Indigenous Peoples still stuck in abusive cycle

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/11/2019 (2305 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Monday was a tale of two reports.

The first, published by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, stated the Indigenous music industry provided more than 3,000 jobs and nearly $78 million to Canada’s economy in 2018.

“The Indigenous music community is thriving, yet the Indigenous music industry is in its infancy,” states the National Indigenous Music Impact Study, suggesting spinoff impacts (infrastructure, non-music employment, and labour income) likely suggests the numbers are much higher.

The second: the Globe and Mail announced an investigation into government records uncovered that more than one-third of people killed by RCMP officers in 2007-17 were Indigenous.

Prompted by a memo obtained under access to information laws, the document proves the federal government’s awareness of the high violence Indigenous people experience from police. The “briefing note” (addressed to former Liberal public safety minister Ralph Goodale) acknowledges it is “disproportionately high that 36 per cent of fatal member-involved shootings by the RCMP deal with Indigenous subjects.”

Indigenous people don’t make up one-third of Canada; it is less than five per cent.

Welcome to Canada, where on one day you can see evidence of how Indigenous communities contribute overwhelmingly to the country, yet experience overwhelming violence within it.

The year began with a January report by Brandon University researchers, which stated total annual spending by Indigenous governments, businesses and households in Manitoba add up to $9.3 billion. Manitoba’s Indigenous economy provides more than 35,700 jobs, $231 million in taxes and over $1 billion more in gross domestic product and spending power.

A few months later, the Canadian Council of Business released the “Business Reconciliation in Canada Guidebook,” which stated Indigenous businesses contribute more than $30 billion annually to Canada’s economy and likely more than $100 billion by 2024.

Indigenous contributions to Canada aren’t just financial.

Nearly every second column I write, I try to highlight Indigenous People doing amazing things to make our world better.

Among these are 15-year-old Autumn Peltier from Wiikwemkoong First Nation (on Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario), who has been travelling the world speaking on the sacredness of water.

“We cannot eat money or drink oil,” Peltier famously told the United Nations in September.

Peltier is like tens of thousands of other Anishinaabe-kweg — like my mother, sisters and daughter — who protect water and, as a result, humanity.

There are millions of other Indigenous people who don’t receive such gifts: on Remembrance Day, the nation was reminded Indigenous veterans enlisted more than any group in Canada (while exempt from conscription).

Yet, violence against Indigenous people appears to be growing. And never-ending.

Just pick a month, and you’ll find a report.

Among the most notable was June’s final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The MMIWG commissioners called violence against First Nations, Métis and Inuit women and girls an ongoing “genocide” from a crisis “centuries in the making.”

It found, throughout Canadian society — from policing to laws to everyday practices — there are “underlying social, economic, cultural, institutional and historical causes that contribute to the ongoing violence.”

The MMIWG inquiry drew upon 98 previous governmental and community organization reports (from as far back as 1907) and offered 231 “calls for justice” for every segment of Canadian society.

In July, researchers from the Assembly of First Nations and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a study which found 47 per cent of First Nations children live in poverty.

In August, APTN published an investigative report which stated 47.1 per cent of all homicides in 2014-18 in Winnipeg were Indigenous (most of them men).

In September, media reported on a June 2019 Statistics Canada report which stated Indigenous people die by suicide three times more than Canadians.

In October, a United Nations special rapporteur report stated Indigenous people in Canada suffered from “abhorrent” housing conditions that contribute directly to the violence and health problems.

Three weeks ago, Toronto-based Yellowhead Institute found private corporations are successful 76 per cent of the time when obtaining court injunctions against First Nations opposition to resource development, and First Nations fail 81 per cent of the time filing injunctions to stop such companies.

The message: Canada’s legal system favours companies over First Nations.

From report to report, a truth is laid bare.

It’s enough to wonder why Indigenous people contribute to such an abusive cycle. And how to stop the abuse.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca