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Remembering my best friend

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Lately, I have been thinking of my girlfriend a lot. I think it may be because I will be attending a workshop on suicide and trauma next week. My girlfriend (Michelle) committed suicide last August. So, the one-year memorial of her passing is also coming up. It’s been a hard year for so I can’t even imagine what life is like for her parents and child. With her passing, it has been sort of a wake up call for me and also a learning experience on how I grieve and deal with loss, which has been a huge life lesson for me. When I was younger, I tended to repress my feelings associated grief and loss. These feelings were most often anger and denial. Coincidentally, the stage where individuals experience anger during grief and loss, from what I learned, is where individuals often get stuck, so to speak. I found that this was the case for me. I would get angry with myself, the situation, the person, etc. and then feel guilty about the anger, then feel angry about feeling guilty, and so on. I didn’t think this was normal until someone taught me about the grieving cycle, and realized it is what a lot of people go through with grief and loss. Some people experience it longer than others and some people get over it quicker than others. Whatever pace you take, it’s all normal. I eventually became aware of this pattern and in that awareness made the connection to one of the teachings I received from my mother. Part of that teaching was realizing that depression is unresolved anger.

When I was younger, I had overcome some significant personal challenges that were linked to my suicide attempts. The first time I attempted was when the first time I ended up in the ICU and being monitored 24/7. When I think back to that time, I am thankful that I survived. However, immediately following that attempt and many more, I was angry with myself. I had to work very hard to get over this inner-anger. Counselling, at the time, didn’t seem to help me but today, I have come to terms that counselling is, in fact, very useful. Just accepting that took a long time.

What took even a longer time for me to realize was the pain I was causing my family and friends. Sadly, it took the lost of my best friend this past year to realize how much pain I was causing. The last time I attempted was when I was in my first year of college and I realized that I was experiencing a similar cycle of traumatic events in southern Ontario as to when I lived in Northern Ontario. I knew I had to change and I knew that it had to have been right then and there or continue this cycle over and over again. That evening I decided to change was also the evening I saw another friend in the emergency room for a suicide attempt, and then the news came 3 days later that she had died. It was a shock for me and one of my many wake up calls. That could have been me.

From then on out, I found a good counsellor, even one who could just comfort me if I needed a day to just cry. If there is one thing I was taught about crying and tears (again from my mother), it is even when the tears blur your vision, after all the tears are I cried, you begin to see everything more clearly. Some people are bothered by when others people cry. Some people are uncomfortable when others people cry, and even some people like to bug others when they see them cry. I say, fuck it! Crying is normal and crying is healthy. Most importantly, crying is like an emotional cleanse. Realizing this also took me some time to accept on my own, and what also took some time from when I was younger was realizing that experiencing feelings was normal, and trying to be “normal” is abnormal. Personally, when it comes to suicide, depression, or even mental health, we need to learn to embrace these feelings and learn to grow more comfortable with the uneasiness of some these feelings. Supressing feelings isn’t healthy or good for anyone, child, youth, or adult. Understanding that crying or tears is part of experiencing emotions is especially important for the whole concept of masculinity and femininity but that is a whole other blog post in itself!

And in terms of what was normal or what everyone else thought, this is what I remember most about my girlfriend, she just didn’t give a fuck what everyone else thought of her or if her life didn’t coincide with what was considered “normal.” She was in a league of her own. While we were very close, I only ever saw or heard cry a few times but in those times, I knew it was important for her to do. She was the strong one. Yet, this time she grew tired of being strong. If there is one thing I do know for sure, it’s that I miss her dearly.

Baby gurl.

Hello Beautiful Readers!

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Well, it’s been a long time since I have actually written a post and I have a lot of exciting news to share with you all. As I write this, and as you can all see, I finally did the switch over from BlogSpot to wordpress which has been so far a great decision. I am still kind of new to wordpress (I’ve been scoping it out before I did the switch and trying to become familiarized with some of its features and what not), so hold out for more changes (maybe lol).

