The CMHR and the Ongoing Crisis of Murdered or Missing Indigenous Women: Do Museums Have a Responsibility to Care?

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Notes

In 2009, Faron Hall was proclaimed “Winnipeg's Homeless Hero” for saving two other people from drowning in the Red River (on separate occasions).

See the website of the Native Women's Association of Canada, and in particular the Sisters in Spirit research page (2015b).

See Royal Canadian Mounted Police (2014). Lubicon scholar and activist Robyn Bourgeois (2014a) points out that although the RCMP report “gives us a good picture of the scope of the problem,” the report also problematically “fails to address the role of dominant systems of oppression—colonialism, racism, heteropatriarchy—in this violence,” which greatly limits its usefulness and differentiates it significantly from the important work done decades earlier by NWAC and other Indigenous women's organizations.

See, for example, Hunt (2014) and Sinclair (2014). One of Faron Hall's relatives also reflects on the increased vulnerability to violence and suffering he has witnessed in his own family: “Our family has suffered so much through deaths, violent deaths, and alcohol,” he told Steve Lambert in an article published by the Toronto Star (2014).

I use the language of genocide to characterize the relationship between Canada and Indigenous people deliberately here. It seems clear to me that Canada's colonial relationship with Indigenous peoples meets the UN's 1948 definition of genocide, and Indigenous leaders and Canadian genocide scholars have called upon the Canadian government and the CMHR to acknowledge the genocidal nature of Canada's relationship to Indigenous peoples. For examples of such calls, see Welch (2013).

For but a few of many available critiques of the popular sentiment that Canadian colonialism is a benevolent intervention intended to “better” Indigenous peoples and communities, see Monture-Angus (1999), Coulthard (2011), Alfred (2009), Furniss (2002), and Regan (2010). In September 2009, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, despite having only recently delivered a public apology for Canada's Indian Residential School (IRS) system, announced to a global audience that Canada “has no history of colonialism” (Ljunggren 2009). For a critique of how the IRS apology and subsequent Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) risk situating colonial violence as an aspect of Canada's past, downplaying how colonialism continues in the present, see Henderson and Wakeham (2010). The CMHR has also been embroiled in controversy for its refusal to use the term genocide to describe human rights abuses against Indigenous people in Canada.

Many Indigenous women's organizations and scholars have documented much higher rates of violence in the lives of Indigenous women as compared to both non-Indigenous women and Indigenous men. See, for example, the Native Women's Association of Canada's “Fact Sheet” (2015a). For more on Indigenous women's experiences with violence and resistance to violence, see also Bourgeois (2014b), Anderson and Lawrence (2003), Beads and Kuokkanen (2007), McGillivray and Comaskey (2004), and Silman et al. (1987). NWAC's Fact Sheet points to some of the limitations of government-collected statistics about violence against Aboriginal people, as does Robyn Bourgeois’ (2014a) response to the RCMP report. With these limitations in mind, it is still worth noting that Statistics Canada reports the rate of violent victimization (including spousal violence) of Aboriginal women as nearly three times higher than in the non-Aboriginal population. Although Indigenous women are especially impacted by much higher rates of violence, Indigenous people (regardless of gender) are also more likely to experience violence than non-Indigenous people in Canada: According to Statistics Canada, one in ten Aboriginal people report being violently victimized by non-spousal violent crime, which is more than double the proportion of non-Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people are also more likely to report being victimized by non-spousal violence multiple times (Perreault 2011).

For a more thorough analysis of how colonialism relates to the extremely high rates of contemporary violence against Indigenous women, see Jacobs and Williams (2008), Native Women's Association of Canada (2010), Smith (2005), Christine Welsh's (2006) documentary film Finding Dawn, Razack (2000), Anderson, Kubik, and Hampton (2010), and Dean (in press).

For its mission statement and purpose, see the CMHR (2014a).

For a more thorough discussion of the idea of curation as “caring for” in relation to the CMHR, see the introduction to this special issue (Failler, Ives, and Milne this issue).

MOA Press Release (2011) was at one time available online but has since been removed from the MOA's website.

For more information about the annual Valentine's Day Women's Memorial March, which now includes companion marches in several Canadian cities on February 14th, see Women's Memorial March (2014).

For a broad range of responses to the exhibit and cancellation by family and friends of murdered or missing women, Downtown Eastside antiviolence organizers, a number of Indigenous women, and local service providers, see the documentary The Exhibition (2013) by Damon Vignale.

Some of the portraits from The Forgotten project can be viewed online at various websites, and a promotional video for The Forgotten can be viewed online (“The Forgotten Project” 2014).

See Moss (2012) and Pinto (2013) for discussion of how the suggestion that these are “forgotten” women is offensive to many.

A 2012 joint presentation by MOA staff and members of the DTES Missing Women's Memorial March committee at the “City Museums” conference in Vancouver reflected on a series of dinner dialogues called “The Shared Bowl” that was sparked by the cancellation of the exhibit, for example, whereas MOA director Anthony Shelton spoke in a 2013 news article about the significance of some of the many artworks that are weaved into the Memorial March itself (Verstraten 2013).

See Amnesty International (2004) and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (2014). When I toured the CMHR on its opening weekend a number of exhibits were still under construction, and the “niche” exhibit in which Jaime Black has since installed her REDress Project (2015) was not yet available for viewing.

I am indebted to the descriptions offered by Townsend-Gault (2002), Neville (2007), Rickard (2006), and to the video on Belmore's website (2010).

This use of her body (including in many of her other performance pieces) to draw attention to histories of colonization is also discussed in Neville (2007), Rickard (2006), and Townsend-Gault (2002).

See also Angela Failler's article in this special issue, and the Trace facebook page (2014).

The interview is based on a public conversation between Martin and Belmore in Winnipeg during the opening weekend for the exhibition Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, organized by Plug In ICA.

On the eve of the CMHR's opening festivities, “A Tribe Called Red,” a popular Indigenous DJ group, cancelled their scheduled performance at “Rightsfest,” citing concerns about the CMHR's refusal to use the word genocide to describe Canada's relationship with Indigenous people (“A Tribe Called Red” 2014). Shoal Lake 40 First Nation also established a protest camp on the grounds of the CMHR during its opening “Rightsfest,” inviting Museum visitors to tour their reserve as an example of a “Museum of Canadian Human Rights Violations.” As cited in Hale (2014), Roxanne Green asserted “At the settlers’ end of the water pipe there's economic prosperity, clean drinking water and a $350-million building that advertises ‘healing’ and brags about what a wonderful country Canada is. At our end of the pipe, we have 17 years of boil-water order, no job opportunities and we are forced to risk our lives for basic necessities. It's important that the world have the opportunity to see that huge Canadian contradiction.”.