The Globe and Mail
For Indigenous women, systemic racial bias in prison leaves many worse off than men
In the standardized tests that determine federal inmates’ paths to rehabilitation, Indigenous women are more likely than white women to get the worst scores – with long-lasting negative effects after their release Bookmark Please log in to listen to this story. Also available in French and Mandarin. Log In Create Free Account
Getting audio file . This translation has been automatically generated and has not been verified for accuracy. Full Disclaimer
Patricia Whyte of Halifax and support dog Carl sit at the Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia, where she is a peer support worker for vulnerable women and girls. She worries that prison officials gave her higher security classifications than she should have had because she is Indigenous.
It goes like this.
In 1757, a Cherokee spokesman, Attakullakulla, led a delegation of his people to negotiate an agreement with the governor of South Carolina. Looking around the room, Attakullakulla noticed something odd about the delegation of white men. He was puzzled.
“Where are your women?” he asked.
I don’t know if that story is factual. It may be a parable. Still, there’s truth in it.
A newsletter for people who care about the climate
Email
First Nations are diverse, but with few exceptions, women traditionally exercised our will on our communities’ governance through women’s councils, clans or kinship ties and commerce. At the risk of simplifying a complicated history, legalized gender discrimination in the Indian Act forced First Nations women out of the political space. Residential schools, family unit breakdown, the loss of traditional economies and media stereotyping all devalued and displaced us.
To print this article, all you need is to be registered or login on Mondaq.com.
On December 13, 2020, news broke that Cleveland s
professional baseball team was changing its name. After the 2021
season, the Cleveland baseball team will no longer use the
name “Indians”.
The name change came following the discontinuance of the racist
“Chief Wahoo” logo prior to the 2019 baseball season,
and following decades of public opposition to the use of the name
and the logo. The Cleveland name change likewise follows changes in
other professional sports teams use of similar racist
imagery and language, including the high-profile decision of the
She was trained in chemical engineering and applied chemistry at the University of Toronto, worked in energy research, and then returned to academia to complete doctoral research in biochemical engineering at McGill University. Dr. Sears s work with public science institutions includes: writing the Medical Perspective on Environmental Sensitivities for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, leading to a policy under the Canadian Human Rights Act; carrying out a scoping review on toxic elements (arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury) with Canadian Institutes for Health Research and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funding; and numerous collaborations with members of the Environmental Health Committee of the Ontario College of Family Physicians. One of her central interests is the conduct and interpretation of science in environmental health.