As some of my regular readers know, I have a keen interest in and around sex work. Just recently I was introduced to A Kiss For Gabriela (which you can read more about at www.akissforgabriela.com) through my beautiful friend at www.bornwhore.com. Because of this introduction, I will be a part of a short interview that will introduce one of my papers that is accepted to be a part of the amazing writings over at A Kiss For Gabriela. Briefly speaking, the paper that is being featured discusses Human Trafficking in the 21st Century and how Canadian anti-human trafficking legislation is an extension of on-going colonization of Indigenous bodies, and ultimately, Indigenous lands.

In addition to this, I will have my glam-rock-extraordinaire girlfriend guest writing for Kwe Today on more issues relating to sex work, specifically sex work in Northern Ontario. Be on the lookout for that awesomeness!

All in all, I have to say I have been enjoying my summer especially the adventures that I have shared with my partner here in northern Alberta.

But….. sorry for the short post. I just wanted to give a brief update to all my readers!

I thought I would share this amazing piece by my kickass friend!

As taken from the video description: Sâkihitowin Awâsis is a Didikai Métis Two-Spirit of the Carré Clan. They are a spoken word artist, community organizer, and writer who currently resides in the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Wendat-Huron, and Attawandaron Peoples territories of Southwestern Ontario. You can read and hear more of their work at awasis.blog.com.

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Taking chances

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Wow. Here I am today, sitting in another province, and I am very blessed to be a part of another illuminating experience working with young people.

I will be honest. I did have writer’s block on this post. So, to overcome this, I decided to take a quick look at a post that I wrote at the same time last year. Turns out, I was also working on another project that was working with youth (you can read about that post HERE). Oh yeah, I remember this event and all the surprises that came along with it (power outages on the day of the event — thank god for the sun since it was a nice day for picnics all over the campus). It seems to me that the best things in my life are the things that I take chances on.
This current summer experience was a chance I took. True to form, I applied to this job posting for the Alberta Future Leaders program on the day it was due (but only because I didn’t see the job posting until that day lol). Later in the week, I received an email saying that I was chosen for an interview. So, the interview happened and then …
Then on the day I was doing a paper presentation, again literally 5 minutes before my presentation, I received a call back saying that I got the job!
Now, here I am sitting in Jasper, Alberta, writing this blog on how I took another chance on an additional opportunity.
I am very blessed to be able to share this with you all and I hope that you all one day have the opportunity to take a chance on something worthwhile for yourself and for others!

Human Trafficking and Indigenous Women in the 21st Century

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My speaking notes for my paper presentation today for Flaunting It 9. This was an amazing experience and it was great to hear all the other presenters share their knowledge. 

For my presentation, I will discuss how current human trafficking legislation and institutional definitions of domestic human trafficking specifically targets Indigenous women/girls. In addition to this, this paper presentation will discuss how colonial and oppressive legislation has negative implications regarding Indigenous women/girls agency and bodily autonomy, and in a much broader significance, Indigenous sovereignty. The two main papers that help situate human trafficking from the 20th century through to the 21st century are: The Traffic in Women essay by Emma Goldman and Canada and Migrant Sex-Work: Challenging the ‘Foreign’ in Foreign Policy by Leslie Ann Jeffrey. While Goldman’s Traffic in Women and Jeffrey’s Canada & Migrant Sex-Work address the same topic from different viewpoints, their main arguments are comparable which is a need to focus on human rights and workers’ rights. Their contrast is in their approach. Jeffrey adopts a post-colonial approach and Goldman adopts a victimist approach. The victimist approach is defined by Jeffrey as “part of a binary discourse of victim/perpetrator that makes it impossible to talk about migrant sex-workers as rights-bearing individuals who deserve to have those rights respected” (39). Subsequently, in her post-colonial framework, Jeffrey draws attention to sex workers’ right to work safely and autonomously.  Jeffrey argues, “trafficking, understood as exploitation within sex-work, occurs because of ignoring sex-workers’ rights to decriminalized and safe working conditions” (34). Thus, there is a fundamental need for sex workers’ who enter the trade autonomously to have their voices heard as opposed to the constant re-telling of the stories of victims of trafficking. 

