apology on behalf of Canadians for the Indian residential schools system, put residential schooling firmly in the past by calling it a “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCpn1erz1y8">sad chapter in our history</a>.” This narrative of pastness allowed Harper to swagger to the aspirational conclusion that “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prime-minister-stephen-harper-s-statement-of-apology-1.734250">there is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian residential schools system to ever again prevail</a>.”</p>
<p>The policies of assimilation that governed the schools in the past, however, remain in operation today, although in different forms. Gitksan professor Cindy Blackstock, for example, asks of residential schools: “<a href="https://cwrp.ca/publications/residential-schools-did-they-really-close-or-just-morph-child-welfare">Did they really close or just morph into child welfare?</a>” </p>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/canada-guilty-of-forging-crisis-in-indigenous-foster-care-90808">Canada guilty of forging crisis in Indigenous foster care</a>
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<p>And Mi’kmaq lawyer and professor Pam Palmater suggests that “the abuse did not end with the closing of the last residential school in 1996. Today, there are <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/opinion-foster-care-system-path-to-mmiwg-1.4552407">more Indigenous children forcibly removed from their parents and placed into foster care</a> than at the height of the residential school era.”</p>
<h2>Responding through story</h2>
<p>Following the release in 2015 of <a href="http://trc.ca/assets/pdf/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf">94 Calls to Action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada</a>, educators across the country — most of whom are not Indigenous — were tasked with the urgent imperative to bring the history and legacies of residential schooling into the classroom. Many teachers chose to respond through story by teaching residential school literature. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/teaching-truth-and-reconciliation-in-canada-the-perfect-place-to-begin-is-right-where-a-teacher-stands-111061">Teaching truth and reconciliation in Canada: The perfect place to begin is right where a teacher stands</a>
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<p>To teach residential school literature (fiction or memoir) is to bring deeply felt, personal stories of capture, imprisonment and cultural erasure into largely non-Indigenous classrooms.</p>
<p>In this context, it’s important to ask:</p>
<p>How can we teach residential school literature in culturally responsive ways? </p>
<p>What do we owe the survivors of residential schooling who have gifted their stories to us? </p>
<p>How do we bring our hearts, minds, bodies and spirits into dialogue with genocide?</p>
<h2>Relationships</h2>
<p>In a nutshell, it’s all about relationships: between the reader and the story being told, and between the reader and the Indigenous writers and communities to which we are all accountable. </p>
<p>Building accountability into the practice of reading and teaching these often intensely personal and traumatic stories can be fostered through consultation and engagement with Indigenous communities.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://theconversation.com/ca/topics/focus-truth-and-reconciliation-in-canada-77341">Click here for more articles in our ongoing series about the TRC Calls to Action.</a></span>
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<p>Accountability also requires that we immerse ourselves fully in the material on its own sovereign terms and in all of its depth and complexity. We need to be ethical witnesses, and we need to ask what the stories teach us about our present.</p>
<p>My students created and contributed to a Facebook page, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ResidentialSchools101">Indian Residential Schools in Canada: Literature, Art, Media</a> over the past years. This page is an example of how to engage students in the material in meaningful ways that promote an ongoing dialogue about truth, reconciliation and colonialism in Canada. </p>
<p>This dialogue is critical, and key to it is that we keep thinking and reading about residential schools in the present day and for the future. These are in many ways stories of our time. It’s the guise that has changed. And without radical decolonization in this country, these are stories of our future.</p>
<h2>‘The Marrow Thieves’</h2>
