Conference on Indigenous Women, Culture and Politics

I was impressed by the community workers who attended either to speak or just be observers. It was four days of bonding with women from different walks of life-- from senior professors to grass-root-level social workers. The conference was inaugurated with a prayer by Marge Friedel, a Métis Elder, who invoked the spirits and the creator for the well beings of us present as well as the ancestors. After the speeches by the Provost and the Dean we were entertained by a colourful dance by the Thundering Spirit Dance Troupe. This was a family affair of three generations of women with the youngest one being six years old. They did have male dancers but decided not to bring them any this particular meet said Shirley Thunder, the daughter, much to the mirth of the audience. She explained that one of the reasons they decided to put together this troupe was to preserve the Cree tradition as well as the language, which they made a point to speak at home. Many indigenous languages are being lost for ever due to massive assimilation within the mainstream culture, especially of the younger generations.

Canada is home to many native tribes who are referred to as First Nations, a term of ethnicity in Canada that has widely replaced the use of the word 'Indian'. The Inuit or Métis, however, do not fall within this group. The proper terms to refer to the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis collectively is Aboriginal peoples in Canada or First peoples or Indigenous peoples, tribes, or nations. The use of the word 'Indian' in day-to-day language is erratic in Canada, with some seeing the term as offensive while others prefer it to alternate terminology such as 'Aboriginal'.

With all the glorification of the noble brave we see in logos or Disney movies, racism still runs deep, in the city and on the reserve. And it is more than simple prejudice. Canada is no South Africa, but there is enough of a fissure that it amounts to a subtle form of apartheid. Intentionally or not, too much of Canada continues to push natives into a second-class carriage, and too many native leaders keep them there. In workplaces, sports teams, schools and places of worship, there are powerful divisions that perpetuate a two-tier society, the one that Paul Papigatuk, a Quebec Inuit leader, calls 'our caste system.' John Stackhouse, a journalist from the Globe and the Mail, remarked about a nickel mine on Papigatuk's people's land that seemed like a scene out of the American South, with Inuit taking the place of blacks in the menial and unskilled jobs with whites in positions of authority. Sometimes, this is not because of intentional racism. Decades of failed education, social and cultural policies, as well as retrograde attitudes among many aboriginal leaders, has ensured that the Papigatuk people can't do much more than hunt, fish and wash dishes.

Community workers, in the conference, were especially vocal about the segregationist attitudes of the general white public towards the aborigines, drawing particular attention to a series of gruesome murders in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside of aboriginal women and what they saw as a complete apathy in the police force to solve the cases. The serial killer was later apprehended but that did not stop similar crimes being committed against poor indigenous women forced to walk the street.

It was a white policeman who finally solved the case and was later presented with the Esquao Award. Muriel Stanley Venne, president, Institute for the Advancement of Aboriginal Women, explained that this is an award which is given every year to community leaders, educationist or any native woman who makes a remarkable contribution to the community. The institute started the Esquao Awards by reinventing the word 'squaw'. Their brochure explains: 'From the colonist's inability to pronounce the word Esquao, the word 'squaw' came to be a derogatory term. IAAW is claiming back the term for all Aboriginal women to stand proud when we hear Esquao applied to us.'

In all the cowboy and Indian movies and Western comics that I had pored over with my brothers, I had figured the 'squaw' to be the natural designation. The term, of course, came with all the implications that those cowboys had meant to express-- dirty, disheveled and ugly. The connotation continues today. No matter how educated or high-placed an Aborigine woman might be, she is still regarded as a squaw by most.In answer to Audre Lorde's 'How can we dismantle the masters' house using the masters' tools?

' the women of the native community has subverted the master's tool to their own empowerment. Esquao is now a term of empowerment.

I did manage to steal some time out to do some sightseeing on the third day of the conference. My niece Shurovi and her husband Rashed, both graduates of U of A, took me to Jasper Park, part of a spectacular World Heritage Site about 360 kilometers from Edmonton. The sight was breathtaking, with blue lakes flanked on one side by the Rocky mountain range. This was the pristine landscape that the native forefathers had lived in and which now has to be a protected area brings us face to face with the dire prospects of our endangered world.

My paper, on the fourth day, was on the state of indigenous women's activism in the context of the mainstream women's movement in Bangladesh. The program ended with a dinner banquet at a local Italian restaurant. As we exchanged e-mail addresses with hopes of meeting again at future meets, I also longed to go back home. But after Edmonton, Toronto seemed too crowded, too noisy, too hot, and most of all, too flat. I miss those mountains.

Rebecca Sultana teaches postcolonial studies at McMaster University, Canada.