Within a Canadian context, on November 25, 2005, Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (Trafficking in Persons), received its Royal Assent. This Bill introduced changes to the Criminal Code of Canada by including section 279 to address a concern over trafficking in women. Since the Bill received its Royal Assent, there has been a reported increase in concern of trafficking in Indigenous women. A report by The Standing Committee on the Status of Women writes, “[Indigenous] girls and women are at greater risk of becoming victims of trafficking within and outside Canada” (9). Then in November of that same year, a report was published by the First Nations Caring Society calling for more analysis, research, and documentation of trafficking in Indigenous women and girls (Sethi 68). In March 2010, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) released a complex report entitled Human Trafficking in Canada. While current research on this growing topic concerns itself with examining the causes of trafficking in Indigenous women and girls, there is little research that investigates the connections between exploration on Indigenous lands and the exploitation of Indigenous bodies, specifically Indigenous women’s bodies. Although Canada’s current anti-prostitution and anti-human trafficking legislation appear to work for the safety and security of individuals, these policies work to further advance the colonial agenda of the Canadian government by exploiting Indigenous lands and Indigenous bodies. 

Canada’s colonial agenda began with the creation of the North West Mounted Police (NWMP). Often ignored is the role the NWMP played in the criminalization of Indigenous peoples through the effects of carrying out Canada’s colonial agenda, which included the forced assimilation and civilization of Indigenous populations. In “Racialized Policing” Elizabeth Comack writes, “the project of colonizing the Indigenous population began in the seventeenth century [and] the colonial project involved a number of strategies” (69). One strategy included the enactment of the Indian Act in 1876. According to Comack, the NWMP role was to protect settlers’ missions to dominate and control Indigenous land by controlling Indigenous bodies through “implementing the government’s policies towards [Indigenous] people” Like the Indian Act. The Indian Act is a legislation that has undergone many changes since its enactment in 1876. Some changes were for the benefit of Canada’s Indigenous populations. However, the most underreported change that directly affected Indigenous women and girls are the prostitution sections that permitted the policing of Indigenous bodies and sexuality. Before the enactment of the Criminal Code of Canada (CCC) where Canada’s current anti-prostitution laws can be found, the anti-prostitution laws were first enacted in the Indian Act “by adding a series of provisions relating to prostitution” (Boyer 78). These sections relating to prostitution within the Indian Act underwent significant changes, which added more force and more provisions than their preceding sections. For instance, initial sections only affected Indigenous women. However, later modified sections affected both Indigenous men and women, and allowed for policing of Indigenous bodies and sexuality in their own homes (Boyer 78). Finally in 1892, the CCC was enacted and all sections relating to prostitution were removed from the Indian Act and then added to the CCC (Boyer 78). There is almost no recognition of this history of prostitution laws in Canada in current research that attempts to address the growing concern over human trafficking in Indigenous women and girls. As a consequence, the continued policing of Indigenous women’s bodies and sexuality as being inherently tied to the colonization of Canada are often ignored. 

At the heart of this colonization is Othering where the Other is seen as the problem. In Decolonizing Methodologies,Linda T. Smith writes, “the ‘indigenous problem’ is a recurrent theme in all imperial and colonial attempts to deal with Indigenous peoples [and] concern about ‘the indigenous problem’ began as an explicitly militaristic or policing concern” (91). The Indigenous problem for Canada was initiated through its creation of policies and the problem was controlled by Canada’s policing agencies. Within Canada, human trafficking is policed under two distinct pieces of legislation. Domestically is it policed under the CCC which is similar to anti-prostitution laws. Domestic human trafficking in Indigenous women and girls is defined as being familial-based or gang related. It is often described as an exploitative relationship between two individuals where one controls, coerces, or forces another to do labour, which is most often sexual labour, through intimidation and violence, and the RCMP definition emphasizes that a human trafficking victim does not have to be moved to be trafficked. Some argue an emerging key trend relating to trafficking in Indigenous women and girls is the increased trafficking “due to flourishing oil rights and mining businesses in Alberta” (60). As mentioned earlier, research on this topic concerns itself with examining the causes of trafficking. As such there is little research that investigates the extent of resource extraction as way to exploit Indigenous lands and the creation of the problem of human trafficking as a way to police Indigenous women’s bodies and sexuality. 