<p>Last February, one day after the acquittal of Gerald Stanley for the murder of Colten Boushie, Métis writer and author of <em>The Marrow Thieves</em>, <a href="https://twitter.com/cherie_dimaline/status/962419509448597504">Cherie Dimaline, tweeted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I wrote a book about Indigenous people being considered not human, being considered ‘things’ at the hands of a colonial Canada. I thought I was writing about a potential future. #justiceforcolten #themarrowthieves @canadareads.” </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315350/original/file-20200213-10980-19av89b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315350/original/file-20200213-10980-19av89b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=881&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315350/original/file-20200213-10980-19av89b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=881&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315350/original/file-20200213-10980-19av89b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=881&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315350/original/file-20200213-10980-19av89b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1106&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315350/original/file-20200213-10980-19av89b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1106&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315350/original/file-20200213-10980-19av89b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1106&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘The Marrow Thieves,’ by Cherie Dimaline.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(DCB Books/Cormorant Books)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p><em>The Marrow Thieves</em> is a young-adult novel set forty years into the future. In the wake of environmental disaster, Indigenous peoples are being captured and sent to residential schools. They are being hunted and killed for their bone marrow, which allows non-Indigenous people, who have all lost their ability to dream, to dream again and, thus, to imagine again.</p>
<p>Cree poet Billy-Ray Belcourt asks, “<a href="https://houseofanansi.com/products/ndn-coping-mechanisms">What is an NDN if not the ceiling of a country’s political imagination</a>?” In <em>The Marrow Thieves</em>, the political ceiling is high. </p>
<p>The limit of the colonial imagination is the cannibalistic harvesting of Indigenous bodies to support non-Indigenous nation-state survival. </p>
<p>There is an inevitability to the narrative arc of the novel that suggests that it is as realistic to imagine a future of ecological devastation as it is to imagine a future of residential schools — a future where Indigenous peoples continue to be hunted down, like Colten Boushie, because they are considered somehow less than human by colonial Canada.</p>
<h2>‘Seven Fallen Feathers’</h2>
<p>Tanya Talaga’s <em>Seven Fallen Feathers</em> focuses on <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/taking-action-elementary-schools-universities-play-active-role-in-reconciliation-1.4426316/seven-fallen-feathers-the-story-tanya-talaga-had-to-tell-1.4426317">seven Indigenous young people who went missing and ultimately died in Thunder Bay, Ont.</a> </p>
<p>An inquest into the seven youths’ deaths found that First Nations people in Thunder Bay “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday-edition-1.5181432/police-review-of-thunder-bay-indigenous-deaths-a-big-step-says-writer-tanya-talaga-1.5181436">are often treated as less than worthy victims</a>” and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/seven-youth-inquest-year-two-report-1.5024621">exposed systemic problems</a> surrounding supports for the youth and responses to their deaths. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315351/original/file-20200213-10976-jtsa1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315351/original/file-20200213-10976-jtsa1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315351/original/file-20200213-10976-jtsa1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315351/original/file-20200213-10976-jtsa1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315351/original/file-20200213-10976-jtsa1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315351/original/file-20200213-10976-jtsa1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315351/original/file-20200213-10976-jtsa1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘Seven Fallen Feathers’ by Tanya Talaga.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(House of Anansi Press)</span></span>
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<p>A civilian police review body found in December 2018 that police failed to adequately investigate the deaths of nine Indigenous people in Thunder Bay, including four youths discussed in Talaga’s book, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday-edition-1.5181432/police-review-of-thunder-bay-indigenous-deaths-a-big-step-says-writer-tanya-talaga-1.5181436">at least in part because of racist attitudes and stereotyping</a>.</p>
<p>The seven fallen feathers were all from communities in northern Ontario. Because of the refusal of the government to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/m_features/first-nations-schools-are-chronically-underfunded">adequately fund on-reserve education</a>, Indigenous young people are frequently unable to complete a high-school education in their communities. They must go south, far from their homes, to what is often a hostile and culturally unfamiliar place.</p>
