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A Review of Research on Criminal Victimization and First Nations, Métis and Inuit Peoples 1990 to 2001
9. Explanations for Aboriginal Victimization (cont'd)
9. Explanations for Aboriginal Victimization (cont'd)
9.2 Racism
This part examines briefly the issue of systemic discrimination of Aboriginal peoples by the Canadian justice system. An in-depth review of this issue is beyond the scope of this review. Although it is true that systemic discrimination of the justice system can be viewed as victimizing Aboriginal peoples, it is not directly about criminal victimization. It can, however, exacerbate and contribute to high victimization in the Aboriginal community and this will be briefly addressed. We also examine direct racism by non-Aboriginal individuals in this part because of its link to criminal victimization.
9.2.1 Systemic Discrimination of the Justice System
Aboriginal peoples experience systemic discrimination every time they come into contact with the justice system. Systemic discrimination is the norm and effects offenders and victims indiscriminately. It is pervasive and endemic. Various Aboriginal justice inquires have studied the issue of systemic discrimination of the criminal justice system, particularly as it affects offenders.[33] Less attention has been focused on the victims. Nonetheless, the literature in dealing with systemic discrimination and racism in the justice system is extensive.[34]
The most comprehensive review of the issues of systemic discrimination in this area continues to be the Manitoba Justice Inquiry report (Hamilton & Sinclair, 1991b). Other inquiries have added little original content or recommendations since this inquiry (RCAP, 1996b). The RCAP Bridging the Cultural Divide report (1996a) provides an excellent summary of the major inquiries. Despite the recommendations of these reports very little has changed. For example, racism and systemic discrimination continue to exist in Saskatchewan. The recent allegations that the Saskatoon police have a practice of dropping Aboriginal "troublemakers" off at the edge of town where one such troublemaker was later found to have frozen to death has prompted the formation of a public inquiry (currently being chaired by William Littlechild). The existence of such a practice reinforces the conclusion that notwithstanding previous inquiries in that province conducted in 1992 which set out numerous recommendations to address systemic discrimination and racism by justice personnel very little seems to have changed. This sentiment was recently stated with regard to circumstances in Manitoba as well. In 1999, Judge Sinclair, one of the Co-Chairs of the Manitoba Inquiry made a presentation to the First Nation Shelter Director's Meeting. In his remarks, he expressed considerable disappointment that "not a lot of change has happened" (Sinclair, 1999).
Most recently, the province of Manitoba has conducted a 10-year review of the status of the Manitoba Inquiry (Chartrand & Whitecloud, 2001). The report is informative for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the acknowledgment that not much has been done in the past 10 years with regard to the implementation of the recommendations of the Manitoba Inquiry. The Review Commission asks that the province make an institutional commitment and recommends setting up a permanent commission and hold a round table. The report is also informative in the change in emphasis on reform from that of setting up an Aboriginal controlled justice system (which has been criticized as primarily replacing brown faces with white faces) advocated by the Manitoba Inquiry to reforms that emphasize more restorative alternative and community prevention approaches.
It has been argued that systemic discrimination contributes to Aboriginal victimization because the existing system does not address, and is inherently incapable of addressing, the underlying causes of Aboriginal criminality (RCAP, 1996a). Sending offenders to jail only makes them better criminals and more bitter and angry when they return back to the community (Hollow Water First Nation Community Holistic Circle Healing, 1994). Aboriginal alternative to the existing justice system have, in part, been motivated by this failure of the existing system to "heal" offenders.
9.2.2 Hate Crime and Victimization
Direct personal racism also contributes to continued victimization of Aboriginal people by non-Aboriginal people who target Aboriginal victims simply because they are "different". Many of the major justice inquires concerning the impact of the criminal justice system on Aboriginal peoples arose out of individual accounts of Aboriginal victimization fuelled by racist attitudes by non-Aboriginal people (for examples, the Manitoba Justice Inquiry of 1990 and the Osnaburgh/Windigo Justice Inquiry of 1990).
The form of violence against Aboriginal women is violence by Euro-Canadian men against Aboriginal women outside the home, in which non-Aboriginal men exercise their gendered racial privilege by victimizing Aboriginal women (Razack, 2002). This form of violence against Aboriginal women is unique to this group and arises as a result of gendered racism. For example, gendered racism is often manifested in the violence targeted at Aboriginal women sex trade workers by non-Aboriginal men.