Linda T. Smith examines limitations of research through the discourse of the Indigenous problem. Smith states: 

“A continuing legacy of what has come to be taken for granted as a natural link between the term ‘indigenous’ (or its substitutes) and ‘problem’ is that many researchers, even those with the best of intentions, frame their research in ways that assume that the locus of a particular research problems lies with the indigenous individual or community rather than with other social or structural issues.” 

This growing concern over trafficking of Indigenous women and girls is initiated and maintained through Canadian policies, like Bill C-49, and through the continued policing of Indigenous bodies. When trafficking is seen as a problem within families and communities, they ignore, as stated earlier, the continued policing of Indigenous women’s bodies and sexuality as being inherently tied to Canada’s colonial agenda. Consequently, institutions and researchers do not directly address the effects of Canada’s colonial agenda on Indigenous women and girls. With respect to domestic human trafficking, the RCMP adopts a victimist approach by defining a domestic human trafficking victim as someone who does not know they are victim. The RCMP removes agency from trafficking victims by defining who is a victim and who is deserving of being “saved.” This conceptualization of the victim in domestic human trafficking discourses indicates a disregard for the continued exploitation of Indigenous women’s bodies by designating who is a worthy victim which is demonstrative of the colonial agenda. This colonial agenda indicates a further exploitation of Indigenous lands and controlling of Indigenous women’s bodies. Susan Hawthorne, in “Land, Bodies, and Knowledge” makes this connection between women’s bodies and the land. Hawthorne writes, “both the land and women’s bodies have suffered colonialist intrusions, and both colonialist and imperial agendas have capitalized on exploiting women’s bodies and the land” (314). One might argue that there are legitimate human trafficking victims that are deserving of support and the services to help rehabilitate them. Yet, if human trafficking victims and their relationship to the human trafficking perpetrators are defined as exploitative, including having a fear for their life or experiences of violence, it can be counter-argued that the creation of these laws is excessive since there are other sections of the CCC that deal with violence, sexual exploitation, kidnapping, and other items that may classify a human trafficking victim’s experience. One might argue by not addressing domestic human trafficking that it will not bring justice to the families/friends of the 600+ missing and murdered Indigenous women. Yet, the RCMP emphasizes that a domestic human trafficking victim does not have to include the movement of the victim. In Trafficking of Aboriginal Women and Girls in Canada, Anette Sikka, also argues that conflating human trafficking with the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women “does an injustice to both issues.” This discussion of human trafficking and Indigenous women and girls begs the question: why are settlers so concerned with trafficking in Indigenous women and girls? 

In I am Woman, Lee Maracle highlights the aims of the colonial agenda from an Indigenous woman’s perspective. Lee Maracle writes, “the aims of the colonizer are to break up communities and families, and to destroy the sense of nationhood and the spirit of co-operation among the colonized” (91). Maracle reminds us of Canada’s colonial agenda in relation to the increasing concern over trafficking in Indigenous women and girls. The colonial agenda persists through the conceptualization of domestic trafficking victims, as being non-agents, and domestic trafficking perpetrators, as being closely related to Indigenous women and girls. The anti-prostitution and anti-human trafficking legislation continues to police Indigenous women’s bodies and sexuality, and allows for the increasing exploitation of Indigenous lands by ignoring the injustices that Indigenous people experience due to Canada’s colonial agenda. As a nation, Canada and Canadians need to be reminded of this colonial agenda and the ways in which this persists through the NWMP’s living legacy, the RCMP, and the exploitation of Indigenous lands and Indigenous bodies through our current anti-prostitution and anti-human trafficking legislation that continue to police Indigenous women bodies and sexuality.

Mmmmm coffee makes me feel good but so does…

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Hello beautiful and amazing readers!

I am writing this blog post today to say that I am really happy with this new initiative I started on my blog and that is the “buy me a coffee” button! Since starting this, I have received some funds (a huge thank you/chi-miigwetch to one reader). I must say that since I’ve received the funds I have been wondering what to do with some of them (not that I receive a lot but still wondering nonetheless). As a community member, I believe that it is also good to give back to communities that I am located in whether it be locally, regionally, or nationally.

