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UNSETTLING KIN: FRACTURED GENERATIONS,
INDIGENOUS FEMINISM, AND THE POLITICS OF NATIONHOOD
by Carmen Julia Zarifeh Watson Course: HIST 449, Honours Graduating Essay Instructor: Dr. Courtney Booker A graduating thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in The Faculty of Arts History Department We accept this thesis as confirming to the required standard Supervisor: Dr. Paige Raibmon
Committee Members: Dr. Joy Dixon
University of British Columbia June 28, 2018 and Dr. Steven Lee
Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………... 3 Foreword: Brothers Once Removed ……………………………………………...... 5 Introduction………………………………………………………………………...... 6 Chapter 1: Women, Children, and Indigenous Families — ‘Indian’ Women & The Politics of Belonging ……………………………………………………………...... 18 Chapter 2: Stolen Children, Lost Years — Sovereignty Breaches Through Apprehension ……………………………………………………………………...... 38 Chapter 3: On The Move — Behind the Shift in Indigenous Child Welfare Policies ……………………………………………………………………………... 54 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………. 69 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………... 74 Appendix…………………………………………………………………………… 81
warmth. Ironically, without the archival research skills that this degree has taught me, I doubt that finding them would have been as easy. And, above all, I thank my parents, and specifically my brother for consistently standing in my corner, and for cheering me on without fail. I thank those three from the bottom of my heart; merci infiniment à vous trois!
Brothers Once Removed “Brothers once removed,” he used to say about you. I was too young to understand the weight of these words. It sounded funny to me, because I knew you were David’s brother. But David and Daniel were brothers too, yet you weren’t Daniel’s brother. You shared David’s blood, but had no recollection of him. This is what happens when someone, far away, in another city, tries to craft you an identity. You knew of David, of Emily, of Doug, of the other David too. But Daniel, David’s brother, became your brother once removed. What I remember is right before you left us, you learned that your people knew fish. They knew fish the way that I know my own name. With certainty, with ease, and with a silent nod to the way it tells me of my past. I carry the name of ancestors who have fled warzones, of a literary heroine who seeks freedom, of a mother who has loved me before she knew that I would come to be, and a father who has taught me to fight with every ounce of my being. You were much like that with fish. It told you something, it told you of your ancestors. You did not know it, but I wonder if you carried what your people knew. My brother and I now carry that, thanks to you. Your old boat, your cigarettes in your pocket, plastic bags in the trunk of your car. Ready to bring my bass home. With great ease and great kindness, you knew to fish. And you knew to teach my brother and I to fish. I cannot fish without thinking of how you fished with us. Without fault, every time I cast my line, I think back to how you fished. “I am an imbecile,” he said disappointed, his little body shaking. He had not caught the five- pound bass. I had caught it, screaming at first that I needed you to cut the line because it was stuck on a rock. Little me, realizing that I had caught a fish, jumping up and down. I think you might have sworn, chuckled, and clapped for me as my dad helped me reel it in. “No imbecile would know to say ‘imbecile’,” you said quietly reassuring him. Before you left us, you gave us more than I knew to recognize then. You and your brother once removed told a story. You were born at a time when your family was not given the respect they deserved. Someone, somewhere, wanted to give you an identity that differed from what you would have gotten otherwise. Because they believed yours to be wrong. You, like the brother and sister of your brother once removed, had a piece of you stolen before you even knew. You would not meet your own blood for forty long years. You should never have been made to feel like a stranger in a room with your own. Sometimes I wonder what it would mean, if you had learned about your people and fish, long before you did. That is only one thing. But what you carried, you shared. I wonder what more you could have carried if you had been allowed to find it in the first place. I wonder what more you could have shared, if they had allowed you your identity. “Brothers once removed,” he always says now.
