Indigenous Studies: Discrimination Against Indigenous Women

I am a white straight female. As a female, I do face some discrimination from males because “I am just a girl,” I have dealt with sexist comments in sports and schooling, I have never let these comments bother me. However, I do not have a government policy that discriminates myself for my gender and race. As a student in Indigenous Studies, I want to be able to understand more about the policies that discriminate against Indigenous women because there should be no government documents that discriminate a culture and genders, I also would like to know more about how the Indian Act is constructed and the political reasoning behind the attempted assimilation of the Indigeous peoples, since it is still relevant in today’s society. Being raised

There are many movements to try to bring awareness of the many missing and murdered Indigenous women. Since the Indian Act does discriminate against women because Indigenous women are inferior due to the western ideologies “as dictated by the Act, they are branded deviants and considered fair game for mistreatment,” furthermore proving that the Indian Act is subjecting the Native women to criticism because they do no tact like the white women. Violence among indigenous women is also on the rise, “the Native Women’s Association of Canada found that between the 1960’s and 2010, 582 Igneous women and girls went missing or were murdered,” which has Indigenous women fearing for their lives because they do not know if their loved ones will ever be found. Indigenous women are stereotyped to living in a high-risk way since they are not living a “normal” lifestyle, the police do not do much; however, if the person was white the police would do more to help locate the white woman. The families of the missing women do not get the attention that they need to help find the missing person because “police may [be] aware of [the] practices of endangering Indigenous women but do nothing about them,” which proves that Indigenous people are often put to the side since they are not as important. Domestic violence is also very present in the aboriginal community.

Aboriginal women do not get proper health care that they need and there are more chronic diseases in aboriginal women than a non-aboriginal female. “Aboriginal women have a lower life expectancy, elevated morbidity rates, and elevated suicide rates compared to non-Aboriginal women,” therefore, creating the notion that Aboriginal women are not getting proper health