Calling for justice and reimagining governance: the rematriation of Indigenous women’s human rights and the obligations of all governments
About the project
This project examines the interconnected historical and contemporary factors contributing to the systemic marginalization of Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people, with the aim of proposing new systems of governance and expressions of self-determination that centre gendered realities. While working toward the goals of this project, we have continued to witness violence against Indigenous women and girls, including elected members of Manitoba’s legislature. These acts of violence reinforce findings that the intersectional impact of settler colonialism in Canada remains a gendered and racialized project.
Inspired by and responding directly to the Calls for Justice – particularly Call 1.4 which demands “urgent and special measures to ensure that Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people are represented in…governance and leadership” – this project contributes to the ongoing work of Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people who are actively working to stop a genocide through their leadership and governance.
Guided by Indigenous feminist methodologies, this project used a relational and collaborative research process that centred Indigenous women’s knowledge, leadership and lived experience. The research combined critical engagement with literature across law, politics, history and human rights and included collective reading practices, Kitchen Table Gatherings and story-based learning led by Indigenous matriarchs. Together, these approaches supported knowledge-sharing, reflection and accountability grounded in relationships, care and responsibility to community.
Key findings
- Indigenous women and gender-diverse people play key roles in governance and leadership, working within and outside of settler colonial systems. The goals of Indigenous Nation and community leaders are the health and safety of their relatives in their community, whether urban or rural. This leadership of Indigenous women and gender-diverse people is not recognized as governance because it exists, and persists, outside of dispossessory hierarchical state structures.
- Matriarchy and leadership are taught to Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people through ceremony, visiting and teachings.
- Human rights mechanisms (e.g., United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights) must be identified and implemented within municipal, provincial, territorial, and federal law and policy.
- Violence against Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people is ongoing and can be traced back to colonial stereotypes and ongoing colonial structures.
- Recommendations found in the Independent Special Interlocutor’s Final Report (2024), Calls for Justice from the MMIWG2S+ Inquiry (2019), Aboriginal Justice Inquiry (1999), and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) have not been respected or implemented. Municipal, provincial, territorial and federal governments’ inaction to implement these recommendations and policy changes demonstrates that the active genocide against Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people is permissible.
- Intergenerational knowledge transmission and mentors are important for Indigenous girls and gender-diverse youth. These relationships foster leadership, provide opportunities for youth to imagine their futures and gain new skills, and create important support networks for leaders of all ages throughout their lives.
- Indigenous men who are in leadership positions are viewed and treated differently than Indigenous women and gender-diverse people in similar positions.
- More resources are necessary to close the gap between Indigenous urban and rural programming.
- Indigenous organizations and programs need sustainable funding commitments and resources to effectively support Indigenous women, girls, gender-diverse people and families.
- Indigenous Nations and Peoples are actively working together within the city of Winnipeg to fundamentally change the realities of their kin and create healthy futures beyond the settler colonial state.
- Settler colonial justice and accountability systems do not work for Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people.
- Parenting support must be made available to both urban and rural Indigenous families.
- Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people are actively stopping a state-sponsored genocide.
- A failure to acknowledge the leadership and governance of Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people continues to allow this genocide to persist.
- All levels of government must acknowledge, respect and adhere to the obligations to consult Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people.
Policy implications
- All levels of government must implement the recommendations in the Independent Special Interlocutor’s Final Report (2024), Calls for Justice from the MMIWG2S+ Inquiry (2019), Aboriginal Justice Inquiry (1999), and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) to respect and protect Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people. These reports’ recommendations cannot remain unfulfilled.
- Indigenous women’s governance and leadership must be supported and recognized outside of state structures. Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people persistently work in a myriad of areas to shape, intervene in, and make policy recommendations to Indigenous and state government and organizations.
- We recommend exploring provincial and federal labour policy as a means to ensure that consultation includes Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people. Consultation must reject tokenism. Governments and third-party stakeholders must demonstrate meaningful equitable relationships.
- Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people are dispossessed from Canadian human rights legislation and their respect, dignity and protections exist outside of the law. Human rights mechanisms must be identified and their protections implemented within state governments to ensure the respect, dignity, protection, safety and security of Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people.
- Data does not account for structures of oppression, nor privilege the lived realities of Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people. A social justice lens must be used to address human rights and inequities. Governments, as well as academic institutions, must be required to demonstrate meaningful consultation and inclusive data structures.
Contact the researchers
Adele Perry, Director, Centre for Human Rights Research, University of Manitoba: adele.perry@umanitoba.ca
Sandra Delaronde, Centre for Human Rights Research, University of Manitoba: chrr@umanitoba.ca
Hope Ace, Indigenous Studies, University of Manitoba: chrr@umanitoba.ca
Further information
Read full report (Coming soon)