certain provinces had their photos placed in newspapers, with short descriptions, and with contact information for the adoptions office. My father’s parents, my grandparents, still have the ad. I seek not to politicize the lived experiences of my close family members, but I do wish to emphasize the ways in which the history of Indigenous child welfare has played out amongst white Canadians. Told that they would be loving parents for a child that would otherwise have no home, my grandparents, like many others of their generation, adopted babies that they believed were in need. The historical backdrop against which my extended family came together is but one instance in our country’s tendency to infringe on Indigenous rights. This broader context is one which has seen different methods used to undermine the sovereignty of Indigenous nations. The discipline of history is one that has only more recently moved to include the narratives of Indigenous peoples. There is a particular gap, however, in reference to historical works which employ an Indigenous feminist lens. The following thesis focuses on the family as a site of Indigenous nationhood, relying on the works of Indigenous feminist scholars to do so. I argue that through the systemic removal and erasure of women and children from their communities, the federal and provincial governments sought to weaken Indigenous nations by infringing upon their sovereignty. Historically, Indigenous women fared worse than their male counterparts, as a consequence of their existence at the intersections of sexism and racism. Within the broader public, Indigenous peoples faced consistent attacks on their Indigeneity. Indigenous women, however, faced simultaneous attacks on their Indigeneity and their gender, both in non-Indigenous and Indigenous circles.^1 The former demonstrates a hierarchical system of violence, whereas the latter demonstrates a lateral one, in which collective rage against the (^1) For more on the relationship between violence, gender and Indigeneity, please see: Lee Maracle, I am Woman , 2nd ed. (Richmond, BC: Press Gang Publishers, 1996).
colonizer “work[s] itself out in an expression of hate for one another.”^2 This multi-layered discrimination and collective self-hatred confined Indigenous women to identities constructed by colonizers. Upon the systemic internalization of these identities – that is to say, the internalization of colonial understandings of Indigeneity, particularly with respect to femininity – the erasure of Indigenous women’s identities began. Bonita Lawrence traces this process of erasure back to the early days of Canada’s nation-building process, explaining that the British chose to only negotiate with Indigenous men in the treaty process.^3 “Deliberately cut[ting] out the stabilizing presence of older women and the general authority that was given to their voices in major decisions concerning the land,” colonial actors demonstrated that they had little regard for Indigenous women in political or quasi-political contexts.^4 Lawrence writes extensively on the experiences of Indigenous women, their historic erasure of their roles from social and political spheres, the ways in which colonialism oppressed and continues to oppress Indigenous women on the basis of both sex and race. 5 Colonial values thus began to relegate Indigenous women to apolitical environments, effectively restructuring the sociopolitical dynamics that had existed pre-contact. Colonizers viewed Indigenous men as the gateway to establishing political, or seemingly political relationships. Women, however, were seen as an impediment to the process, taking up spots that could be occupied by men. With women excluded from Indigenous organizations, such as the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB) and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), they resorted to organize in ways that appeared to adhere to the gender divide brought on by colonizers. More (^2) Maracle, I am Woman , 11. (^3) Bonita Lawrence, ‘Real’ Indians and Others: Mixed-blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 46. (^4) Ibid, pp. (^5) Lawrence, ‘Real’ Indians and Others. Particularly the following chapters: “Regulating Native Identity by Gender”, “Reconfiguring Colonial Gender Relations Under Bill C-31”, and “Racial Identity in White Society”.
the historical context within which Indigenous women located their fight for equality; they argued it to be a collective question of Indigenous rights, rather than simply a case of sexism. Women’s experiences at the intersections of racism and sexism granted them a diversified understanding of the inequalities faced by Indigenous peoples. In Chapter 2, I explore the period known as the Sixties Scoop, wherein tens of thousands of Indigenous children were removed from their families and sent to live, in most cases, with white families. For this, I draw on a variety of primary sources, ranging from newspaper articles, to ads, to a recent podcast, and to reports from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. What I emphasize for both chapters, is the deeply destructive nature of 12(1)(b) and the Sixties Scoop on the collective, or more specifically, on Indigenous nationhood. Indigenous nationhood, as employed by Daniel Heath Justice, “is more than simple political independence or the exercise of a distinct cultural identity”. 7 It also includes “the understanding of a common social interdependence within the community, the tribal web of kinship rights and responsibilities that link the People, the land and the cosmos in an ongoing dynamic of mutually affecting relationships.”^8 Resisting the systemic violence and oppression brought on by colonizers, while simultaneously drawing attention to the presence of a similar kind of violence and oppression within the collective psyche of the colonized, Indigenous women aimed to dismantle the confines they and their children were subjected to. Drawing on my two first chapters, Chapter 3 analyzes the Indian Child Caravan in British Columbia as a means of recapturing Indigenous sovereignty, using a collection of primary sources from the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs. I simultaneously examine the erasure (^7) Daniel Heath Justice, “‘Go Away Water!’ Kinship Criticism and the Decolonization Imperative” in Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaching Indigenous Literatures , edited by Linda M. Morra and Deanna Reder (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016), 353. (^8) Ibid, pp.