The case study of Pamela George by Sherene Razack (2002) explains in a revealing and powerful way how racism and gender contributed to her death by two white men. Two middle-class university athletes raped and murdered Pamela George who was working as a prostitute in Regina. Race, despite the court's interpretation of the events in which racism was deemed to be irrelevant, was a factor in her victimization. Razack explains:
Two white men who buy the services of an Aboriginal woman in prostitution, and who then beat her to death, are enacting a quite specific violence perpetrated on Aboriginal bodies throughout Canada's history, a colonial violence that has not only enabled white settlers to secure the land but to come to know themselves as entitled to it. In the men's encounter with Pamela George, these material (theft of the land) and symbolic (who is entitled to it) processes shaped both what brought Pamela George to the Stroll and what white men from middle-class homes thought they were doing in a downtown area of prostitution on the night of the murder. (Razack, 2002, p. 128)
For a recent review of material documenting gendered racism and its connection to violence and victimization see McKay (2001). The intersection of gender and race increase the risk of Aboriginal women experiencing violence (National Association of Women and the Law, 1993). McKay also asserts that Canada's continued failure to ameliorate the gendered racism that Aboriginal women face in terms of increased rates of violence and rape is a violation of Article 2.2 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Thus, Aboriginal women are at increased risk of victimization due to racism and sexism, embodied in stereotypes of Aboriginal women within Canadian society. Crimes motivated by racism are arguably hate crimes and should be pursued by Crown prosecutors as such. A recent incident arising from Saskatchewan involved demands from the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations that the death of a native woman, Cynthia Sanderson, in Prince Albert should also involve the laying of hate crime charges. In this case, the CBC reported that witnesses alleged that the driver of the truck shouted racial slurs at Sanderson before running her over.[35]
Considerable attention and research has been devoted to addressing systemic discrimination in the justice system against Aboriginal peoples, but little attention has been directed at identify the motivating factors of personal racial violence against Aboriginal people by non-Aboriginal people. What factors motivate white-middle class men to react violently against Aboriginal people, particularly Aboriginal women?
The Simon Fraser review (Cohen, 2002) briefly discusses how racism and stereotypes of Aboriginal women exacerbate and aggravate the risk of victimization including increasing the risk of victimization from Aboriginal men. "Internalized colonialism" is manifested in Aboriginal men victimizing Aboriginal women and children because of the reinforced belief in the devalued nature of their own people because of gendered racism within society at large (Cohen, 2002, LaRocque, 1994).
9.3 Summary
There is no debate about the prevalence of Aboriginal family violence and victimization in Canadian society. It is a serious social issue. There is also no longer any real debate about the explanations for such prevalence of victimization. Factors such as alcohol abuse and poverty are increasingly being recognized as the symptoms they are of a broader explanation based on the impact of colonization. What remains an issue for debate in the literature at the present time is the question of what to do about it. How should the offenders, the majority of whom are Aboriginal, be dealt with?
Unfortunately, as Johnston (1997) argues, society's response to dealing with the trauma experienced by abused Aboriginal individuals and consequential effects has often been to institutionalize the affected individuals in prisons and other institutions. Often, Aboriginal victims in need of therapeutic help or culturally relevant healing methods fall through the social safety net and do not receive any assistance. In these circumstances, Aboriginal victims often become victimizers themselves. Both the Sugar and Fox (1990) and the La Prairie (1996) studies note that most of the female inmates in prison were victims of violence themselves. Sugar and Fox movingly capture the tragedy of many Aboriginal women's involvement in prison in these words:
As our stories show, aboriginal women who are in prison grow up in prison, though the prisons they grow up in are not the ones to which they are sentenced under law. (p. 3)
As explained by McIvor (1992), many of the Aboriginal women in prison are there for violent crimes because they were "pushed to the wall and responded in violence". They were victims of incest, sexual assault and physical abuse as children.
How Aboriginal offenders are to be treated given that their life stories reveal that they are as much victims as offenders in many cases has given rise to considerable debate. Should they benefit from alternative Aboriginal justice processes that emphasis healing and reconciliation or should they be punished and isolated from the rest of society for the protection of others?
Opinion on this issue can be categorized in two different directions. Ursel (2001) summarizes this debate:
[F]rom a historic stand point it is difficult to separate the victims and the abusers because of the profound history of abuse of Aboriginal people. From the stand point of Aboriginal offenders (who may well have been abused as children) the question arises; do they merit a different consequence because of their history? (p. 3)
In a national study of Aboriginal offenders, Johnston (1997) found that during their childhood, Aboriginal offenders suffered a number of socio-economic disadvantages, including the following:
It was found that early drug (60.4 %) and alcohol abuse (57.9 %) were commonplace, as were behavioural problems (57.1 %). Other frequently-noted occurrences were both physical (45.2%) and sexual abuse (21.2 %), as well as severe poverty (35.3 %), and parental absence or neglect (41.1 %). Suicide was attempted by 20.5 percent of these offenders (Johnston, 1997).
In light of the above, Ursel (2001) goes on to identify the issues that need to be addressed:
From the stand point of Aboriginal victims the weight of history and the urgency of immediate risk seem to pull in different directions. Do Aboriginal victims merit greater police intervention because of their greater risk, or less police intervention because of their assailants history of abuse? How is protection best provided? Much of the debate seems to revolve around the question of whether we privilege past or present victims? (p. 3)
In the following section on the impact of the justice system and alternatives to the existing criminal justice system, we explore these and other tensions in greater detail.
