Ottawa Report

Page 2

A new report was released recently on the subject of battered women and it reminded me of a line in an old Humphrey Bogart movie: "The only thing a dame understands is a slap in the face or a slug from a .45."

That cave-man approach was not just the way tough guys like Bogart sometimes handled their women in the movies. It was alos the way that tough-guys and a lot of other not-so-tough guys were supposed to handle their women in real life. The thinking, if you can call it that, is that violence is not only a perfectly legitimate way for men to deal with women, it's also the most effective way for a man to make sure a woman will do what he says.

The trouble is that this kind of thinking is not restricted to the movies. Hollywood didn't invent wife beating. It just made the problem worse because it reinforced macho attitudes on the subject. I can remember, for example, hearing men joke that it's a man's duty to beat his wife ? that he should beat her regularly, whether she needs it or not.

And it was only five years ago, when Margaret Mitchell stood up in the House of Commons to announce that ten per cent of Canadian women were beaten by their husbands. The Members of Parliament ? almost all of them men ? snickered and laughed. The incident triggered an angry reaction that changed public attitudes. I think people know, finally, that you just can't laugh out loud at the mention of wife-beating because it just isn't funny anymore.

Which finally brings me around to the wife-battering report. The report is titled "Battered But No Beaten ... Preventing Wife Battering in Canada". It was published by the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women.

The report did not concentrate on individual horror stories but it did provide a few chilling and sorry insights into the lives of battered women, as told by the women themselves: "I was hit plenty by my husband over the years. I had a couple of concussions, broken ribs and I'm still deaf in one ear from his always hitting on that side of my head. But you can't understand what I went through if you only talk about the beatings . . . . The thing that's most hurting for me is the way he makes me fee so dirty, so filthy . . . He tells me I'm ugly and worthless. He spits on me. Sometimes I think the hitting is better than being made to feel so low."

The 120-page report includes a two-page section on Native women. But the only hard fact in that section is that 15 per cent of the women in shelters are Native women. Although the report doesn't come right out and say so, a little arithmetic would seem to show that Native women are beaten at a rate that is five times the national average.

The report is also pretty vague when it comes to suggesting workable solutions in the Native community. That's partly because the report admits that the situation of Native women differs considerably from non-Native women. For example, the report points out that physical violence is an accepted and inevitable part of Native life. It also says that Native people don't like going to court or to the police.

The report says that since alcohol is usually involved, Native women don't blame the men who beat them so much as they blame the alcohol. It says that many Native women defend the actions of Native men because all Native people have been victimized by society. Here's how one Native woman explained it: "You can talk about men being powerful in our society if you want, but you're not talking about my husband. My husband's never had any power in his whole life. He was born poor. He was born Indian. He's never felt better than anyone. He's never felt better than me. It's because he's so low that he hits me."

Only a few Native groups are trying to do something about the problem. That's why Native leaders and opinion-shapers should begin focusing attention on this issue.

We as Native people need to look into the mirror of family violence and face up to the ugly reality so that we can begin thehealing process. We have to stop leaning on the crutch of Native alcoholism and Native powerlessness because there is no excuse for beating wives, husbands or children. We won't solve the problem of family violence until we admit there is a problem and start to talk about it. It's too bad the report on battered women won't be much help but like a lot of other problems we face as Native people, it's something we've just got to begin to do for ourselves.