of women from the historical narrative, within the context of the Caravan. I use this to ultimately highlight the ways in which Indigenous feminism accounted for the lived experiences of women and children with respect to popular understandings of Indigenous sovereignty and nationhood. I conclude by relating these three chapters to the present, and by emphasizing how current inequality can be understood to in fact be a continuation of the legacy of colonialism. My intent is to underline the relationship between recognition and reconciliation, and to provide a historical context to the status quo. Reconciliation seems impossible without first an admission or recognition of continued power imbalances; without acknowledging the historical process through which we have arrived at our current state, we simultaneously oppress Indigenous resurgence, and deny the realities of the effects of colonization. I situate my analysis in these chapters within the growing body of decolonial and Indigenous feminist literature. First and foremost, I draw on the works of Lee Maracle to identify the persistent oppression of Indigenous women, and to identify the systemic violence that these women face. 9 Specifically, Maracle identifies the multi-faceted forms of sexualised violence that Indigenous women have faced since European contact, by challenging the heteronormativity/anti-queerness, whiteness, paternalism and patriarchal nature of settler society. Further, she describes the utterly destructive consequences of the internalization of these values: Indigenous women bear the brunt of both racism and sexism, in white and in Indigenous communities. “Decolonization”, according to Maracle, “will require the repatriation and the rematriation of [the expropriated accumulated] knowledge by Native peoples themselves.”^10 It is thus an active process, in the sense that Indigenous peoples participate in the resurgence of revitalization of this knowledge. (^9) Maracle, I am Woman. (^10) Ibid, 92.
which resurgence can be achieved. To further expand on this, I invoke the work of Glen Coulthard, who argues that our settler state is one which benefits from the “ongoing practice of dispossession” of Indigenous peoples and their resources.^15 This continuous dispossession, along with the earlier dispossession of knowledge identified by Lee Maracle, creates a state within which colonialism continues to exist — it is not a thing of the past, but rather a continued affront to Indigeneity, through its consistent extractionary and oppressive tactics. This also closely relates to Simpson’s explanation of the perceived ‘right-ing’ of colonialism, and is of significant importance within the context of the lived experiences of Indigenous women. Coulthard also examines the internalization of colonizer values and psyche on the colonized, interpreting Fanon’s theories of “negritude” and the relationship between “cultural self-recognition and projects of decolonization.”^16 This self-recognition is a fundamental part of the framework that Indigenous feminism permits: it promotes the rejection of colonial constructs of Indigenous identity, and actively protests the consistent internalization of colonialism. On this topic, the works of scholars such as Joyce Green, Kim Anderson, and Cheryl Suzack identify Indigenous feminism as a means to reject colonialism and undo its complex and oppressive control of Indigenous identity. Green defines Indigenous feminism as bringing together two distinct critiques: “feminism and anti-colonialism”. 17 It is thus a “theoretical engagement with history and politics, as well as practical engagement with contemporary social, economic, cultural and political issues.” 18 It is an act of resistance, by means of its constant and active opposition to white supremacy, sexism and anti-queerness. This is evident in Anderson’s (^15) Glen Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). (^16) Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks, 133. For a primordial analysis of decolonization and the colonizer-colonized psyche, please see: Frantz Fanon, “On Violence” and “On National Culture” in The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1961); Frantz Fanon, “The So-Called Dependency Complex of Colonized Peoples,” “The Negro and Psychopathology,” and “The Negro and Recognition” in Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto Press, 1986). (^17) Joyce Green, “Taking Account of Aboriginal Feminism,” in Making Space for Indigenous Feminism , ed. Joyce Green (Black Point, NS: Fernwood Publishers, 2007), pp 23. (^18) Ibid, 25.
