‘Women are supposed to be the leaders’: intersections of gender, race and colonisation in HIV prevention with Indigenous young people

Abstract

Focusing on gender, race and colonialism, this paper foregrounds the voices of Indigenous young people, their histories of oppression, their legacies of resistance and the continuing strengths rooted in Indigenous peoples, their cultures and their communities. Exploring the relationship between gender and colonialism, the paper speaks to the lived realities of young people from Indigenous communities across Canada. Over 85 young people participated in six different Indigenous community workshops to create artistic pieces that explored the connections between HIV, individual risk and structural inequalities. In the course of the research, Indigenous young people, and young Indigenous women in particular, talked about how gender intersects with race and colonisation to create experiences that are, at times, especially difficult for them. In this paper, young people discuss the ways in which colonialism has demeaned women's roles and degraded women's sexuality, and how continuing cultural erasure and assimilationist policies impact on their lives and on their bodies.

En este artículo examinamos los aspectos de género, raza y colonialismo para poner de relieve las voces de jóvenes indígenas en lo que afecta a sus historias de opresión, sus legados de resistencia y la continua fuerza arraigada en los pueblos indígenas y sus culturas y comunidades. Al analizar las relaciones entre el género y el colonialismo podemos abordar las realidades vividas de los jóvenes de poblaciones indígenas en Canadá. Más de 85 jóvenes participaron en seis talleres comunitarios diferentes para indígenas en los que se crearon piezas artísticas que permitían explorar las conexiones entre el VIH, el riesgo individual y las desigualdades estructurales. Durante la investigación, los jóvenes indígenas, en particular las chicas, explicaron cómo confluye el género con la raza y el colonialismo creando experiencias que a veces son especialmente difíciles para ellos. En este artículo, los jóvenes hablan del modo en que el colonialismo ha reducido el papel de la mujer y degradado la sexualidad femenina y cómo la continua supresión cultural y política asimilacionista afectan a sus vidas y cuerpos.

Axé sur le genre, la race et le colonialisme, cet article met au premier plan la voix des jeunes autochtones, leur histoire d'oppression, leur héritage de résistance et les forces continues ancrées dans les populations autochtones, leurs cultures et leurs communautés. En examinant le rapport entre le genre et le colonialisme, l'article se penche sur les réalités vécues par les jeunes issus des communautés autochtones à travers le Canada. Plus de 85 jeunes ont participé à six ateliers communautaires distincts pour créer des œuvres artistiques explorant les correspondances entre le VIH, le risque individuel et les inégalités structurelles. Au cours de l'étude, les jeunes autochtones – les jeunes femmes en particulier – ont expliqué comment le genre interagit avec l'appartenance ethnique et la colonisation pour déterminer des expériences qui sont parfois extrêmement difficiles à vivre. Dans cet article, les jeunes abordent la manière avec laquelle le colonialisme a déprécié le rôle des femmes et déshonoré leur sexualité, et en quoi l'effacement culturel continu et les politiques assimilationnistes ont un impact sur leurs vies et sur leurs corps.

Keywords::

• Canada
• Indigenous peoples
• HIV prevention
• gender
• colonialism
• Aboriginal health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. We use the term Aboriginal in accordance with s. 35.1 of the Canadian Constitution to refer to ‘Indian, Inuit and Metis people of Canada’. Those who are included in this governmental definition are considered to be of ‘status’; however, there are many others who self-identify as Aboriginal, but who are not entitled to registration under the government's definition. For our team, the term Aboriginal includes those who are status or non-status and who live on or off-reserve. Importantly, however, the Federal government does not include non-status people in its definition, continuing the imposition of colonial ideology. The term Indigenous is used globally to refer to the descendants of those who originally inhabited a country or a geographical region at a pre-colonial/pre-invasion time. Indigenous peoples also maintain cultural and economic ties to their land (http://www.firstpeoples.org/who-are-indigenous-peoples).

^2. The videos and artwork are available online www.TakingAction4Youth.org

^3. While we consider 70 follow-up interviews a good response rate (82%), there are numerous reasons for young people not participating. As many of these locations were remote, our staff was only able to return to communities for a limited time to complete follow-up interviews. Some young people were not able to accommodate our time parameters, others declined without reason and a few were lost to follow up.

^4. The practice of othering usually involves the dichotomisation of people into two groups: a power group, which values its own practices and knowledge as superior, and another group, which is seen as the object of mistrust, exotification or inferiority (Said 1978).

^5. In the 1960s, in what has been termed ‘the 60s Scoop’, child welfare agents removed hundreds of Aboriginal children from their home and families, placing them mostly in non-Aboriginal homes. By the 1970s, roughly 33% of all children in care were Aboriginal. Approximately 70% of the children apprehended were placed into non-Aboriginal homes (Sinclair 2007).

^6. Before the Canadian government cut their research funding in 2010, the Native Women's Association of Canada had documented more than 580 cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. More recent data from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, from research conducted by Pearce (2013) and from numbers collected by the families of missing and murdered Indigenous women, puts the number at 1186 women. Most of these events have occurred within the last three decades (http://www.itstartswithus-mmiw.com/background and http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/pubs/mmaw-faapd-eng.pdf).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Ontario HIV Treatment Network, and supported by the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University.