Indigenous women's descriptors of intimate partner violence interventions in settler colonial Canada


Julie Kaye, University of Saskatchewan; Alana Glecia (Demkiw), University of Saskatchewan

Ongoing discrimination in the form of racism and sexism are enacted against Indigenous women through a broad range of provincial and federal agencies in the context of settler colonialism in Canada. As the National Inquiry and multiple other preceding reports have found, the experiences of Indigenous women in relation to criminal justice and related systems are situated in the context of ongoing settler colonial relations that are rooted in a longstanding history of targeted colonial violence against Indigenous peoples in Canada (see, for example, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission [2014]; the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women [2015]). Despite widespread recognition of the problem, a paltry number of recommendations from the courts, inquires, and reports have been addressed and none have resulted in the meaningful systemic change necessary to address the ongoing distrust of Canadian criminal justice systems or the continued culture of violence experienced by Indigenous women and girls in Canada (Feinstein and Pearce 2015; LSC 2018; Peters et al. 2018; Bourgeois 2017; NWAC 2022). The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW 2015) indicates “with serious concern that perpetrators [of violence against Indigenous women] may count on the insufficient response of the police and justice system and continue to operate in an environment conducive to impunity in which Aboriginal women continue to suffer high levels of violence with insufficient criminal liability and without adequate access to justice.” Despite numerous calls to action, rates of violence against Indigenous women remaind disproportionality high, particularly rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) against Indigenous women. As Dawson et al. (2015) identify, 15% of Indigenous women have experienced IPV, where their non-Indigenous counterparts recorded rates of 6%. In 2021, Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE) identified that from ages 15 up, 61% of Indigenous teens and women in Canada were more likely to have experienced IPV in their lifetime when compared with non-Indigenous women (44%). IPV against Indigenous women is also more likely to be fatal (Hoffart and Jones, 2018; Savange, 2021). In the context of historical and structural discrimination against Indigenous persons and ongoing settler-colonial gender violence, responses to widespread violence against Indigenous women remain severely inadequate and are seen by Indigenous women to cause further harm rather than alleviate violence. Nonetheless, such interventions remain positioned as the primary and appropriate response to violence against Indigenous women in settler colonial Canada. Guided by Indigenous feminist and decolonial theoretical frameworks, this presentation provides a thematic analysis of 30 one-on-one qualitatie interview with Indigenous women across Canada who experienced IPV. Ther results expore narratives of shared re-victimziation by and through the responses of the crminal legal systems they must navigate. Experiences of violent vicitimization were minimized and met with disbelief. In a context of settler colonial interventions. In particular, the presentation details how descriptors emerged throughout the interviews that described their abusers in similar terms as descriptions of the police, judges, lawyers, and court actors. The interviews detail a continued and demonstratable lack of empathy for Indigenous women experiencing IPV and a minimization or outright denial of the severity of their experiences of violence. Many expressed how the police and legal system utilized tactics of coercive control in ways that were disturbingly similar to those used by their abusive partners. Through the experiences shared by these Indigenous women across Canada, it can be argued that the CLSs response to VAIW, particularly IPV against Indigenous women, is a continuation of the settler colonial project of elimination. By contributing to Indigenous women remain in violent relationships for longer periods of time, dropping legitimate charges, and internalization of victim-blaming tactices of shaming them to reenter violent relationships, the CLS makes it more likely that they, too, will become one of the many missing or murdered Indigenous women in Canada. This presentatin concludes by considering the possibilities of any role of the Canadian legal system in addressing IPV and VAIW.

This paper will be presented at the following session: