The Family makes a Difference for EVERYONE

The following editorial, first published by REAL Women of Canada early this year and re-posted here with the organization’s kind permission, addresses some of the many adversities and pathologies chronically experienced by indigenous women, including their high murder rates by male perpetrators close to them, their differentially high incarceration rates, and their high levels of poverty.

The piece convincingly argues that all these adversities and pathologies have little relation to indigenous status as such. Instead, they are a result of:

The noticeable absence of a stable family environment [that] runs through the sad legacy of indigenous offenders.  Promotion of strong families would be a better place to effect meaningful and lasting change for the better rather than in continuing with the mistaken and dangerous mentality of Indigenous people as victims.

More particularly, blaming colonialism in general and the Indian Residential Schools in particular for these problems not only denies the role of human agency in people’s lives but excuses not treating ongoing adversities and pathologies at their source — the family — by speciously arguing that because history can never be changed, the present can never be altered.