Unworthy Bodies: The Exclusion of Indigenous Peoples from Canadian

Consciousness

Katherine Torrez –

There has been what can be perceived as an increase in media attention on Indigenous

issues within Canada, with the focus placed on movements such as Idle No More and Sisters in

Spirit. However, I use the word perceived because while these movements have been given some

mainstream media coverage, the coverage itself is often superficial, dismissive and aims to

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discredit. For example, in the case of Idle No More, the public saw Chief Theresa Spence

become the “poster boy” for the movement and was quickly discredited with an array of scandals

concerning the financial mismanagement of the Attawapiskat tribe, as displayed in the January 9,

2013 cover story in the National Post (Partland). Upon an initial analysis it would be easy to

extract that these voices cannot be contained within dominant Canadian discourses as they

necessarily go against this discourse. This is a point that I would like to make in regards to the

hundreds of Indigenous women in Canada who have gone missing without any apparent concern

by the state, judicial, or policial institutions.

The treatment of Indigenous bodies in Canada is very telling of their position in this

society and the unwanted nature of their bodies. Not only are their bodies devalued on the basis

of their racialization but also because their presence impedes Canadian national narrative. What I

mean to say is that Indigenous bodies conflict with Canadian ideals of being a peaceful, kind,

racist - free country. Essentially, these missing Indigenous women in Canada are not reported on

because they go against Canadian consciousness and so they must be ignored, undermined, or

hidden. Their bodies are indigenous and therefore undervalued and they are not seen as

productive and so do not align themselves with global capitalist value. My main research

question in pursuing this research was to analyze this issue from a Canadian context but also to

link the issue to global structures of power. How is the treatment of Indigenous bodies in the

Canadian context reflective of larger global systems of power which are at play? How can the

Coloniality of Power account for the way in which Indigenous bodies are treated in Canada and

around the world?

However, it is imperative to go further, and so I will posit that Canadian discourses and

stereotypes around indigenous women and their existence in Canada can be analyzed through the

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Coloniality of Power to unpack the way in which these discourses not only uphold Canadian

consciousness but also global systems of economic, social and political power. In order to

unpack this statement I will define and examine the importance of Anibal Quijano’s Coloniality

of Power and by extension the Coloniality of Knowledge and Being. I will then draw a necessary

link between the subordination and dehumanization of Indigenous women in the Global North

and the Global South. This link is essential to in order to come to the realization that the

Coloniality of Power is informed by a racial hierarchy which privileges white bodies and created

Indigenous bodies as the unwanted other. I will also look at the ways in which the media covers

the cases of missing Indigenous women, in order to extract assumptions and stereotypes and

analyze how they influence the creation of identities needed to perpetuate and reinforce social

and economic hierarchies and structural power within the Canadian state but also on a global

level.

The Coloniality of power, a theoretical-analytical approach introduced by Anibal Quijano

that would later be further developed by Mignolo (2009, 2011), Lugones (2008, 2010),

Grosfoguel (2007) and Maldonado-Torres (2007) in a variety of their works. This model of

power is one which began with the conquest and colonization of the Americas and can be seen

today as surviving through the discourse of globalization (Quijano, 2000, 533). Quijano

maintains that the two essential axis of power created during colonialism where the

establishment of the mental category of race and world capitalism (2000, 216). It is however also

important to note that this system of power is not limited to the Americas, as Quijano explains, it

develops into a global system of power through these established institutions during the conquest

of the Americans. He states,

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“Alongside the expansion of colonial domination by a single ‘Race’ (whites - this

term was in invention of British colonial America - or ‘Europeans’ from the 18th

century on ) of the rest of the world’s population over the last 400 years, the same

criteria were applied to impose a new social classification of the world population

on the global scale. (2000, 217)

In addition, it is important to make the distinction between colonialism and coloniality.

Colonialism is most easily understood as a period of direct colonial rule in which European

empires came to the Americas to “conquer” the continent. It can be said that there is a clear

beginning and a clear ending that is often associated with certain dates. In contrast, coloniality is

noted as “outliving” colonialism, and is the way in which modernity is inherently colonial or

informed by hegemonic social relations during colonialism (Quijano, 2000, 533). In order to do

so, European colonizers had to establish a new set of hierarchies and systems of power which

could place them in a position to dominate and colonize. While Quijano pinpoints these new

created structures as racism and capitalism, other scholars have sought to expand on the theory.

