Essay On Aboriginal Women And The Law Enforcements

This research paper will discuss and analyze reforms or alternatives to the training of Canadian Police services in regards to Aboriginal affairs, specifically the racialized and sexualized treatment of Indigenous women when engaged with the Canadian law. Currently, this legal system is a progression of systemic violence and discrimination that in turn influences the social displacement, cost of life, and ongoing victimization of women with Aboriginal identities by law enforcements. As revealed in The Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, it is in the perspective of the Indigenous community that many of these progressions have resulted in a formal and failed Canadian justice system that is grounded in colonialism. Specifically, these pre-existing

reforms have given rise to police brutality, sexual abuse, and discrimination towards Indigenous women residing in Canada. I will addresses these issues and the failure of the police services on both the provincial and federal level in order to address ideal directions to further the sensibility and the diversity training in law enforcements when governing Indigenous women affairs. In this context, I will apply an interdisciplinary approach grounded in multiculturalism to these reforms in which injustices faced by Indigenous women can be addressed.

I will also provide another solution to the ill-fitting policing system that governs over the Aboriginal communities by suggesting a separate police force that will adhere to the different cultural approaches to achieving harmony and to avoid the systematic racism that occurs when there is an unsuccessful attempt to combine the two systems. Throughout this paper, I will be looking at the relationship between Aboriginal women and the law enforcements. I will apply the notion of legal consciousness as a framework to build my argument as I explain the implications of colonization reinforcing an oppressive role in the mentality of Aboriginal women. I will discuss the significance that the report of missing and murdered Aboriginal women have in policing reforms and training and I will provide case accounts when Aboriginal women have had contact with policing, as well as the influence of better training on a provincial and federal level or a separate force could have for this marginalized

community.

To begin, the idea of legal consciousness has been conceived in a number of different ways by different researchers. In one of these ways, Ewick and Silbey’s conception of legal consciousness is of the greatest utility to my socio-legal research. In “Common Knowledge and Ideological Critique” the approach to legal consciousness posed by these two authors is integral to understanding legal consciousness as the process is shaped by both social and legal interaction with the law. An analysis of legal consciousness will demonstrate how the mindset of Aboriginal women has with the law, which then influences their relationship with it. The definition of legal consciousness is furthered as the empowerment of individuals regarding issues involving the law as it helps promote a frame of thinking about legal culture, such as the participation in the formation of laws and its enforcement (Ewick and Silbey, 3). In this theoretical perspective, I will explore the social stigma and mindset of the majority of Indigenous women and their relationship with the law, while also addressing on how it can better police practises.

This legal consciousness analysis will examine the lawful and social discrimination of Aboriginal people.

In Jonathan Rudin’s “Aboriginal People and the Criminal Justice System”, his report of the Ipperwash events visualize the correlation between under and over-policing and its influence on Aboriginal women. This correlation can be traced back as far as the beginning of colonialism, such as in the case of oppressive roles forced upon Aboriginal women that resulted in a marginalized group of reinforced victims. This could also be seen in the issue of the overrepresentation of Aboriginals that can be seen in incarceration and the historical oppression under eurocentric laws. The overrepresentation rates are highly alarming for female inmates as well. By the late 1980s, the incarceration rate for female Aboriginal inmates was nearly 50% of the entire population, being 68.4% in Manitoba (4). In comparison, the Aboriginal community only holds 10 to 13% of the overall population in

Canada.

These factors have made way towards this unreliable distrust between Canadian police force and the Aboriginal community and despite the many alternatives that are being taken, the problem and dynamic relationship have remained unchanged. The difference between the two systems can only be met with resistance and tension, and this article furthers the idea of legal consciousness as to why Aboriginals feel antagonized by these legal enforcements as it is mentioned that the role of policing is important as they are legal actors that influence the lives of Aboriginal people and their relationship to the law. The case of under-policing or over-policing approach is a problem since in either case, both can lead to experiences of distrust in relations to police (Rudin 28). Arguably, it also shows the lasting effects of colonization of discrimination against the Aboriginal community and their relations with the law as further outlined in the book “Thunder in My Soul” by Patricia Monture-Angus.

Within this book, it addresses the issues in regards to the racism in the legal system and in policing services. In particularly, Monture-Angus’ main issue with the system is that it only covers discrimination in the acts of anti-discrimination laws (40). These laws only cover racism that can be seen through actions and practices, and not the actual issues that are behind racism. In addition, the oppression from the Canadian legal system is so engraved into the Aboriginal communities that it has caused a rift within these groups of Aboriginals, splitting them from being on the reserves or off the reserves (47). This distinction was a result of the Canadian federal government and was constructed from the Indian Act, not from the reflection of the nation. Such distinction is set within a colonized mindset and predisposes them to an oppressive lifestyle, which is added to the contemporary legal consciousness of present-day Indigenous individuals (47). Another difficulty that Aboriginals face, in particularly Aboriginal women, is the lack of equality from the legal system. In most Aboriginal societies, women are highly respected and sacred in their communities, standing at the centre of the nations for being able to give birth and bring life into the world (49). However, it becomes difficult for these women to find the same equality under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for it forces these women to step away from their culture and identity in order to participate in its equality (49). The issue lies within the definition and enactment of the rule of law - to blindly place everyone onto the same level. This disregards the complexity of the oppression and discrimination that many suffer from, especially the Indigenous people in Canada. For example, Aboriginal women experience violence with far greater frequency than any other group of women in Canada (170). As these women move away from the physical violence in their childhoods, they then replace it with violent relationships with men (170) and as a result, the physical violence quickly turns into physiological and mental violence. The violence and experiences of these battered women do not fit within the narrow and general definition of violence in recent women’s movements because it simply does not account for the sheer amount of violence that an Aboriginal woman goes through in her lifetime (171). Furthermore, violence against women was not tolerated or accepted in most Aboriginal cultures, so these women do not share the same history of legally sanctioned violence against women in Canada that are incorporated within feminist analyses (175).