Because what’s better than buying someone a coffee? Supporting fundraising efforts!

So I just wanted to say that in addition to this “buy me a coffee” fund, it will also be a fund where I donate a portion of the monies I receive to organizations or causes that have sought out funds either to groups or individuals in an online setting. I am limiting it to those individuals and organization who raise funds online (and preferably) via paypal since I have already that jazzy stuff set up. If you submit some funds to my “buy me a coffee” efforts, and you would like me to donate to a particular organization/individual that has paypal set up, just let me know via email nls@kwetoday.com.

Please keep in mind that you do not have to have to have a paypal account to donate.

Thank you/chi-miigwetch for continuing to read and support this blog!

Kwe Today, 
Naomi Sayers

Mack’s Packs

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Hello readers! Today I am publishing a guest blog written and published by Mackenzie Sayers, M.Ed, teacher, motivator, and fellow inspiration-creator! She is employed by a First Nation school board and she loves her job as well as her students who she helps achieve their own goals and grow into their own little magnificent selves. Today, I asked her to write about her scholarship program which provides students with basic supplies to become successful students (supplies that sometimes we forget that are just as important to one’s academic/educational success). You can find out more about why she started this scholarship program and where you can find out more (link provided at the bottom of the post). Enjoy! 

Mack’s Packs started as an idea based on the simple fact that I am an educator and I see many students come to school with little to none of the necessary tools required to help them succeed in a classroom.  These tools can be as simple as pencils, pens, binders, and much more that one can stuff in a backpack.  With this in mind, and the sheer fact that budgets for classrooms have been dwindling I got the idea for Mack’s Packs.  I ran something similar to Mack’s Packs when I was a head dancer at a traditional powwow years ago.  To show my appreciation, I stuffed backpacks full of school supplies and had all the youth dancers come out and dance.  Then I asked community elders to take notice to the dancers and choose one they felt were proud of who they were in the powwow circle.  All the kids that received backpacks were beaming and I couldn’t help but wish that I could have provided more to the many youth that came out to dance.
Last year was my first year for doing Mack’s Packs and although I tried as I might to get the word out, I did not get a lot of entrants and in total had nine applicants.  Out of those nine I chose to give out five backpacks as they were all from the same category.    This year I am hoping for more and utilizing social media to get the word out to our youth that they can win a backpack full of school supplies for the upcoming school year.  I also received donations for the backpacks and was able to get them full of much needed school supplies as shown in the picture below. 

To participate in the contest, I had students write essays and answer “Why is cultural identity an important element on our educational journey?”  I chose this question because it one I answered throughout my own endeavors as a student.  It all began when I started to learn about my culture at the age of 12.  And then in grade seven it really hit me how important it is to know who you are when I had to take a teacher to human rights.  I had witnessed a fight between a Native and non-Native student and heard the teacher who broke up the fight mutter under her breathe “Stupid Indian”.  And I thought, she could be talking about him, me, or any other First Nation student so I told my mom, who, I told to tell the principal.  Well word got back to her that it was me and while in class, she pulled me out of the classroom and proceeded to yell at me for what seemed like a lifetime.  It was humiliating because I’m a crier and no one wants to not only have their classroom but also the senior grade class hear you crying as your being belittled.  All I remember from her rants was her telling me “Are you gonna go cry to her now?” when after running away, I was stopped by a concerned teacher and she had her arms around me leading me away to the counselor.  It didn’t end there because I decided to take her to human rights and although it did not go to court, she was instructed to apologize, was moved to a different school, and the board implemented cultural sensitivity workshops for educators.  I felt the worst for her to do was apologize because she broke down and cried. 

That was the beginning when I realized how important it was to be proud of who you are.  I still believe this and demonstrated it through the completion of my Masters in Education with my thesis being an action research based project that focused on implementing a culturally relevant classroom into a First Nations classroom.  My thesis can be found in the University of Western Ontario libraries.  I believe that First Nation students need to be proud of who they are in order to be successful in life.  I’m not stating they need to be practicing traditional ways (if that is not their beliefs), but to be proud of who they are and their history.  We have a beautiful culture that should be celebrated and a relationship to Mother Earth that should be held near and dear to our hearts.  There are many stereotypes of First Nation people and with each new generation I hope that they are broken.
With all of this in mind, Mack’s Packs focuses on First Nations students and the pride that we must have as a nation.  It provides them with some of the tools that can assist them to enter into a classroom confidently and feel ready for a new year.  This year the competition will be somewhat different with it being open to a smaller age bracket but with more categories to enter.  I hope through social media, colleagues, family and friends that word gets out that Mack’s Packs wants to give deserving students back packs to prepare them for their educational journey. 

