The B.C. First Nations Justice Council (BCFNJC) is calling for wide-ranging social, legal and policing reforms it says will help reduce violence and harms to Indigenous women and girls both outside the legal system and within it.
The organization’s Indigenous Women Justice Plan (IJWP), unveiled Monday at a forum in Vancouver, says while Indigenous women are vastly over-represented in the child welfare and prison systems, they are much more likely to be victims of violence or harm than to perpetrate it.
“Indigenous women today are still at the margins of society and at the negative end of Canada’s socio-economic indicators,” said Kory Wilson, chair of the BCFNJC and lead on the Indigenous Women Justice Plan, in a Monday statement.
“It’s time to act; time to implement. We need to transform the justice system so that my three daughters are not more likely to be incarcerated, or worse, because they are Indigenous.”
Though Indigenous women represent four per cent of Canada’s population, they account for half of the women incarcerated in federal prisons and are four times more likely to be victims of violence, according to the report.
Between 2009 and 2021, Statistics Canada reports that 490 Indigenous women were murdered, equating to a rate six times higher than that of non-Indigenous victims.
Stemming from the B.C. First Nations Justice Strategy, the BCFNJC was given a year to complete the final draft of the IWJP, and the draft includes feedback from people in communities across B.C.
It builds off of high-profile reports and recommendations, such as the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ calls for justice, Red Women Rising report, and Highway of Tears symposium report.
“There’s no space for women in the current justice system,” said Darla Rasmussen, a steering committee member for the BCFNJC. “It completely erases us.”
Throughout First Nation communities, Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people hold sacred roles as matriarchs, knowledge keepers, healers, teachers, artists, and storytellers, reads the statement.
“Women had a legitimate role in society,” said Lydia Hwitsum, BCFNJC council member. “There was an extraordinary effort by the colonizer to ensure that women didn’t have a voice, right from the beginning, there was a strong, strong colonial specific oppression of Indigenous women.”
“What we have is a continuous intentional oppression that led to marginalization of Indigenous people, and then the most vulnerable being, of course, Indigenous women and girls,” said Wilson.
The IWJP, adorned with artwork by Tla-o-qui-aht member Marika Swan, makes several recommendations.
They include expanding cultural programming that is trauma-informed for women who are incarcerated, increasing community-led safety initiatives, funding justice and violence prevention efforts in First Nations communities and increasing legal aid to women and girls who are victims of violence.
It also recommends forming a task force to work with the provincial and federal governments to ensure current and past cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls are properly tracked, investigated and completed, including respecting cultural protocols around death and burial.
“We just want to make sure that we have all of the information possible, and that we’re creating something that is effective and is efficient and will move towards action,” said Wilson.
“My hope is that us women are going to take our power back,” said Rasmussen.
“I hope that our women are going to rise from this. We’re going to fill all those little cracks and gaps, with love, and with knowledge, and with empowerment and encouragement, because we can do this.”
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