<p>Remember that Thunder Bay is where a young white man, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/bushby-murder-trial-delayed-1.5400801">Brayden Bushby, stands accused of second degree murder for allegedly throwing a metal trailer hitch from a moving vehicle at an Indigenous woman, Barbara Kentner</a>, who was simply walking by. She was hospitalized and <a href="https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/indigenous-woman-dies-months-after-trailer-hitch-blow-7aBC5wy6sUeN8p_99V-XRg">died from her injuries about six months after being attacked</a>.</p>
<p>The violent deaths of Barbara Kentner and Colten Boushie remind us that in present-day Canada, it’s threatening and even perilous for Indigenous people to walk around. </p>
<p>Talaga’s book reveals the many comparisons between students from remote Northern reserves boarding and attending school in Thunder Bay — far from their communities, far from their families, far from their languages and far from their cultural traditions — and the Indian residential school system. </p>
<p>Talaga thus draws important connections to the assimilative system that stole generations of children to obliterate any traces of their identities as self-determining and self-sustaining peoples with a wealth of languages, knowledge systems and cultural traditions.</p>
<h2>Into the future</h2>
<p>Dimaline’s and Talaga’s books teach us that versions of residential schooling exist not only in the present, but also in the future if Canada does not take seriously and implement the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html">United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a>.</p>
<p>Memoirs and fictions about residential school experiences and legacies are thus necessary readings in neo-colonial Canada. Teaching and reading residential school literature foster richer understandings of present and future colonialisms. </p>
<p>To understand the colonial past is to open the door to understanding the colonial present and future. This understanding is a crucial part of the pathway to real change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120383/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Coupal receives funding from the Canada Research Chairs program and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). She is affiliated with the University of Regina.</span></em></p>To understand the colonial past is to open the door to understanding the colonial present and future. This understanding is a crucial part of the pathway to real change.Michelle Coupal, Canada Research Chair in Truth, Reconciliation and Indigenous Literatures and Associate Professor, Department of English, University of ReginaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1311182020-02-07T20:59:19Z2020-02-07T20:59:19ZRaid of Wet’suwet’en part of Canada’s ongoing police violence against Indigenous Peoples<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314227/original/file-20200207-27533-1gl3mzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C30%2C3364%2C2436&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the RCMP look on as supporters of the Wet'suwet'en Nation block a road outside of RCMP headquarters in Surrey, B.C., on Jan. 16, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a pre-dawn raid on Feb. 6, <a href="https://www.straight.com/news/1356821/rcmp-begin-arrests-gidimten-spokesperson-molly-wickham-issues-declaration-wetsuweten">the RCMP arrested six land defenders</a> of the Gidimt'en clan of the Wet'suwet'en nation at a blockade protesting the Coastal GasLink pipeline project. They were released later the same day but <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/people-at-wet-suwet-en-checkpoint-await-next-wave-of-rcmp-injunction-enforcement-1.5455521">protestors at the Gidimt'en checkpoint await another raid by RCMP</a>. Enforcing an injunction, the RCMP have said that they will use “<a href="https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/rcmp-will-use-least-amount-of-force-necessary-to-enforce-coastal-gaslink-injunction">the least amount of force necessary</a>.” But protesters and observers believe any action will result in police violence.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296574/original/file-20191010-188819-17iz6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://theconversation.com/ca/topics/focus-truth-and-reconciliation-in-canada-77341">Click here for more articles in our ongoing series about the TRC Calls to Action.</a></span>
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<p>The RCMP has been called “an occupying foreign army” by Indigenous blogger M. Gouldhawke, who does so based on the fact that the RCMP still maintain their own camp in Wet’suwet’en territory and “<a href="https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2020/02/02/a-concise-chronology-of-canadas-colonial-cops/">continue to harass people at the long-running Unis’tot’en anti-pipeline camp</a>.” </p>
<p>As a young woman, 27 years ago, I stood on the line in Clayoquot Sound with land protectors trying to block logging trucks from taking down an old-growth forest. I witnessed the process of intimidation and <a href="https://thenarwhal.ca/25-years-after-clayoquot-sound-blockades-the-war-in-the-woods-never-ended-and-its-heating-back-up/">systematic arrests by police</a>. However, most of the people on the line were Euro-Canadian, middle class or relatively privileged folks in fleece and wool. </p>
