Climate Justice is Gender Justice
The largest-ever attended UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP28) kicked off in Dubai this week with today’s themes highlighting Gender Equality, which seeks to address the intersections of gender rights and climate justice within strategies to build climate solutions for a Just Transition. This programming encouraged us to reflect on the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relations (MMIR) and speak to the need to disrupt ongoing systemic violence inextricably tied to extractive and world-destroying industries within our communities and beyond.
Missing and Murdered
This epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) has been known under a few names since it has come into our collective awareness - Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two Spirits (MMIWG2S+), and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples (MMIP). Regardless of the terminology, this movement seeks to address and act upon the gendered and sexualized violence that Indigenous bodies face in the ongoing colonization of our lands.
There is no need to justify any of their lives other than they are human, they are Indigenous and they are femme. Take a few moments today to think about who we lost and who are still missing - sisters, knowledge holders, language carriers, water warriors, Elders, aunties, and land defenders - and recognize all of our Indigenous relations are part of the statistics you see on Red Dress Day. This is why ICA has a delegation of Indigenous change makers in Dubai. We do not want to see another relative lost under the status quo that brought us to this heartbreaking time. Awareness and acknowledgments are nothing without action or accountability. An opportunity that must be acted upon now within the climate justice movement.
The Cost of Extraction on Our Lives
Colonial Nation-State projects like Canada and the United States have relied and continue to rely on the violent displacement of Indigenous bodies to extort and extract from the land in the pursuit of endless economic growth and the establishment of a settler colonial culture. Colonial policy has fated Indigenous territories and bodies to exist in the sacrifice zones of industry and imperial expansion. As we have existed in good relations with the land since time immemorial, Indigenous rights, culture, and worldviews, our existence as Indigenous Peoples poses a direct threat to the goals of feeding the insatiable appetite of the capitalist economy that is at the heart of colonial culture.
Since so-called Canada’s colonial inception just over 155 years ago, there have been over 1200 Indigenous Femmes, Two Spirits, and relatives that have been murdered or are currently missing. Note: This figure does not reflect all loss of life due to colonial violence as it does not incorporate the thousands of Indigenous bodies currently being excavated from mass graves across residential school sites in this country.
Disappearing and dismissed by this country’s political leaders, killed by the very institutions designed to ‘protect and serve’ us, non-consensually sterilized by medical professionals, and mentally, spiritually, physically, and sexually abused by the church, our Indigenous Relatives are first missing from their homelands and ceremony long before their physical bodies ever go missing in the colonial world. The spirit is lost before the body is murdered. We must transform and release ourselves of this colonial past to shift the decision-making structures and embrace a cultural presence that will allow us to create space for the beauty of Indigenous futurisms in all of our splendor, abundance, and inevitability.
Man Camps
Outside of metropolitan centers, the bulk of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) in so-called Canada has occurred in the Northern half of provinces and territories. Coincidentally, this is also where we see the largest natural resource extractions in ‘canadian’ history. Last year, a report by the Standing Committee on the Status of Women revealed a significant link between resource extraction and violence against Indigenous relatives in so-called Canada.
What are “Man Camps”?
(via Pipeline Fighters Hub) Located on Indigenous territories, away from cities, and often in close proximity to Indigenous communities, resource projects bring an influx of mostly non-Indigenous, mostly cisgendered male workers who come to the territory to profit from the resource economy, in some cases more than doubling the local population. Sometimes called “work camps,” “industrial camps,” or more commonly, “man camps,” large-scale facilities are set up to house this “shadow population” of transient men.
“Anytime there are men with money who are transient, you’re going to have sexual exploitation of women and girls, and some form of violence against Indigenous women and girls.”
“It just becomes normalized within these man camps, yet there really isn’t any responsibility held to industry to be part of the solution.”
Thousands of capitalists, settlers, and pipeline perverts bound and determined to fill their pockets on the empty promise of endless economic growth. They devour our abundance, while introducing scarcity to us, and view our Femmes and Two Spirits as commodities to be consumed. An expansion of industry anywhere requires the suppression of Indigeneity everywhere.
For us, the message is now abundantly clear: Colonialism causes climate change and the solutions must ensure there are no more stolen relatives on stolen land.
Protect the Sacred
We cannot simply focus on not killing our Indigenous women, girls, and Two Spirits but how do we build a world where they are held sacred and protected? How do we create the conditions for a Just Transition for climate justice? At ICA, we believe the first step is to acknowledge the trauma that colonization has caused. We must stop the harm now so that healing can begin. We must build back the capacities for decolonial ways of living and knowing that’s sitting just outside the collective awareness. These all require strategies that change who our decision-makers are regarding the health and well-being of our communities and the territories we call home. Bringing land back under Indigenous community control and stewardship.
As described by ICA’s report on Decolonizing Climate Policy;
“Climate change is largely the result of the tightly interwoven forces of colonialism, patriarchy, and neoliberal forms of development. These conditions are constraining women’s knowledge, expertise, and unique agencies in addressing what is probably the most defining issue of our age. Yet women, including Indigenous women, have significant roles to play in the articulation of feminist and Indigenous worldviews, and aligned climate action strategies.”
So as delegates from across the globe gather in Dubai this week to discuss the financing of gender-responsive climate change and just transitions, we ask ourselves: Who is defining and designing these solutions? Whose worldviews are they rooted in? Are the proposed solutions being implemented in ways that respect Indigenous rights and lifeways?
Our team is front and center at COP28 asking these questions and more, but we call on all our relatives and allies to join in:
Read the recently launched and Indigenous-led Just Transition Guide
Keep an eye out December 9 for the upcoming phase 2 reports from ICA’s Decolonizing Climate Policy Project
On December 10 the Women and Gender Constituency will host Indigenous Women’s Day at COP28 - keep an eye out for more information on actions and events (and wear red if you’re on the ground in Dubai)
Learn more about MMIR and how you can take action:
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People National Action Plan