Mack’s Packs information can be found at http://sayers6.blogspot.ca/.  All donations are utilized for backpack purchases and the costs associated with having such an opportunity for First Nations students and can be sent thru email money transfer to mackspacks5@gmail.com. 
I believe in providing our children with the necessary tools to enter a classroom and feel prepared.  Our society is one where education can open many doors and this is just one way to support our students in their scholastic endeavors. 
Respectfully,
Mackenzie Sayers

Sorry Ms. Christie Blatchford but you are not writing about Aboriginal culture…

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Over the last little bit, with the rise of the Idle No More movement, I have had plenty of things to think about, to feel, and to even ponder about what I should write about. I was itching to write because what helps me in times like these is writing. Just as stated in this blog written by Eric, The Normalization of Murder: 
“I was enraged. I still am. Since the shooting I have been struggling with my emotions. Normally, I try not to write publicly when rage hits – it so often leads to words I regret. But, days later, I am still raging and need an outlet. Writing is so often that for me. And, as Audra Lorde reminds us, anger often needs to be voiced and has a particular power and transformational energy. As Tuck and Yang remind me, sometimes we need to be more impatient with each other to ensure decolonization happens.”
Very nicely said.
Yet this blog won’t be about murder or the violence that was committed against the children and adults who lost their lives this past week in the states. This blog won’t even be about the Idle No More movement. This blog won’t even be about the intense emotions that I feel when I think about how our PM is ignoring Chief Spence’s hunger strike. 
It will be about my displeasure for the continuation of the stereotypical image either in mainstream media, every day discussions, or even classroom lectures on the culture of Aboriginal people. 
I can tell you as an Indigenous woman that culture has never been discussed properly or given a platform to be properly discussed in the classroom, in the media, or in every day discussions. As a criminology student, my peers are forced to discuss (sometimes awkwardly) the plight of Aboriginal people and not even with adequate education or backgrounders either before they attend class or attend university. As an individual walking down the street, I hear the racist slurs hurled toward me with futility. I have grown accustomed to the racism, the ignorance, and the stereotyping I experience on a daily basis as an Indigenous woman; they are just habits of every day people in my every day life. 
However, I would like to stress the point of my experiences. With these habitual experiences, I am not vilified for simply being a woman but also an Indigenous woman. I am not criticized for being who I am as a person. Rather, I am condemned for the group of people I belong too. It is not an assault on one person but the millions of people who have been here before me and who will come after me: it is an assault on generations of people. 
This assault happened again today after I was finished reading Christie Blatchford’s nightmare of an article after the recent release of Oppal’s Missing Women’s Commission Inquiry. Ms. Blatchford decided to take it upon herself to comment on this report, which I highly doubt she read in its entirety since she complained about the 1,448 page report. In fact, it seems that she only read the first few pages because she casually mentions that these women *might* actually be human. 
Ms. Blatchford writes, “[Oppal’s] worthy intentions are evident in the report’s title (Forsaken) and the sophomoric collage of words (“joyful, brave, loved, compassionate, mother, caring,” etc., etc.) that adorn the cover and are meant to recognize the murdered women as the complete and complicated human beings they were.“
I bolded parts of the above quote because this is her ignorance of the fact that these women went missing and/or eventually murdered because of the fact that policing agencies did not recognize them as “worthy victims.” And what does Ms. Blatchford mean about complicated? Last time I checked, all of our lives could be complicated at any point in time and with varying degrees. Yet, these women lived lives that were ignored and swept under the rug like dirt meant to be ignored by the policing agencies themselves. It is about time that we, as a society, demand the respect and humane treatment for women and girls especially those caught in the patriarchal, imperialistic system we like to call our criminal justice system (In another post, I refer this system as a system of injustice; rather than a system of justice because it is clear indication with this report that our justice system is not a *gasp* justice system).  
When it comes to the policing agencies themselves, the reality is that these women’s lives were dismissed because the police did think “they were transients prone to just disappearing.” It was not assumed, not in the first instance but in the multiple instances after the first instance. That is the way it was. There is no grey area. Even though Mr. Oppal stressed this may have been unintentional, it was not. He even stated that it was the systemic bias in the institutions themselves. I know that Christi Blatchford favours Canadian institutions and would rather have Aboriginal people charged or in jail as opposed to receiving justice themselves, because I wrote about it here. Yet when a report such as this stresses it was systemic bias that translates to deeply embedded practices and policies which ultimate means these practices and policies have to change! Not yesterday but today!
Ms. Blatchford goes on to say that these institutional changes will cost Canadians too much money. She writes, “sweeping institutional change that would, if implemented, cost the moon,” However, she fails to address that sustaining prisons/penitentiaries actually cost more per individual than making such changes as highlighted in the report itself. In fact, these costs continue to rise each year. So why not offer positive change to the systems that continue to target and cause more harm than good to Indigenous peoples themselves? It is after all the policing agencies themselves that are offered a great amount of discretion of who they will investigate as evident in this report and in Ms. Blatchford’s article. Note: I am not saying that these women should have been inside the justice system, although many of them would have been if the policing agencies so casually ignored their families/friends call for help. Rather I am highlighting the fact that the policing agencies used their discretion to ignore the missing and murdered women. 
The really interesting part about her article is that she totally undermines the importance of Aboriginal elders that Oppal’s report recommended to those who read it. This is a clear indication that Ms. Blatchford is in fact not an expert on Aboriginal culture and does not have a clue what she is talking about when she writes about the “the crisis that is the broken state of Aboriginal culture.”
In fact, the report eloquently states the following on page 23 of Volume 3, 
“Ongoing challenges include ensuring there are enough resources in Aboriginal communities to deliver….culture-based programs that recognize the importance of cultural awareness and Elder wisdom.” 
So the truth is that the Aboriginal culture that Ms. Blatchford talks about in her article is not the culture of Aboriginal people. Her article is an assault on a group of people who have been fighting for their cultural rights over the past decades which have been taken away from them due to residential schools in the past and the institutional violence that continues today. Her article is not what Aboriginal culture involves. As an Aboriginal woman who practiced her culture growing up and is striving to re-learn it from those around me, I can tell you, that her picture of what Aboriginal culture entails is not Aboriginal culture. This article and much like her other articles written on Aboriginal people are ill-informed and for the most part, ignorant and racist. 
I cannot stress this enough: this article that I am referring to in this post is demonstrative of this ignorance and racism. 