<p>They were not hit with billy clubs, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/police-racial-bias-aboriginal-canada-1.3761884">or called derogatory names</a>, such as “squaw” or “chug.” To the state, Indigenous protesters represent a much greater threat than environmentalists demanding a park.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314088/original/file-20200206-43123-y7apzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314088/original/file-20200206-43123-y7apzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314088/original/file-20200206-43123-y7apzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314088/original/file-20200206-43123-y7apzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314088/original/file-20200206-43123-y7apzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314088/original/file-20200206-43123-y7apzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314088/original/file-20200206-43123-y7apzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An anti-logging protestor is carried away by RCMP after being arrested for blocking Macmillan Bloedel logging trucks at the entrance to Clayoquot Valley in July 1993.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chuck Stoody</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Britain’s illegal rule</h2>
<p>Canada’s unlawful domination over Indigenous Peoples was articulated from the moment of the country’s inception. </p>
<p>Prior, imperial rule was enacted through imperial policies from Great Britain, <a href="https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_indian_act/">such as the Gradual Civilization Act</a>, the pre-cursor to the invasive and controlling Indian Act. </p>
<p>The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were established in 1873 as the North-West Mounted Police. They were the enforcers of the recently formed Anglo-settler state’s policies and to ensure that the Métis, Cree and Saulteaux did not take control in the northwest. </p>
<p>The Hudson’s Bay Company had recently closed shop and <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/trading-beyond-the-mountains">left behind a “European void”</a> in the former Rupert’s Land, an area <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/trading-beyond-the-mountains">soon reclaimed by the Métis</a>. Louis Riel was summoned to lead the Métis in their struggle to protect their community. He would later be hanged as a political prisoner, but he was not Canada’s first Indigenous political execution. </p>
<p>On Nov. 27, 1885, <a href="https://www.goodminds.com/loyal-till-death-indians-and-north-west-rebellion-paper-ed">eight Indigenous men were also hanged by the state</a> for their role in the Northwest Rebellion, <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=tcAikMMDA8sC&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=Cameron,+1926+resistance+blood+red+the+sun&source=bl&ots=OAEyxaKQpJ&sig=ACfU3U1dSZ2i-L4pnde0EyUhHeYTHayPBg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwis-9mp8L3nAhULH80KHYo2BKMQ6AEwBXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Cameron%2C%201926%20resistance%20blood%20red%20the%20sun&f=false">also known as the North-West Resistance, as written about in William Cameron’s 1926 book <em>Blood Red the Sun</em></a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314087/original/file-20200206-43128-94m61y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314087/original/file-20200206-43128-94m61y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314087/original/file-20200206-43128-94m61y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314087/original/file-20200206-43128-94m61y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314087/original/file-20200206-43128-94m61y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314087/original/file-20200206-43128-94m61y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314087/original/file-20200206-43128-94m61y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The North-West Resistance in 1885 was a five-month insurgency against the Canadian government, fought mainly by the Métis and their First Nations allies. Here Poundmaker, Big Bear, Big Bear’s son, Father Andre, Father Conchin, Chief Stewart, Capt. Deane, Mr. Robertson and the court interpreter in Regina, Sask.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(O.B. Buell/Library and Archives Canada/C-001872)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Imperial domination can be seen as a matter of class, gender and “race” with white ruling-class supremacy. Prompted by upper-class advisers such as Donald Smith (a.k.a. Lord Strathcona), John Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, sent an army west to kill the Métis and <a href="https://www.drawnandquarterly.com/louis-riel">take their lands</a>, making way for the national railway project.</p>