work, as she closely links the process of decolonization with gender.^19 “When it comes to addressing issues related to Native women,” and working towards decolonization, it is essential to understand how “gendered and intergenerational relations worked in the societies of our ancestors; about how our foremothers and grandmothers defined and then lived their identities, roles, and authorities and about how much of this was lost.”^20 “Indigenous feminism” promotes the “build[ing] of healthier nations.”^21 Also focusing on the legacy of colonialism and its sociopolitical consequences, Cheryl Suzack and Shari Huhndorf explain that Indigenous feminism “centres on the fact that the imposition of patriarchy has transformed Indigenous societies by diminishing women’s power, status, and material circumstances.” 22 Suzack further explores the delegitimization of Indigenous women’s lived experiences and the barriers in the expression of emotion, by analyzing official Canadian policies and court cases. With this overview of the relationship between Indigenous feminism and Indigenous nationhood, I specifically address the ways in which sovereignty can be explored through an Indigenous feminist lens. I point to the concept of ‘kinship sovereignty’ to establish the grounds for my historical intervention. Establishing a relationship between kinship and sovereignty, Mark Rifkin writes that like “kinship, sovereignty is a translation, articulating native peoples’ existence as polities through a comparison to the logics and structures of the settler state.”^23 These two concepts are “intertwined”, with the former “providing a way of variously managing, containing, and/or (^19) Kim Anderson, Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teachings, and Story Medicine (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2011), 1. (^20) Ibid, 4. (^21) Kim Anderson, “Affirmations of an Indigenous Feminist,” in Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism and Culture. Cheryl Suzack, Shari M. Huhndorf, Jeanne Parreault, and Jean Barman (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), 85. (^22) Cheryl Suzack and Shari Huhndorf, “Introduction,” in Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism and Culture. Cheryl Suzack, Shari M. Huhndorf, Jeanne Parreault, and Jean Barman (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), 3. (^23) Mark Rifkin, When Did Indians Become Straight?: Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 17.
survival, and the means through which they ensure their survival – reflecting their use in the contemporary discourse of Indigenous activists and organizations. These collectives share histories, languages, customs, and traditional practices which differ from the settlers who arrived across the continent. Thus, while the terminology I personally employ, as well as the terminology employed in the primary sources, is nation-based, the concept itself predates the inception of these very words. More specifically, within the Indigenous context, the collective – now commonly defined as various ‘nations’ – was rooted in the existence of familial lines. Geographic boundaries, Cartesian points and legal documents did not define particular peoples; kinship did. 26 One was a member of their collective through their lineage, and as families expanded physically, across regions, so did their peoples. In that particular sense, Indigenous ‘nations’ existed extra-geographically, or at least, somewhat independently of territory. In other words, one collective, made up of several families, could span hundreds of kilometres. Belonging was not tied to a geographic region; one was not, for example, Carrier explicitly because of where they lived. They were Carrier based on their familial connection, and through their mothers and grandmothers. This particular conceptualization of the collective, and membership with regards to the collective, is what is invoked by the female activists I outline in this thesis. With the arrival of settler colonialism, and the subsequent identity framework that it employed, Indigenous identities were redefined along geographic boundaries. In settler discourse, this meant that Indigenous collectives began to systemically be tied to land, which meant that former, traditional methods were delegitimized by settler state. Colonial views on (^26) For an analysis of the relationship between kin, nationhood, colonialism and capitalism, please see: Jo-Anne Fiske, “Gender and Politics in a Carrier Indian Community,” (PhD Dissertation, University of British Columbia, 1989).
gender and race began to enforce upon Indigenous peoples moulds of what Indigeneity could be. Heteronormative, patriarchal, paternalistic configurations of identity have continuously been thrust upon Indigenous peoples in Canada, consistently oppressing women in the process. At the intersections of racism and sexism, facing both the oppression of the colonial state and internal oppression, Indigenous women have approached nationhood and sovereignty through a far different lens than their male counterparts.^27 The following thesis explores the efforts of women to articulate and emphasize the systemic oppression they and their children faced as successive, calculated and deeply destructive breaches in sovereignty. (^27) I acknowledge the ways in which colonialism has enforced a binary understanding of gender upon Indigenous societies, and that this is one particular form of colonial violence that continues. While much of my secondary sources, if not all, make specific mention of inclusive gender terms, the primary sources I consulted exclusively made use of binary terms.