When referencing the specific profiles of Aboriginal women in Oppal’s report, Blatchford writes, “these profiles paint a ghastly portrait of a culture that is pathologically ill.” No, Ms. Blatchford, these profiles paint a picture of institutional failure and institutional violence committed against a group of women not for being an individual. Rather, the violence committed against these missing women for belonging to a specific group: Aboriginal women. 
Perhaps Ms. Blatchford was correct when she wrote, “Commenting on the tragic state of Aboriginal culture wasn’t Mr. Oppal’s mandate. Neither is it the job of the child-welfare inquiries. And let’s be frank: There is little appetite, either in institutional Canada or among Canadians, for the full conversation.” Mr. Oppal did not comment on Aboriginal culture because the lived realities of suicide, alcoholism, and violence (just to name a few) is not our culture.  And conceivably, that little appetite in institutional Canada or among Canada, is due to the systemic racism and systemic bias in mainstream media, the classroom, and our everyday lives as Indigenous peoples, especially, the racist/ignorant assaults committed by Ms. Blatchford herself against Aboriginal people. 

The big awful picture that Ms. Blatchford refers to in her article is this continued racism that institutional Canada and Canadians so habitually turn a blind eye to, or overtly ignore. 

And Ms. Blatchford herself is a culprit to this horrendous party. 

References: