Almost exactly one year ago, on May 5, 2023, known as Red Dress Day, I attended a deeply impactful speech by Susan Tatoosh, Elder, Matriarch, and Leader of the Hupacasath First Nation, during my tenureship at the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre (VAFCS) on Coast Salish Lands. Her address in the Chief Simon Baker Room—a space haunted by its proximity to areas linked to the atrocities committed by Robert Pickton and just south of the infamous Highway of Tears—exposed the systemic violence against Indigenous women in Canada. Her words resonated powerfully, thick with the weight of loss and remembrance, and served as a profound catalyst in my understanding of the enduring structural injustices that pervade these lands, seamlessly connecting historical and immediate tragedies and highlighting the urgent need for a deeper engagement with these systemic issues.
The emotional and enlightening experience in the Chief Simon Baker Room sets the stage for a broader examination of persistent government neglect, vividly exemplified by the Prairie Green Landfill situation on Treaty One territory. Despite over a year of intense advocacy by Indigenous leaders for the Manitoba government to search the landfill for the remains of two murdered Indigenous women, official responses have been lethargic. Progress seemed possible only with the advent of a new provincial government, which pledged to begin the search. Meanwhile, the federal government allocated significant funds to finance the exploration of the Titan submersible for locating white billionaires (a project experts had already deemed unfeasible), yet no similar support is offered to search the Prairie Green Landfill.
Despite the confessed murderer in Manitoba acknowledging the killings, both provincial and federal authorities have postponed the landfill search until after the trial. Consequently, the victims—Rebecca Contois, Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran, and Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, also known as Buffalo Woman—are reduced to mere case files, their humanity overshadowed by bureaucratic delay.
Indigenous knowledges marginalised
This situation demands a critical examination of how a settler-colonial state adept at the biopolitical management of Indigenous lives—including a horrific history of forced sterilisations spanning seven decades—fails to protect or honour Indigenous women in death. The systems that segregate, surveil and commodify Indigenous lands, reinforcing colonial dominance, ironically fail to locate these women on closely monitored lands. This selective negligence highlights a necropolitical dimension within settler-colonial governance that determines whose lives are valued and whose are overlooked.
Indigenous knowledge(s), rooted in oral traditions, have long chronicled the tragedies of missing and murdered youths from residential schools. These accounts were dismissed as mere folklore by settler society until recent technological validations, like ground-penetrating radar, began to affirm long-standing knowledge from Indigenous communities. The delayed search for the remains of murdered Indigenous women at the Prairie Green Landfill exemplifies this pattern of disregarding Indigenous knowledge(s), depending on a Western legal principle of ‘due process’ to recognize the validity of accusations, even with the murderer’s admissions.
This scenario illustrates how Indigenous knowledge(s) are repeatedly marginalised and considered less credible than Western knowledge(s), which are often mistakenly equated with empirical and factual evidence. This marginalisation is not just an oversight; it has severe and far-reaching implications. Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit individuals continue to disappear and die, while their stories and the wisdom of their communities are sidelined.
Beyond the material exploitation of Indigenous lands and labour, as discussed by Karl Marx and Dene scholar Glen Coulthard in the concept of ‘primitive accumulation,’ settler-colonialism perpetuates itself through the erasure of Indigenous knowledge(s) and epistemologies. This ongoing suppression transforms Indigenous narratives and wisdom into silenced folklore. While the colonial narrative has evolved—from theological justifications to those claiming scientific objectivity guided by social Darwinism—the core logics remain the same: to uphold settler, material interests at the expense of Indigenous cultures.
Addressing historical injustices requires centring Indigenous knowledge(s)
To confront this issue, Canadian legal systems and policymakers must regard Indigenous knowledge(s) as central, not peripheral. Landfills should be searched without waiting for Canadian courts—anchored in settler jurisprudence—to authorise such actions. The testimonials of Indigenous peoples about their missing friends and relatives should be accepted without needing confirmation from Western technologies like ground-penetrating radar.
Colonialism is not merely a static, ahistorical appropriation of land; it is a dynamic, pernicious process that dictates whose knowledge(s) are esteemed and whose is ignored. It shapes whose voices are heard and acted upon, and whose are disregarded. This dynamic influences our perceptions of authority and truth, traditionally elevating settler judges and scientists while marginalising Indigenous perspectives. Recognizing and affirming Indigenous voices as equally authoritative sources of truth is crucial, not only to address historical injustices but also to tackle this urgent, ongoing issue that continues to result in significant harm and loss of life.
Addressing the crisis of violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit folks as well as the broader issues of systemic inequality requires a foundational shift in how we understand and value different forms of knowledge. This begins with an epistemological reevaluation—essentially, rethinking the very nature of knowledge itself. Decolonial projects demand that we not only alter the contents of our discussions but fundamentally transform the language used to conduct these conversations. Such changes necessitate challenging the prevailing binary of truth and falsehood as defined by colonial frameworks.
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