Domestic Violence (DV) can include many forms of abuse, including physical, sexual, verbal,emotional, financial, and neglect. In Canada, Indigenous Women and Girls disproportionately experience DV and other forms of violence. According to the Native Women’s Association of Canada’s, Violence Against Aboriginal Women Factsheet (2015), “Aboriginal women 15 years and older are 3.5 times more likely to experience violence than non-Aboriginal women” and “rates of spousal assault against Aboriginal women are more than three times higher than those against non-Aboriginal women.”
Lived Experiences Resemble the Statistics
To learn more about DV against Indigenous women in Canada, I met with a First Nations woman – to protect her identity, we will call her Donna. Donna is now a Social Worker who grew up in a reserve and lived there for most of her life; she also worked as a Police Officer on this same reserve.
Donna has experienced every form of DV there is. She bravely shared her painful experiences of being badly beaten, picked on, and harassed by her husband. Explaining “I was so dependent on my husband, and I had no way out. I never had money because he never let me go back to school, and he was so jealous when I worked – he would accuse me of sneaking around with this guy or that guy, so I wouldn’t be able to go. Being too dependent made me really vulnerable, and I think that’s what it does to a lot of girls.”
This dependency and control is its own form of abuse – and as Donna described, it often leaves women isolated and feeling trapped in abusive situations.
Unpacking Economic Abuse
Women’s Aid (2019) defines economic abuse as “a range of behaviours which allow a perpetrator to control someone else’s economic resources or freedoms.” The charity, Surviving Economic Abuse, explains that “in the context of coercive control, economic abuse is almost always perpetrated by a male abuser against a female victim.”
Economic abuse is also usually paired with other forms of physical and/or psychological abuse and limits women’s choices and ability to access safety resulting in women staying with an abusive partner for longer than they would like and experiencing more harm as a result.
Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey (GSS) (2009) revealed that “over one-third (34%) of Aboriginal women said that a current or former partner had been emotionally or financially abusive towards them… a proportion that was close to double that of non Aboriginal women (17%).”
What’s more is that economic abuse makes rebuilding lives challenging because many women leave with nothing and have to start over from scratch. You can see how understanding this sort of abuse becomes very important when thinking about ways to tackle DV as a whole.
It wasn’t until Donna left her home, and her life on the reserve, that she found freedom to access resources that could support her. She told me how she got in a car and drove to the city with only a few things to her name – jobless and without money, she found refuge in a shelter for Indigenous women fleeing domestic violence.
Why Indigenous Women Disproportionately Experience Violence?
When I asked Donna this question, without skipping a beat, she responded “alcohol and drugs” and explained that these addictions exist, in large part, because of the intergenerational and present day traumas which directly stem from colonialism, residential schools, and the many systemically racist systems against Indigenous peoples.
Those many issues, compounded with the lack of resources, leads to “self-medicating” explains Donna. She describes that “addiction and poverty go hand in hand and that, coupled with lack of education and support resources, creates a vicious cycle.”
Canada’s Colonial History is a Major Proponent
A 2009 Statistics Canada report similarly describes that “higher proportions of Aboriginal women experience spousal violence compared to non-Aboriginal women” and these findings have been “linked to the breakdown of family life resulting from residential school experience, and the impact of colonization.”
The realities of Canada’s colonization are at times swept under the rug, but Indigenous peoples still experience many lingering effects of colonization and racism daily. Donna shared that she often hears the phrase “let it go” from non-Indigenous peoples or “that was so long ago…” In fact, the last residential school to close in Canada was only 24 years ago – in 1996.
Colonial systems have been, and continue to be, pitted against Indigenous women. Jessica McDiarmid, in her book Highway of Tears (2019), points out that the United Nations Human Rights Committee found the Indian Act continued to discriminate against Indigenous women and their descendants as recently as January 2019.
What is The Path Forward?
Even with all that she had stacked against her, Donna found a way out of the abuse. She now has a safe home, she has a stable and reputable career, and like her grandmother, she is actively involved in her grandkids’ lives. She is determined to be a catalyst for change in her family – to help stop that vicious cycle. Her resilience, strength of character, and ambition as an independent woman is something to be revered. When asked what advice she would offer to victims who are looking for hope she repeated firmly, that “there is a way out. No one told me that what I was going through was not okay. No one said to me: there is a way out, but there is, and you can do it.”
Find Help Across Canada
If you, or someone in your life, is experiencing abuse of any kind, please reach out to one of the many organizations who are there to help. This CCFWE webpage lists resources across Canada that can help. If you are in immediate danger, or fear for your safety, please call 911.
Ways to Offer Your Help
The Canadian Center for Women’s Empowerment (CCFWE) empowers domestic violence survivors nation-wide through advocacy, mentorship, and economic empowerment.
Join CCFWE’s Pledge to Fight Economic Abuse and share our #HelpUsRise campaign and toolkit on your social media to increase awareness about economic abuse in your social circles and community.
By Marcia Bastos, CCFWE Volunteer