Those who have expanded on his work have also examined other created institutions and

structures and analyzed how they survive today. For example, Lugones has introduced the term

the Coloniality of Gender in response to what she sees as Quijano’s biological approach to

gender in his work, which she sees as a mistake (2008, 5). She states “sex, he understands, as

biological attributes that become elaborated as social categories” (2008, 5). This is problematic

for Lugones because through the Coloniality of Gender she analyzes the creation of gender as

being an imposed framework brought to the Americas by colonizers. In addition she highlights

that there are two sides to the Coloniality of Gender, a dark side and a light side. The idea of

these two sides can be noted in the following quote - “Under the imposed gender framework, the

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bourgeois white Europeans were civilized; they were fully human. The hierarchical dichotomy as

a mark of the human also became a normative tool to damn the colonized. The behaviors of the

colonized and their personalities/souls were judged as bestial and thus non-gendered,

promiscuous, grotesquely sexual, and sinful” (Lugones, 2010, 743). In other words, accepted,

western, normative notions of gender are seen as the light side while the dark side is the side of

gender that the colonizers aimed to obscure and eliminate. Mignolo has also advanced the idea

of the Coloniality of Knowledge while Maldonado - Torres has contributed to ideas of the

Coloniality of Being which will be discussed in the following pages. In this way coloniality can

be seen as surviving colonialism, because although the structured direct colonial rule is no longer

present, the repercussions and established institutions of colonialism (race and racism,

capitalism, patriarchy etc.) still live on and give privilege to the dominant and repress racialized

others (Mignolo, 2009, Maldonado - Torrez, 2007 & Martinez - Salazar, 2012). It is therefore

essential to understand the condition in which Indigenous bodies survive in Canada through the

use of the Coloniality of Power and its underlying formulations of power. The Coloniality of

Gender in particular allows us to understand the way Indigenous women’s bodies are

conceptualized in western ideology and as such why they are so prone to violation, but also why

these violations are not necessarily perceived as such.

Additionally, it is also important to link different European colonizing projects as

Mendoza makes clear “from the colonial experience of Latin America, modernity, capitalism,

nation building, and democracy are understood as organically linked with colonialism, as parts of

the same historical movement of European expansion and domination over modern or colonial

world systems, evolving from the discovery of America in 1942 by Spanish colonizers to British

and U.S. colonial regimes” (2006, 935 – 936). Additionally, this draws to the inherent problem in

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post-colonial theory which is encapsulated in the fact that these theories do not aim to reflect on

themselves with language produced outside of colonialism and also that colonialism is not seen

as global. As Mendoza reflects on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s (2000) work, she notes that Latin

American knowledge and colonialism fails to appear in his analysis and as such his notions of

citizenship are informed by 18th

century British colonialism (2006, 932). This demonstrates the

importance of linking colonial projects because as she later points out the projects are inherently

linked and to truly understand and analyze them we must see these connections.

What this means is that we cannot simply analyze the Coloniality of Power as being

limited to Latin America or Spanish colonialism but rather it was a starting point for all colonial

projects. Mignolo comments on the processes of “sixteenth century, “modern” imperial

colonialism (that is European: Spanish, Portuguese, French, British)” and how this was a time of

“messy historical configuration” (2009, 70 - 71). The colonizing projects that were to come after

would in fact rely on those very same established rules, which Mignolo sees as the international

legal system (2009, 85), and would be encompassed by what would come to be known as

Eurocentrism. Quijano states that Eurocentrism explains how Europeans/Whites came to feel

superior to everyone else in the world in every way and perceived it to be a natural order (2000,

341).

The introduction of race is important because it created a system of hierarchy which was

clearly distinguishable due to it being based on phenotypic traits and because it was entrenched

in science, the preferred epistemology since this time (Quijano, 2000, 534). Race would serve as

a function for social classification and also the production of new “historical social identities”

such as Black, Mestizo, Indian (Quijano, 2000, 534). Race was therefore highly validated and

would come to be seen as natural and those deemed as inferior on the basis of their physical traits

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would be seen so in all other aspects, including cultural features (Quijano, 2000, 535). Quijano

states “the conquered and dominated peoples were situated in a natural position of inferiority

and, as a result, their phenotypic traits as well as their cultural features were considered inferior.6

In this way, race became the fundamental criterion for the distribution of the world population

into ranks, places, and roles in the new society’s structure of power (Quijano, 2000, 535). In

other words, observable difference would become a basis for and justification for domination and

would create new social identities, which could not be refuted as they were entrenched in

science.

Quijano’s second structure of power within the Coloniality of Power is Capitalism or as it

is known as today, neoliberalism. Capitalism would become a way in which labour could be

controlled and would be based on race to create a hierarchy of labour. The Indigenous would be

confined to serfdom, the Blacks to slavery, and paid wage labour for European colonizers: this

system would become the Coloniality of Labour control (Quijano, 2000, 537). The capitalist axis

is important to the Coloniality of Power because it established Europeans at the center of the

global capitalism and also made them the controllers of the commodities and wealth that were

being produced by the bodies of Indigenous and Black people (Quijano, 2000, 539). As Quijano

states:

“based on the idea of ‘race’ and in the ‘racial’ classification of world

population - expressed in the racial distribution of work in the imposition of

new ‘racial’ geocultural identities, in the concentration of the control of

productive resources and capital, as social relations, including salary as a

privilege of whiteness [is what is referred to as the Coloniality of Power].

(2000, 218)

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The Coloniality of power gives us the tools through which we can understand the

subjugation of Indigenous bodies and how they become unwanted in a system that

applauds productivity, cleanliness, whiteness, civility etc. others are naturalized as being

the exact opposite. This has the effect of placing all others in a naturalized position of

inferiority on a racial, economic and social level. Indigenous bodies represent what

white bodies are not and therefore become worthless and unwanted bodies.

The Coloniality of Knowledge and Coloniality of Being are two important extensions of

the coloniality of power which further cement just how pervasive the current model of power is.

To garner an understanding of the Coloniality of Knowledge I will draw on the Works of Angel

Rama and Frida Schiwy. Additionally, to highlight the Coloniality of Being I will draw on the

work of Walter Mignolo and Nelson Maldonado Torres. The coloniality of knowledge is

essentially the monopoly held over the creation of knowledge by European/whites. Quijano

explains that through the conquest of the Americas “an entire universe of new material relations

and intersubjectivities was initiated… a new space/time was constituted materially and

subjectively: this is what the concept of modernity names” (2000, 547). This is to say that

Europe, particularly “north central zones of Europe”, would become the hegemonic center of the

world as well as the “center of hegemonic conceptualization. This serves to demonstrate how the

Coloniality of Power is linked to the concentration in Europe of “capital, wages, the market of

capital, and finally, the society and culture associated with those determinations” (Quijano, 2000,

548). This is precisely the process which would allow European colonizers to establish a code of

conduct different from their own lands, and as such would establish them as the creators of

knowledge. As the creators of knowledge they were granted the privilege of epistemic creativity,

which in turn would devalue other ways of knowing and understanding. As Schiwy explains, the

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way in which colonial knowledge was founded worked through “the subalternization of varied

and multiple material and embodied forms of signifying”, which include among various things

included storytelling, dance, rituals etc. (2008, 32 - 33). The retention of power would also be

cemented in a turn towards the scientific or the “lettered” as is expressed in Angel Rama’s the

Lettered City. He argues that an important part of the social order which was produced by

colonialist lied in the social order which was produced through writing (Dowdy, 2010, 1).

Furthermore, bureaucratic letrados who were literate were the ones creating texts which would

delineate and control social norms creating hierarchies. The “others” who were not literate would

be left out of the creation of knowledge and left out of the public sphere in general (Dowdy,

2010, 2). Although, Rama’s ideas focus solely on literacy, it highlights the power which comes

with a monopoly over creating epistemes and ways of knowing. As will be discussed below,

creating knowledge gives great power in producing narratives and directing ways of knowing

and being. This undoubtedly allows for those in power to create knowledge which benefits them

and subjugates others.

