FEM 1100 Study Guide - Final Guide: Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Squaw, Settler Colonialism
24 May 2018
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FEM Final Exam
Lecture 5 Thinking About Difference and Identity
Talked about in the Next Lecture
CRIAW. “Women’s experiences of Racism: How race and Gender Interact
• Jobs/income (stats from 1995/1996)
− $31,117: all Canadian men
− $23,600: visible minority men
− $19,208: all Canadian women
− $18,200: Aboriginal men
− $16,600: visible minority women
− $13,300: Aboriginal women
• Racism affects:
1. Housing
- Cut off from communities
- They are not rewarded for being in mainstream societies/communities
- Insurance issues
- Neighbourhoods are racialized
- Some don’t want people to move to certain areas
- Property values go down
- Landlords may not want to rent to minorities or they try to raise the prices
2. Jobs
- Your ability to get and secure a job, depends on your performance and race
3. Self-esteem
- Growing up in racist society that you are inferior, less intelligent, less success
- Leads to internalized issues
4. Health
- Their health is much worse than the average Canadians
5. Every aspect of your life
• Different types of racism:
1. Overt racism
- Using racial words
2. Covert, subtle or “polite” racism
- “You’re so smart for a … person, you’re so pretty for being that race, hijab – you actually have
hair, if your hair real”
- You speak English so well for being an immigrant
3. Structural racism
- Racism that affects schooling, media, work places, GOV policies, judicial system, police
- This is the most dangerous and damaging
- Keeps racialized population in subordination
4. What about reverse racism?
- Does not exist, it is a myth
- Ways for powerful groups to hold on to their power
- People within the same race, but some are seen as more upper than others
- Refusal to surrender privilege
• Myths that get in the way of ending racism
1. “But all that is in the past, why can’t we forget about it”
2. “Why can’t women just join together as a sisterhood instead of bringing things up that divide us”?
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Lecture 6 Histories and Legacies of Colonialism
Colonialism
• The economic, political and cultural conquest of one nation by another, either through military force or
economic dominance
- Countries in Europe went into many places also known as the third world and took over those
countries often by force, economics and the use of culture and conquered various nations
- This lead to a great deal of upheaval and violence, deaths, genocide and historical subordination of
many people around the world
- In the case of Canada and the US, the form of colonialism is called settler colonialism
- They settled those countries and took them over as if they are creating min versions of their home
country
- European nations they settled into those countries and took them over, the French people said that it
was empty land but it wasn’t empty though there were indigenous people in the land Terra Nullias
(no one on the land?)
Kim Anderson. “The Construction of a Negative Identity”
• Stereotypes of native women = drunken squaw, dirty, Indian, easy, lazy
- These stereotypes permeate Canadian society
- People draw upon these stereotypes
• Alcoholism, sexual dysfunction and violence in contemporary native communities. Is this where
stereotypes come from? NO
- They are seen as set by these social problems
- They are seen as responsible for their own social problems, violence, uncivilized, predisposed, seen
as lazy and live off the GOV, free tuition
- Stereotypes emerge at the very real systematic and destruction of their way of life through the
violation of treaties
• “Civilized squaw” image created long before these social problems existed. Justified taking over native
land, sexually abusing native women, removing native children from families & placing them in
residential schools where they experienced cultural genocide, physical & sexual abuse by people
running schools
- The image allowed for the taking over of indigenous lands
- What is the stereotyping allowing in terms of the marginalized people
• Roots of a negative female image lie in the equation of native women’s bodies with the land
• 3 phases:
1. Early colonial period, native women seen as great mother, Indian Queen, “exotic, powerful,
dangerous and beautiful”
o Along the lines of patriarchal view of women, colonialist went into a country and saw the
lands like women’s bodies, unknown, mysterious and there for them to claim, the rape of the
land
o Women often acted as go between of the natives and the traders
o It is still problematic as they were racialized and seen as exotic, dangerous and beautiful, but
still was a level of respect that was not about degration
2. Era of colonial attempts to claim land, Indian Queen became Indian princess, more accessible, less
powerful, and within grasp of the white man (ex. Pocahontas)
o Queen has power, princess is seen as subordinate
o Often white men often having sexual relations and maybe marrying and setting up families
with them, but this did not mean that these women had more status
o The idea of Pocahontas is romanticized, it is a deviation, she is actually 13 and it is left out of
the movie
o Moving now towards a tremendous subordination, they are still fighting at this point
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
3. Once Indigenous people began to resist colonization and stealing of their land, image of Squaw
emerged, a symbol of troublesome colonies who had to be conquered by force
o Once they were overcome in tremendous ways, the figure become stereotyped of how they
are troubled and need to be conquered by force
• Late 1800s, Canadian state and national press deliberately promoted “dirty squaw” imagery to justify
colonial violence against indigenous people
• As native people were driven off their lands, women lost status as producers in their economy, cast as
lazy and slovenly
- Major shift is through gender politics that differs between settlers and Indigenous people
- Settlers had specifics about what was seen as acceptable femininity, being weak, delicate and not
intelligent
- Their notion of women was not seen as the same binary
- They don’t see them as being leaders and having prestige social roles
• Increasingly inhumane conditions on many reserves meant poverty, lack of access to proper housing,
proper cleaning tools, etc.
Indigenous Girls and Women Today
• Native women continued to suffer sexual exploitation, abuse and violence at the hands of white men
- History of abuse with women now has shaped the social, economic and political environment
- People argue that this was in the past and it was not our actions that are causing it and they need to
get over it
• Native girls encounter racial/sexual slurs from a young age even before they understand these words.
This leads to self-hatred and constant feeling of vulnerability
- Constructed as hyper sexual, easy and looking for sex, makes them targets for white men who pry
for women without receiving consequences
- Young women are often propositioned by white men, if they want money for their bodies
- They are used to thinking that they are worth less than they are
• In Saskatchewan, 87% of indigenous girls and women make up of the female prison population (Dhillon
2015)
- People think that indigenous people are more criminally minded
• In Vancouver, 70% of street prostitutes working most dangerous parts of the city are indigenous (Razack
2012)
Picture slide
• They are seen as disposable bodies and that they don’t matter
• “We value dogs more than we do these women”
• Thought that Canada doesn’t have racism, we say that it is an individual person and they are extreme
neo-Nazi
Missing and Murdered
• Acc. to RCMP, over 1,000 Indigenous girls & women in Canada have gone missing or been murdered
over past 3 decades. In relative terms (Indigenous population in Canada = approx. 4.3% acc. to 2011
stats Can) = roughly equivalent to 18,000 girls & women (Johnson & Dawson 2011)
• Stolen Sisters report (Amnesty 2004): police & judicial system vs. Aboriginal women: 1) police
awareness/indifference 2) racist views 3) no specific protocols for issues w/ sex workers
• (Canadian department of Justice 2004 survey) Aboriginal women greatly over-represented as sex trade
workers vs. non-Aboriginal women (Oxman-Martinez et al. 2005; Royal Canadian Mounted Police
2006)
• Robert Pickton = largest serial killer investigation in Canadian history. Charged w/ murder of 26
women, police suspect close to 40, majority of whom were Indigenous
- Many women could have been saved if the police had been more vigilant, if they cared enough
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Women"s experiences of racism: how race and gender interact: jobs/income (stats from 1995/1996) ,300: aboriginal women: racism affects, housing. They are not rewarded for being in mainstream societies/communities. Some don"t want people to move to certain areas. Landlords may not want to rent to minorities or they try to raise the prices: jobs. Your ability to get and secure a job, depends on your performance and race: self-esteem. Growing up in racist society that you are inferior, less intelligent, less success. Their health is much worse than the average canadians: every aspect of your life, different types of racism, overt racism. Using racial words: covert, subtle or polite racism. You"re so smart for a person, you"re so pretty for being that race, hijab you actually have hair, if your hair real . You speak english so well for being an immigrant: structural racism. Racism that affects schooling, media, work places, gov policies, judicial system, police.