<p>With the assistance of police, the state decimated the Métis at Red River in 1870, again in 1885 and then subsequently flooded the area with Anglo, Protestant, anti-French and anti-Native settlers. In 1961, the RCMP reprinted a <em>Prince Albert Daily Herald</em> article in their magazine, <em>Quarterly</em>, which claimed that Louis Riel was “<a href="https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2020/02/02/a-concise-chronology-of-canadas-colonial-cops/">mainly responsible for the unsettled conditions which led to the founding of the Force…</a>.” </p>
<p>According to a 2012 <em>Globe and Mail</em> article, strands of the rope used to hang Riel for treason were <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/material-history-the-rope-that-hanged-louis-riel/article4561006/">given to former Manitoba premier Duff Roblin</a> as well as to the RCMP who guarded Riel in his cell.</p>
<h2>Respecting sovereign Indigenous nations</h2>
<p>Many Indigenous Peoples seek the earlier nation-to-nation relationships spelled out in the <a href="https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1379594359150/1379594420080">Royal Proclamation of 1763</a> and the British North America Act of 1867. And some Indigenous activists look forward to <a href="https://redpaper.yellowheadinstitute.org/">restoring sovereign and self-governing lands</a> in a way prior to the imposition of empire in Turtle Island, imagining how this could look today. </p>
<p>Today, Indigenous people own less than one per cent of all lands in Canada. This process has clearly been both unlawful and unethical.</p>
<p>Later in life, when I worked in the Yukon co-facilitating a racism-reduction project, “Together for Justice,” I came to understand a few things about the RCMP. I learned that some individual RCMP members wanted to be seen as kind human beings, which is challenging given that they work for a gun-carrying, para-military force with a history of violence against Indigenous Peoples. At that point, the organization was contending with its role in a number of Indigenous prison deaths, including that of <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/we-failed-yukon-rcmp-says-of-in-custody-death-1.894466">Raymond Silverfox, who perished in his cell from pneumonia at the age of 43</a>. </p>
<p>The RCMP see themselves as having two roles: one of law enforcement and the other of community policing. It is through the second of these roles where their opportunity to be most helpful or humanitarian resides. If police were successful at addressing and stopping violence against women and keeping women and children safe, we would see a different kind of society. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314073/original/file-20200206-43128-1igz7t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=132%2C60%2C3687%2C2740&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314073/original/file-20200206-43128-1igz7t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314073/original/file-20200206-43128-1igz7t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314073/original/file-20200206-43128-1igz7t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314073/original/file-20200206-43128-1igz7t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314073/original/file-20200206-43128-1igz7t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314073/original/file-20200206-43128-1igz7t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ta'Kaiya, front, and Sii-am Hamilton, holding a sign, are seen standing with Indigenous youth demonstrating support for the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs in northwest B.C. opposing the LNG pipeline project, in front of the B.C. legislature in Victoria on Jan. 24, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Dirk Meissner</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The RCMP have long had the disdainful role of enforcing the Indian Act, restricting the movement of on-reserve status Indians, arresting Indigenous people for using ceremony, and for the kidnapping of Indigenous children from their families to the internment camps known as “residential schools.”</p>
<p>Here in Tiohtià: ke/Montreal, on the territory of the Kanien’kehá: ka, police are remembered for their role in the Oka Crisis/Mohawk resistance. </p>
<p>Last month, Indigenous young people occupied the B.C. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum office in Victoria in solidarity with Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs who have opposed the Coastal GasLink pipeline in northern B.C. The occupation ended with arrests by Victoria police.</p>
<p>While we know that prejudice may be rooted in social attitudes, and can be transformed, those who work for the RCMP are required to perform social violence, maintain the status quo and do what folk-singer <a href="https://genius.com/Billy-bragg-the-marching-song-of-the-covert-battalions-lyrics">Billy Bragg</a> identified as “defend wealth.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131118/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Richardson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The RCMP have long been responsible for violence against Indigenous people.Catherine Richardson, Director, First Peoples Studies Program, Associate Professor, School of Community and Public Affairs, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.