The Coloniality of Being is very much linked to the Coloniality of Knowledge in that the

Coloniality of Being is informed by hegemonic western epistemology. Maldonado Torres

encapsulates the important connection between the two by dissecting the Cartesian quote “I think

therefore I am”. He argues that the statement presupposes two important dimensions which are

not explicitly stated, for example, if the “I” thinks, there can be others who do not think.

Similarly, if the “I” is, it can be logically deduced that there are others who are not and those

others who fall out of the scope of being (2007, 252). Essentially, in the same logic which

manifested the empowerment of the colonist, was also the logic to strip the epistemic creativity

of the racialized other and pull them out of the realm of humanity.

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In regards to the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust Mignolo explains that the

Coloniality of Being functioned on two dimensions. In the case of the Atlantic Slave Trade the

dominant had the power to pull individuals from their community and sell them as commodities

in their own markets. In terms of the Holocaust the dominant had the power to strip individuals

legally the same as them in terms of citizenship, and expel them from humanity (Mignolo, 2009,

81). In addition, he sees epistemic racism, which can also be called the Coloniality of

Knowledge, as being behind both of these historical events and as a result, the Coloniality of

Being is a result of the Coloniality of Knowledge (Mignolo, 2009, 82). These two theories are

essential to my analysis because it demonstrates the power of knowledge and how it is used as a

tool to perpetuate and justify the position and treatment of Indigenous bodies. The informing of

beings can be seen as working on two levels. On one level, individuals are informed on their

being by the dominant group in a way which limits them and in turn benefits the individuals who

have the power to inform. On a second level, the notions of being are internalized by both groups

and make them appear to be naturalized which normalizes and rationalizes the inequalities

between both groups. Instead of it being about one group repressing another it is masked by the

fact that one group cannot be at the same level as another, and that they are inherently or

naturally unequal.

The Coloniality of Power, Knowledge and Being, are an important way through which

the position of Aboriginal women in Canada should be analyzed, because they provide tools and

a language which exists outside of hegemonic western epistemology for us to unpack issues

which are essentially the results of this very same way of knowing. It is essential to move past

the dualistic nature of western epistemology, which encourages us to homogenize, while at the

same time individualizing, all aspects of being in order to conform to either category A or B,

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when in reality all relations exists on a more complex level. Additionally, it is important to resist

this hegemonic epistemology which constantly perpetuates the separation of discourses and

disciplines in analyzing issues which is in an effort to invisibilize the Modern/Colonial Matrix of

Power and how it functions on a global level. This is to say that this type of theoretical -

analytical approach, allows us to analyze this issues in a way which allows for the linking of

different times, issues and various types of knowledge. This serves as an important analytical

tool because it highlights the way that current issues faced by racialized others (Indigenous

violence faced by women etc.) can be drawn out from establish systems of power created during

colonization. We can come to understand how coloniality survives colonialism.

Furthermore, as will be discussed feminist discourse is not a sufficient lens through

which to analyze Indigenous women’s issues and many indigenous women being averse to

naming themselves as feminists for a variety of reasons. For example, an important concern is

that feminism and Indigenous women who are fighting for social justice do not have the same

goals in mind. It is clear that feminist discourse strives to promote and create gender equality,

and is a vision that is inconsistent with Indigenous women’s goals. They see the importance of

striving for gender harmony and believe that self - determination is essential to the empowerment

of their women, and this cannot occur outside the context of decolonialism (Grey, 2004, 13- 14).

Grey makes use of exerts from the works of Dawn Martin Hill, and Haunani-Kay Trask to

demonstrate that Indigenous women’s gender resistance is not oppositional to men and that

struggles occur laterally and not vertically:

“’Our men are our equals, our partners – we should cherish one another

mutually,’ writes Dawn Martin-Hill (2003:118), articulating a commonly-held

view among Native women who work toward restoring traditional gender

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interaction… Haunani-Kay Trask15 (1996) states bluntly that, ‘[s]truggle with

our men occurs laterally, across and within our movement. It does not occur

vertically between white women and indigenous women on one side and white

men and [Native] men on the opposing side’ (914).” (2014, 14).

