Indigenous Human Rights Week hosted by McMaster university

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McMaster University's Indigenous Studies Department played host during Human Rights Awareness Week held March 11 to 15.

Dr. Dawn Hill, the director of the department, Kim Anderson, a Cree/Metis author; and Sylvia Maracle, the Mohawk executive director of the Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship Centres addressed the topic of Aboriginal women, painting a bleak picture of the social inequities Native women suffer. This prompted a discussion on how this situation has evolved to this point.

Anderson, author of A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood examined changes brought about to the status of Native women by means of colonization. She sees colonization as "the deliberate dismantling of the gender equity that we had in our societies in order to get at the resources."

Anderson explained that in many societies, older women held a good deal of political authority. It was generally understood that the decisions they made were about the wealth and the wellbeing of the future generations. She said the Indian Act, however, prohibited women from holding public office, from voting, and from speaking at public meetings.

Maracle is quoted in Anderson's book as saying, "the fact that I'm a Mohawk woman means that I have a license to make changes in the world."

Maracle insists, "we need to understand that what we're looking at in terms of human rights is justice. It's not going to come to us in law. There is no justice in law. Law has been created by men, in the interests of men, so that they can perpetuate the power imbalances that they stole in the beginning."

She maintains "the other thing that is going to have to happen is governance. We aren't going to go back to the traditional forms of government if we don't go back and articulate power and articulate ways for women to be involved."

She asserted that any governance had better include 52 per cent representation by Aboriginal women.

"That's what we are as part of this society...52 per cent of the resources are not spent on us. Fifty-two per cent of the power is not housed in our hands, but more than 52 per cent of the responsibilities for our future are."

She contends that "men are going to have to unlearn the colonizers' behaviors and learn to sit and be silent," while women, "are going to have to learn to find our way, to make our mistakes, to be responsible for ourselves and to articulate that direction."

Norma General, Cayuga faithkeeper and Elder in the Indigenous Studies Department, talked about the importance of "connecting with the blood memory."

She explained.

"It's such a marvelous thing because it gives me the freedom to travel within my mind and to reconnect with the ancestors to help bring the teachings forward."

Ward Churchill, author of 22 books and professor of American Studies at the University of Colorado, delivered the keynote address.

He said the internationally-accepted definition of genocide is: 1) outright killing of members of the targeted group; 2) implementation of policies causing severe physical or psychological harm; 3) attacking the conditions which allow the group to maintain its lifestyle; 4) forced prevention of births; and 5) forced transfer of children.

Canada adopted a modified definition of genocide in 1952, deleting the second and fifth definitions of genocidal actions and, in 1986, the fourth action was also removed. Even so, the majority of people don't recognize that genocide has occurred.

"There's an incredible wall of denial," he said, but from that acknowledgment you can begin to work towards constructive resolution.

"We can't undo what has been done, but we can alter the outcomes."

Churchill spoke about his enlistment in the Vietnam War. He was told that it was America's duty under international treaty to fight, yet he came to see that the U.S. disregarded the treaties his own people had signed with that country. He discussed a paper written by Jean-Paul Sartre, entitled "On Genocid" from which came the equation, "colonialism equals genocide." He argues that the decolonization movement of North America's Indigenous people has inevitably been an armed struggle, because one side (the government) is always unrestrictedly armed.

"We have common ground," Churchill said. "And to the extent that we have common ground, we have a common struggle. And to the extent that we have a common struggle we have the possibility of creating an alternately and infinitely better future for our coming generations-seven generations into the future-and that is something to which we all, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, can aspire."