In Canada, there are over 1,200 missing and murdered Aboriginal women unaccounted for, yet the government and law enforcement refuse to launch a national investigation. Does this mean that Aboriginal women in Canada have less value than other citizens of Canada?
Technically the gov't has released two reports by the RCMP (Mounties). But this is hardly an investigation. It's just a collection of data already there. The situation is made worse by Minister Valcourt's claim that the women were mostly victims of domestic violence by other Natives. (It turned out he just made up a number off the top of his head.) Even if that were true and not just race baiting, that would still be no excuse for ignoring several thousand murders and missing persons. It is clearly a devaluing of Native lives. It is somewhat similar to the way minority lives are of lesser value to some police and public in the US. In spite of one high profile case after another involving Black youths murdered by cops (and some far less known cases involving Latinos and Native youths murdered under similar circumstances) a big segment of the US public will excuse away any action done by cops because they find dark skinned males threatening. This I know from firsthand experience, a youth spent being harassed constantly and many of the people I mentioned it to insisting it must have been my own fault. But this situation is different from the US since it is massive neglect based in indifference rather than being more willing to murder members of a group. In the US there was also until very recently a jurisdictional issue, with criminals taking advantage of it to commit crime. Where most crime is same race, Black on Black, white on white, etc., for Natives in the US it is almost all white criminals targeting Native victims. If over 1,000 white women of well off background had gone missing, obviously this would be treated like a national crisis. The numbers would never have been allowed to get this high in the first place. And there has long been a disturbing pattern of human traffickers targeting Aboriginal women. At the same time the police and RCMP have not been shy about going after Native street and prison gangs, and even have sometimes claimed Native warrior societies were gangs or organized crime. The missing women have become notorious enough to make the news in US media, and attract condemnation from international human rights. There have been some discussions. Hopefully it is a start.
Which country has the most tension between Aboriginals and the government?
That would be mine - Canada.Now, I’m not saying we treat our aboriginals worse than the United States, Australia or New Zealand. Although we probably do.But there’s a lot going on.The Canadian Supreme Court just heard a case regarding the rights of our First Nations to pursue litigation under new rules designed to correct historic wrongs.There is ongoing work to implement a settlement with First Nations children who were sent to residential schools. In addition to being mistreated, they were forbidden to speak native languages and were torn away from their parents.There is still an ongoing dispute with respect to the “Sixties Scoop” - the practice of putting aboriginal children in non-aboriginal foster homes.The inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women is in chaos with important members of the inquiry resigning even before hearings are held.There are numerous legal actions ongoing about the production and sale of tobacco on First Nations reserves. That tobacco is supposed to be either used on reserve or exported, but a lot winds up off-reserve in Canada.The inquiry into the “Motherisk” hair testing kits, which falsely indicated people were using illegal drugs, seems to have disproportionately affected First Nations families, and probably several hundred aboriginal children were needlessly taken away from their parents. At this point, the families will probably never be reunited.Luckily, there is very little violence going on at the moment, although there has been violence in the past (Ipperwash Crisis - Wikipedia). Most of this is just working it’s way through the courts. Another case recently was about the conviction of someone who deliberately went into a “no-go” zone in a disputed area where the government is trying to settle a local land claim. It’s not helping that different native groups are also fighting over that same land claim.
What's "intersectionality"?
"What's "intersectionality"?" Intersectionality was the quick, made up solution by upper class, white feminists to answer the charges by minority women that they were being excluded. Feminism began, and still is largely a privileged, white woman movement. They call the shots, and they dictate what feminism does. The idea of intersectionality was to introduce other types of "oppression" that women who are not white and upper class might face, into the feminist paradigm. The biggest one was race. Sometimes, but not always, they entertain the idea of class. They never, ever, introduce legitimately oppressed or disadvantaged males. EVER. This is the proof that feminism is NOT a movement for full equality as too many self-proclaimed adherents claim. It is a special interest group for women only. All men, no matter what their circumstances are, are simply deemed to be "privileged".
Is there a tendency for Canadians, Swiss, Swedes, Finns, and Kiwis to think their countries have no problems when they might have?
I’m not from any of these countries, but I am from Ireland, a country that easily could be part of this group. I think that smaller nations* do tend to get defensive when people talk about their problems.This is because many critiques of these countries come from a position of ignorance. Sweden in particular has been the target of certain media outlets trying to portray it as a god-forsaken hell hole, much as the NHS was 8 years ago, but even leaving that aside, many people read one article, from one source, on a contentious issue and consider themselves totally informed.The fact is, many American and British publications go to these countries knowing what story they want to write, and twist the facts to suit the narrative. An infamous example from a few years ago was when the New York Times sent a journalist to report on Ireland’s economic woes. She managed to find someone who had been shooting pigeons for food and led the article with him, much to the chagrin of the 99.99% of Irish people who buy their food in supermarkets.Its also true that when articles do get written about these places, usually they’re writing for a domestic audience, using other countries as a parable about the dangers of austerity, or what tax rulings in the EU mean for the USA. So the story, often a complex and nuanced one, is hastily and inaccurately explained to push on to the real point of the article, which is to discuss domestic politics. **So, when I see questions or answers attacking Ireland from someone abroad, my default reaction is that they don’t know what they’re talking about, and I have to be convinced otherwise. Its usually correct.Of course, the other side of this is that foreigners who consume US and UK media shouldn’t presume to understand these countries so much, and at least have a little humility when discussing them. You don’t understand these countries, you understand London, and NYC, LA, DC and San Francisco, the cities that dominate the global face of those two countries.*Yes I’m aware Canada is the second-largest nation on Earth, but whatever. It’s mainly lakes.**This also works the other way around, where journalists write about how great Australia’s Gun Control is, or that Ireland has just elected the first openly-gay Prime Minister. People tend to not like these articles either, but not make such a fuss because its nice to see good things about where you live.