The Mass Incarceration of Indigenous Women in Canada: A Colonial Tactic of Control and Assimilation
Indigenous women in Canada are imprisoned at rates that have surpassed Indigenous men, and these numbers continue to grow. This mass imprisonment is due to the continued paternalistic assault on Indigenous women—perpetrated and fuelled by the colonial sta
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duction When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) released their 94 Calls to Action in 2015, they called upon governments to eliminate the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples incarcerated over the next decade, stating the following for action 30: We call upon federal, provincial, and territorial governments to commit to eliminating the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in custody over the next decade, and to issue detailed annual reports that monitor and evaluate progress in doing so. (TRC, 2015, p. 3)
O. Marques (*) Ontario Tech University, Oshawa, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] L. Monchalin Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. George et al. (eds.), Neo-Colonial Injustice and the Mass Imprisonment of Indigenous Women, Palgrave Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity and Criminal Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44567-6_5
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Yet since this call, the incarceration rate of Indigenous peoples has not declined, rather it has only increased for Indigenous women, who are the fastest growing population of prisoners in Canada. For Indigenous women, this increase has surpassed the rate of over-incarcerated Indigenous men. Despite accounting for 4.3% of the population, Indigenous women make up 40% of the total female prisoner population in Canada (Office of the Correctional Investigator, 2018). Increases in the female Indigenous in-custody population coincided with a simultaneous overall decrease in the male prison population. The Office of the Correctional Investigator (2018) reports that: over the past ten years, the number of federally sentenced women inmates has increased by nearly 30%, growing from 534 in 2008 to 684 in 2018. This growth is in contrast to the decrease in the overall male in-custody population over the same time period (decline of 4%). (Office of the Correctional Investigator, 2018, p. 61)
Provincial and territorial institutions have also seen a crisis of Indigenous overrepresentation, with Indigenous persons accounting for 30% of admissions to custody in 2016/2017. A trend which has been on the rise for over ten years (Malakieh, 2018). The situation becomes even more dire when we consider that Indigenous women not only account for 50% of federal segregation placements but are placed in segregation for longer durations than non-Indigenous women (Native Women’s Association of Canada, 2017). It is as a result of these realities, that we argue, following from Smith (2005), that Indigenous women’s bodies have borne the brunt of the impacts of colonization and patriarchy. As highlighted in the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (National Inquiry into Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls (NIMMIWG), 2019): “Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people in Canada have been the targets of violence for far too long. This truth is undeniable” (p. 49). That Indigenous women’s bodies are part of the ter
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