A new study on murdered or missing Indigenous women in the US, Canada and Australia reveals this racialized violence is rarely reported on in mainstream media or debated by lawmakers.
The case study on murdered and missing Indigenous women is part of the Deathscapes project which seeks new ways to document, understand, and respond to contemporary racialized violence.
Macquarie University’s Professor Bronwyn Carlson is one of the academics involved in the project. She says Australia, the US and Canada are talking about measures to address the situation which, she says, stems from settler colonialism.
“There is a long history of colonial violence towards Indigenous women throughout history. Perpetrators (in Australia) have actually been celebrated for the kinds of violence they committed against Indigenous women,” Professor Carlson said in an interview with NITV Radio.
“We see high levels of violence against Indigenous women where they are in state care custody, kids being removed, women being targeted, locked up for unpaid fines...“
“We see a pattern which is a continuation of colonial violence where women were targeted right from the beginning. They were target to be used by men for sex then discarded when no longer needed.”
“They (Indigenous women) were targeted through the assimilation and protection policy when their children were removed and they were seen as the ones who were breeding when there was an attempt to breed them out…”
Why is there no worldwide emergency?
Professor Carlson adds that not a day goes by without the death of an Indigenous woman in the context of racialized violence.
Aboriginal media tries to report on this violence as much as possible but this information is rarely picked up in mainstream media and followed on in the political discourse.
Among all settler colonial countries Canada is the only one that has gone as far as carrying out a formal investigation into state violence against Indigenous women even concluding that this violence amounts to a genocide.
However, professor Carlson observes, despite the formal investigation in Canada not much has happened to address the situation and public/media reaction has been lacking in vitality considering the scale of the tragedy.
“In Canada there is much talk but nothing really is being done,” Professor Carlson laments.
“How can a country that size have that scale of missing or murdered women without any national emergency being called?” "Why is there no worldwide emergency?” Professor Carlson questions. Yet, Canada is lauded for the way it treats its Indigenous population.
In Australia, investigations have only been carried out in academic circles. Australian researchers have agreed to use the term femicide to underline that the incidence of Indigenous women’s deaths in disparate places is not accidental or random, but a systematic outcome of the logic of settler colonialism.