Additionally, feminist discourse is entrenched with the assumption that gender equality

is ubiquitous, and as a result proves to be alienating for Indigenous women who maintain that

their societies did not suffer from patriarchal oppression prior to the onset of colonialism (Grey,

2004, 11). As a result, Grey states that “A continued insistence on the ubiquity of male

domination, despite dissenting views, has two significant implications: it creates an atmosphere

unconducive to dialogue between feminists and Native women, based on the lack of a pivotal

shared experience and the subsequent muting of other potential commonalities” (2004, 11). This

points to the fact that due to Indigenous women’s “bicultural existence” they are forced to know

clearly the dominant culture but women from this very same culture know very little in regards

to Indigenous issues and communities (Grey, 2004, 18).

Finally and perhaps most importantly, in the eyes of Indigenous women Feminism fails to

locate the reason for their subordination; while feminist focus on patriarchy as their perpetrator,

Indigenous women see clearly their oppression as being an implication of colonialism (Grey,

2004, 19). A similar sentiment is expressed by Anderson who states that Indigenous women are

aware that their condition is the result of colonization and as a result their struggles are against

the systems and policies enforced by colonizers, and not against men or individuals (2000, 55-

56). As Anderson states, “we are also aware that we carry the struggles of the past five centuries

into the new one” (2000, 55). This statement really captures the idea that Indigenous

marginalization must be analyzed from an all-encompassing perspective which accounts for not

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only all of the time since colonization, but also an approach that recognizes the survival of these

institutions throughout this time into today. For example, the way violence against women exists

in a normalized way in Indigenous communities, to the point where women who do not suffer

violence are seen as “the exception not the rule (Anderson, 2000, 55), cannot be explained by

simply examining gender relations in those communities. We must ask ourselves where these

gender ideals came from, who they benefit and who they deter, and also we must unpack and

learn from the way genders existed prior to colonisation.

Mignolo also uses an important term which is essential to understanding the status of

Indigenous people in Canada: bare lives and dispensable lives. He makes use of Hannah

Arendt’s notion of bare lives which she used to describe the institutionalized stripping of

citizenship from the Jews in Europe during the Holocaust (2009, 79). Dispensable lives on the

other hand are lives which are only given value on the basis of their ability of their labour and

ability to produce worth (Mignolo, 2009, 74). I see an important link which can be made here in

that indigenous peoples in Canada can be seen as being both bare and dispensable to the

Canadian consciousness. In other words, I mean to say that the way stereotypes revolving around

Indigenous peoples exist in Canadian consciousness plays a great part in making them bare and

dispensable lives. The scope of these stereotypes is beyond naming all of them but they typically

revolve around the fact that Indigenous people are seen as having a tenuous hold on “modern”

life (Razack, 2011, 1). This can best be explained by the fact that “Europeans imagine

themselves as the exclusive bearers and protagonists of modernity” and also their assumption

that time and history moved from a state of nature directly to modernity which ended in Western

Europe (Quijano, 2000, 542). In following dualistic thinking patterns, what was natural was seen

as subordinate and primitive (i.e. what was non-European) and what was modern and European,

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was civilized, scientific, and naturally superior. Going further, there is a notion that Cree/Metis

professor Emma LaRocque explains in Kim Anderson’s book A Recognition of Being:

Reconstructing Native Womanhood, the “vanishing Indian”. As she explains this idea is based on

presumptions surrounding primitiveness which as an extension meant that Indigenous cultures

were perceived as static or frozen culture. As a result any changes in culture were seen not as

development, but instead as assimilation (2000, 25-26). Here we can note the necessary

invisibilization of Indigenous people.

Institutionally, it is evident that Indigenous people are vulnerable to becoming bare lives

through the legal structures of the Indian Act, status and disenfranchisement. In addition, the

problematic natures of these structures are many, but for the purposes of this argument it is

important to note that the power of control over the extraction from the community is what is

important. Although, being disenfranchised does not necessarily remove one from Canadian

citizenship or from true Indigenous being, it does serve very powerful legal and symbolic

implications of removal. For example, certain scholars such as Bonita Laurence have found that

status is an important part of reaffirming Indigenous ancestry for individuals (Cray & Hanson,

2009 - Indian Status). Furthermore, going back to the idea that Indigenous are perceived to have

a tenuous hold on modern life and the notion of the disappearing Indian, we can extract that

people in Canada are also bare on a deeper more symbolic level. This is because this logic

suggests that there are no thriving Indigenous people in Canada; there are only those which are in

the process of perishing and are not symbolically important or citizens and those that are true

citizens are those who are no longer Indigenous. Additionally, these perishing Indigenous are

also disposable because they are not seen as having productive bodies and although they are per

say not disposed of directly, one can still draw a strong connection between the two. What this

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discourse serves to perpetuate and reproduce is that those who do not meet these stereotypical

notions of what being Indigenous is according to Western hegemonic discourse, are in fact not

Indigenous at all. This idea that indigenous bodies are perishing or dead is also expressed by

Serene Razack in her examination of the deaths of Indigenous people in police custody. She tells

us that these bodies are seen as essentially already dead and as such are seen as beyond help

(2011, 1). These assumptions are perpetuated and justified because of the pathological frailty

which is associated with their bodies, which in addition is often linked to alcoholism. It is a

common held assumption that alcoholism is biologically linked to indigenous bodies and is often

used to “discredit” their bodies; as a result they are perceived to be responsible for their sickness

and as such undeserving citizens who are “beyond the pale” of being helped (Razack, 2011, 8).

This again further establishes the invisibility of Indigenous people in Canada: they are not only

seen as a perishing race, they are also seen as a people who are rightly perishing and here too

there is an element of naturalization.

This example mirrors very closely, the way in which missing Indigenous women are

treated in society by the social conscious, the police and government. However, before turning

our attention to this situation I would like to first discuss the way Indigenous women’s roles in

particular have changed in their communities as a result of colonial projects. Indigenous people

as they are referred to today come from a multitude of tribes with diverse cultures and traditions

which have been homogenized into a single group as a result of colonization. There are however,

commonalities which can be noted and are important for disseminating the position of

Indigenous women before colonization. As Anderson explains, we can locate various Indigenous

cultures as being land-based and as such have commonalities in the way the earth is related to as

well as the way relationships are built and maintained (2000, 35). Furthermore, Gun Allen states

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that tribes were joined together by the fact that they are “earth based and wilderness centered; [as

well as] ‘animalistic’, polytheistic, concerned with sacred or non-political power” (in Anderson,

2000, 35). It is clear based upon these traits that what the first colonizers saw in the relationships

between themselves and all other things, was not something that they would have ever found or

experienced in Europe. The treatment of women within these societies was varied but they are

joined through the fact that women were not seen as submissive or needy and there was no

questioning of the power of femininity (Anderson, 2000, 36). Womanhood was seen as a sacred

identity which held an important position within these cultures which were focused on the

importance of balance and practicality, and as such it was essential for labour to be divided in a

way which was based on practical needs (Anderson, 2000, 57-59). For example, although it can

be said that women mostly worked within the home and men worked out of the home; where it

was necessary and practical it was not seen as negative or discouraged if individuals of the

opposite gender engaged in the jobs of the other (Anderson, 2000, 59). In the same way one

groups work was not valued over the other, it was clear that everyone’s work was important to

the community (Anderson, 2000, 60). Women in particular were responsible for food production

and distribution, and also there was a sense that because they worked directly with the land that

they in a sense were responsible for it or “owned it” (Anderson, 2000, 61).

These dynamics would soon change with the arrival of colonizers who were shocked by

the control that women had within their communities, and would aim to reorganize these

communities to mimic European gender norms. The effects of these policies can be noted in the

Iroquois nation, as missionaries pushed to turn the men towards agriculture and that women

should remain in the home. Thus, as a result women’s economic position was lowered and they

became dependant on their men, like white women (Anderson, 2000, 63). Additionally, the

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Catholic Church had a very big role in eliminating the role of women in spirituality in these

cultures. By using the image of Eve, Indigenous women and in turn all Indigenous spirituality

was seen as evil and sexually objectified by limiting their roles to reproduction (Anderson, 2000,

77). These notions make an important statement which must be considered about colonial

relations: they are gendered and sexualized (Smith, 2005, 8). What this means is that indigenous

bodies were made to seem as though they were a pollution which the colonial “body” needed to

purify itself from. They were seen as being polluted with sexual sin and their nakedness wrong,

making them adulterous and libidinous (Smith, 2005, 10). As a result their bodies are not seen as

worthy and because they are dirty they are “sexually violable” – sexual violence towards these

bodies is seen as no violence at all (Smith, 2005, 10). It is through these established relations that

we can begin to unpack why the Canadian imagination does not care about indigenous bodies,

why they do not care about missing, murdered and raped Indigenous women.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada has estimated that in the last twenty years

there are around 500 Indigenous women that have gone missing which goes hand in hand with

government statistics that calculate that Indigenous women between the ages of 25-44 are five

times more likely than other Canadian women to die violent deaths (Kuokkanen, 2008, 219). The

situation in Canada is starting to reach mainstream media in some senses that a report in 2004 by

Amnesty International was released denouncing the police and Canadian government’s failure to

address these issues. The report outlined, that the threat of violence towards these issues was a

result of social and economic marginalization, the frequent failure of the justice system and that

there was evidence that Indigenous women were being targeted for violence because of the lack

of attention given to their cases (Kuokkanen, 2008, 219). We can see the notions that western

discourse creates about Indigenous bodies at work here and how their bodies are not valued. This

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situation can also be seen as upholding capitalist structures that are inherently important to the

underpinnings of the Coloniality of power. As we know, Capitalism is a structure of power

which is inherently unequal and requires the subjugation of most individuals in society for a

smaller portion to dominate. In the case of Indigenous women in Canada there is no difference,

this system has left them in an economically disadvantaged position from the time of

colonization through to the rise of globalization; they are made vulnerable by being forced into

situations of extreme poverty, homelessness, and prostitution (Kuokkanen, 2008, 220). In this

way we can see the Canadian government’s disavowal of this situation as a safeguarding

measure to protect global capitalist structures at large, and Indigenous women’s vulnerability to

sexual violence is very clearly socially constructed and exploited through these systems.

Furthermore, the vulnerability created by viewing Indigenous women as “sexually violable”

makes them targets for sex trafficking as they are perceived to have “exotic sex appeal [which]

can be used as objects of sadism and violence with relative impunity” (Kuokkanen, 2008, 221).

In the same vein, it is also important to note that of the Indigenous women who have gone

missing and found, a great majority of them have been victims of sexual homicide (Gilchrist,

2010, 373)

There is also a particular aspect of Canadian imagination which must be protected and it

is one where Indigenous people do not exist and furthermore do not matter. This can be noted in

the media coverage or lack thereof missing Indigenous women. As Gilchrist’s analysis

concludes, even Indigenous women who fall within the normal parameters of whiteness, do not

receive the same media attention which white female victims do. They are not talked about in the

same way, nor is the amount of coverage they receive comparable (Gilchrist, 2010, 376). This is

very telling because female victims tend to be overrepresented in the media particularly those

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who have died as a result of violent crimes (Gruenwald et. al. 2011, 756). It can be said that the

media generally aims to create public fear, and so it is important to question exactly why there is

a divergence in this when it comes to reporting on Indigenous women. It is very clear that

Indigenous bodies do not count, they cannot exist within Canadian imagination and this can be

noted within all areas of Canadian life. For example, in 1992 “Ontario Minister Jim Flaherty

argued that the Canadian government could boost health care funding for “real people in real

towns” by cutting bureaucracy that serves only Native people” (Smith, 2005, 12). This is very

telling of position which Indigenous people hold in Canadian society hold, but also the

conditions in which they have been able to survive. Additionally, we can note how these

attitudes are essential to maintaining racist subjugation which underpins the Coloniality of Power

on a global level.