Paternalistic and discriminatory in nature, the Indian Act exemplified the intersections of racism and sexism in the day-to-day lives of Indigenous women, particularly with respect to the politics of belonging. Indigenous women’s identities as ‘Indian’ were legally tied to that of their husbands — section 12(1)(b) mandated that a “woman who married a person who is not an Indian” would concurrently lose her rights to band membership, and her status under the Indian Act, 1951. 30 No such clause existed in reference to Indigenous males, upon their potential marriage to a non-‘Indian’ woman. It is important to emphasize the distinction between band membership and the recognition of identity in a nation-based interpretation of belonging. I argue not that band membership equates to a recognition of identity. Rather, I argue that it was the dissolution of a woman’s membership and the revocation of a woman’s status under the law that precluded her (and her children) from maintaining a distinct, noticeable and practical tie to her nation. This specific policy barred women and their children from accessing the physical site which acted as a host to the language, cultural practices, and ancestral historical narratives to the distinct identities of their respective Indigenous nations. Thus, this policy severed a vast number of individuals’ ties to their historical identities. Emphasizing the generational impacts of 12(1)(b), a number of Indigenous female activists — namely Mary Two-Axe Early, Jeanette Lavell, Yvonne Bédard and Sandra Lovelace — defined this phenomenon as an issue of collective rights, fitting within the rhetoric related to ‘self-government’ that emerged in the 1960s, following Trudeau’s failed White Paper proposal in 1968. This clause, colloquially referred to as ‘marrying out’, breached Indigenous sovereignty by revoking a woman’s membership to a nation, and by denying her heirs such membership. (^30) Canada. Indian Act, 1951.
As for the rise of Indigenous women in public spheres, there is no single aspect to distinctly explain their emergence into federal discussions of Indigenous rights. Though Indigenous men had long organized politically and consequently undertaken methods to publicize the concerns that they observed, women had little recourse to publicize theirs. In Saskatchewan for instance, the province with the “oldest Provincial Indian organization in Canada”, Indigenous women had no public representation until nearly three decades following the creation of the then Federation of Saskatchewan Indians “back in the 1930’s” (now the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations).^31 Reflecting in 1981 on the prevalence of men within Indigenous politics, one public servant explained “that the Indian and Inuit people and its representative associations have always been considered as male bastions.”^32 Campaigning to form a Saskatchewan Native Women’s Association in the mid 1960s, Flora Mike identified a distinct difference between the ways in which Indigenous men had organized in comparison to Indigenous women and alluded to how this further promoted inequality. “[I]n order to catch up to men,” she explained, Indigenous women had to become “organized provincially and nationally”: Indigenous men organized along political lines, through organizations such as the National Indian Brotherhood (now the Assembly of First Nations), or the aforementioned Federation of Saskatchewan Indians. 33 Only after organizing, could women “enjoy the same recognition.”^34 This statement can be further analyzed, at which point it becomes evident that female activists identified their erasure and exclusion not only as problematic, but that this had come to shape the status quo of Indigenous communities. By leaving women out of the decision-making process, visions of strong Indigenous futures were (^31) Sol Sanderson, “The Past - Present - Future,” Saskatchewan Indian 1.1 (July 1970), 1. (^32) Native Women’s Association of Canada, Newsletter 1.2 (Ottawa: October 1981), 5. Rise Up! Feminist Archive. URL: http://riseupfeministarchive.ca/wp-content/uploads/NWAC-vol1.No_.2-Oct.pdf. Last accessed: April 28 ,
(^33) “Indian Women Urged to Become Organized,” Saskatchewan Indian 2.4 (April 1971), 9. (^34) Ibid.
