Violence Against Indigenous Women

According to Razack (2000), “women working as prostitutes are considered by law to have consented to whatever violence is visited upon them” (126). In doing so, she acknowledges that history and its relationship to violence against Indigenous women perpetuated earlier during colonization when Indigenous women were routinely raped, murdered and in some cases tortured (Jiwani and Young, 2006). Razack’s portrayal of the case is accurate in the sense that she suggest George’s autonomy was taken away through a stigma attached to sex work and her Indigeneity. For other scholars such as Lynne Farley (2005), “the experience of prostitution stems from the historical trauma of colonization” (258). According to Driskill et al (2011), “the Native people

What the George case reveals is the connection between colonization, prostitution, and control over Indigenous female bodies. Razack (2000) acknowledges this history where white men (colonizers) were the historical perpetrators of violence against Indigenous women. During the French and British colonial era, “the combined effects of poverty, race discrimination and cultural losses profoundly affect First Nations and are likely contributing factors to high rates of interpersonal violence, depression, suicide and substance abuse” (Farley, 245). Razack (2000) contextualizes this within a form of domination and control, which subjugated the female bodies of Indigenous victims and served as the backdrop for the encounter between George and her two attackers. She argues that this history is precisely what was missing from the trial, which became a case study for how George’s Indigeneity was put through a stigma around sex work that ignored her humanity as a result. According to Canada’s Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996), Indigenous people are much more likely to experience premature death as a result of the consequences of

Evan Vipond (2015) states that the law “ignores the historical and systemic forms of oppression that are enforced through state and civil acts of violence” (16). It was this issue of history that was missing in Steven Tyler Kummerfield and Alexander Dennis Ternowetsky trial and as such it is important to acknowledge that George became objectified and personified as indignant, deviant and deserving of the rape and murder she endured. In Justice Malone’s instructions to the jury, he informed them that it would be “dangerous” for the jury to return a guilty verdict, presumably on the basis of the precedence that it would set, however, this instead reveals a larger problem of the Canadian legal system seen from the perspective of the ongoing legacy and presence of colonialism and how it continues to both shape and form through case laws. Today, there remains an urgent need to explore how intersections of race, gender, and class in prostitution exist in