CPT Aboriginal Justice Delegation Day 6: Messages to the World

13 Aug 2014

Note: these are my own observations/reactions/musings, not Christian Peacemaker Teams’ official communications. Please also follow Caitlin’s delegation blog, Peace Pigeon, and the official CPT Aboriginal Justice tumblr!

Personal ethnographic note: I am white, Jewish descent, and from San Francisco, California, Turtle Island.

##(TW) Kenora Sexual Assault Centre

This morning we visited the Kenora Sexual Assault Centre, a nonprofit with a small, dedicated staff who help to counsel women (and sometimes others) who have experienced any type of sexual or domestic abuse. The Centre also helps clients find other services, and supports them in their interactions with medical services, police, and the court system. They are also an explicitly and proudly LGBT-friendly organization, and very welcoming to all trans people who have suffered abuse. (They can be emailed here and found on Twitter here.)

We heard a great deal of information about the work they do, which often focusses on aboriginal communities in the area, many of which suffer high amounts of sexual assault. This includes “fly-in” communities: small, indigenous communities which are only accessible by sea-plane. Rather than recount all the wonderful information they gave us (I’d refer the reader to their website), I’d like to focus on the specific message KSAC asked us to spread to the wider world.

Here are the specific messages they would like shared, and they are all especially directed to men of the world:

1. If a woman is drunk, that is not a license for men to help themselves to her.
2. Marriage does not equal consent. Women are not available for sexual contact at all times, without clear consent, just because they are married to you.
3. “Sexual assault is not a thing”: it is not exactly a specific action that can be defined out of context, but rather a fact about control and power of one person over another in a situation.
4. Men need to heal [JCW: from the social disease of patriarchy, and other mental, physical, and spiritual diseases]. Men who perpetrate sexual assault are suffering themselves, and more male healing will help decrease the problem of sexual assault.

##Arrival in Grassy

Shortly after our meeting at KSAC, we drove the 70 miles north to the Grassy Narrows First Nation Reserve. We met with band Council (i.e. government of the reserve) members and current Chief of Grassy Narrows, Roger Fobister Sr.

In an impressive display, Roger gave us an impromptu history of the land-politics of this region, from the original settlement to the present day. The policies of white settlers have consistently squeezed indigenous people into smaller and smaller spheres of cultural and geographical influence, so that settlers and settler governments can gain control over more and more of the land. This attitude was present in the early treaties between Canada and the First Nations, like Treaty 3 in Anishinaabek territory, where Anishinaabe agreed to grant settlers rights of access and use to their lands. The Canadian government interpreted these treaties as signing over permanent ownership and control of land to them.

This interpretation that continues to the present day, as does the policy of taking control of more and more land surrounding First Nations reserves. The ultimate goal seems to be keeping aboriginal people contained (i.e. imprisoned) in the narrow confines of reserves (not their traditional territory, which is much more extensive), or moved out and totally assimilated into white culture. The story can be summarized by these words from Roger: “land-based wealth extraction”. While indigenous people continue a tradition of living off the land and maintaining conditions for trapping, fishing, and fruit/vegetable-gathering, which is definite wealth, white/settler culture tends to be extractivist: it wants to extract portable wealth (equity) which can be monetized and crucially, accumulated (and so can accumulate debt as well); aboriginal-style wealth does not accumulate at all, but it is sustainable with only minor fluctuation over many generations, as long as natural resources are cared for.

Towards the end of the discussion, Roger heatedly began to describe situations of active resistance to clearcut-logging, or the Energy East pipeline, scenarios which may become necessary for Grassy Narrows in the near future. He hopes that they could take a stand without bloodshed. But he fixed us with a strong gaze here, pointing at us with his index finger, and said that when they have to take a stand, “that’s when we expect CPT to watch our backs, and stand in front of us, and protect us against your governments that want to destroy our people”.