An interesting connection can be seen in the way in which Indigenous people are

subjugated in the Modern/Colonial Matrix of Power today and the way they were during Spanish

colonialism. My intent in highlighting this important connection is to make a concrete

connection to colonial relations today. The treatment and conditions of the way Indigenous

people in Canada survive is something which is very much left out of Canadian consciousness,

the issues that face them are not something which is ever seriously discussed. When these

conversations do reach the public sphere as I have discussed, there is a particular type of

discourse used. This discourse serves to individualize the issues that Indigenous people face in a

way that marks them as biologically flawed, again perpetuating a basis of domination. On the

other hand this language also serves to eliminate the involvement of the role of the colonizer in

the making of the unequal relationship, and their implication in the creation and perpetuation of

the position of indigenous peoples is effectively hidden. In the same way that this discourse was

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created to justify and disguise barbarity, the Spanish also had to disguise barbarity and protect

their image in Europe. Mendoza discusses that “the rights of peoples debate” was an attempt by

the Spanish Crown to control the damage to their image that was made as a result of the

spreading of the “Black Legend” – an account that had spread around Europe about the barbarity

of Spanish conquistadors (Mendoza, 2006, 937). From these talks came the decision to end

Indigenous slavery and to raise their status of that as human. It is however imperative to see how

this decision was also made with colonial interests in mind, as raising the Indigenous to human

status allowed them to embark on a civility project which involved the Christianisation of these

bodies (Mendoza, 2006, 938). Essentially, this gave them justification to save these “souls”, by

converting and civilizing them and in turn colonizing them. Additionally, the way in which

colonizers would come to treat Indigenous bodies was outside of the bounds of the normal

ethical standards which existed in their countries of origin (Maldonado –Torres, 2007, 246).

What we can see here is the need for the colonizer to justify their barbaric actions so that they

can logically self-reason that they are not uncivilized and savage like as their behavior would

normally indicate.

The Canadian government’s disavowal of Indigenous people’s issues in the international

arena, as well as its attempts to erase these issues from Canadian consciousness can also be seen

as needing to preserve a certain image. Within the international arena and Canadian

consciousness, Canada is seen as being a nation with a peaceful history. Canada is also seen as

being a multicultural nation, where racism and sexism is non-existent – to the point that it is one

of the first pieces of information that are given to new immigrants (Arat – Koc, 2012, 8).

Therefore, having the conditions in which Indigenous people survive in Canada made public is a

major concern for their identity; as a result, the individualization or ignoring of these issues

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serves to preserve Canadian self-identity as well as their international image. In the same way in

which the Spanish justified their barbaric actions to preserve their sense of civility in themselves

and in Europe, Canada also justifies their barbaric policies and behaviors towards Indigenous

peoples. An example of this in action can be seen in the weaving of national narrative during the

Somalia Affair in a manner which adamantly denied racism. Serene Razack contends that “in a

nation where racism is so vigorously denied, the Somalia Affair posed an enormous challenge to

Canadian confidence… we believed in our national innocence yet feared we did in fact possess

‘hidden hatred’” (2004, 117). In the Somalia Affair, it quickly became a matter of focusing on

the military cover-up and that the violence had been the work of “a few bad apples”: in turn, race

and colonial relations were effectively hidden (Razarck, 2004, 120-121). It is clear in this

example of the importance of maintaining a consciousness and identity both to the community

and on an international level and we can see a strong parallel here to the manner in which

Indigenous issues are addressed both domestically and internationally. This is a clear example of

what Kate Shanley calls “present absence” in regards to the manner in which U.S. colonial

imagination reinforces the notion that Indigenous people are vanishing while simultaneously

justifying the conquest of native land (in Smith, 2005, 9).

It is clear that colonial relations and models of power are still informing the world around

us today, and as a result Indigenous issues cannot be analyzed within the same framework of

hegemonic western episteme which perpetuates this relationship. In particular, feminist discourse

does not go far enough in unpacking the position of Indigenous women in Canadian society

today and prior to colonization. On the contrary, decolonial thinking provides a way of analyzing

issues which delinks from western epistemology: the Coloniality of Power, Being and

Knowledge provide us with a more complete way of examining these issues which takes into

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account race and colonialism. Furthermore, we can see the way in which these structures have

affected the position of Indigenous women and the importance to include them in any analysis.

It is salient to unpack the manner in which Canadian imagination perpetuates the notion of the

“disappearing Indian” to disavow Indigenous issues and institutional racism in Canada. Finally,

it is essential to go further and unpack the way these same notions also uphold global systems of

power through race and the economy among other factors, and to acknowledge the continued

survival of Indigenous peoples.

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