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The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

March 22, 2010

By debraf

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The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is observed annually on March 21. On that day, in 1960, police opened fire and killed 69 people at a peaceful demonstration in Sharpeville, South Africa, against the apartheid “pass laws”. Proclaiming the Day in 1966, the General Assembly called on the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.
Over the last few decades, Canada has become a truly multi-cultural country, celebrating traditions and customs from the world over through immigration from virtually every nation on the planet.
But there’s one population that still feels the sting of discrimination that has been present since colonizers first came to this land.
The Indigenous peoples are “trying desperately to deal with a legacy of dependency” promoted by early government policies, says José Zárate, PWRDF’s program coordinator for Indigenous Peoples Development. While white people and newcomers alike advance in society, many First Nations try to cope with substance abuse, one of the highest suicide rates in the world, high drop-out rates from school and violence.
Even the United Nations has observed that Indigenous peoples in Canada live in third world conditions with high unemployment, mass poverty, and sub-standard housing and infrastructure.
For aboriginal women, there’s a double discrimination. Indigenous women continue to be the victims of discrimination, violence and abuse both on and off reserves, Zárate points out. About 500 Indigenous women have been murdered or reported missing over the past 15 years.
The status of an Indigenous woman is still passed on through male lines due to the archaic Indian Act, notes Ellen Gabriel, president of Quebec Native Women. In responding to the March 3 Speech from the Throne, Gabriel added that Canada is only now considering endorsing the 2007 United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and that in the follow-up to the Prime Minister’s residential school apology in 2008 there “seems to be a lack of sincere reconciliation.”
Many Indigenous communities have suffered “quite drastically” in the last 30 years as a result of the lack of culturally relevant social development, education, political advancement and economic well-being, Zárate says. Gabriel agrees, pointing to the throne speech statements on uranium mining in which Prime Minister Harper wants to encourage economic growth without consulting the First Nations where the mines are located.
PWRDF works with Indigenous partners in Canada not to “help” them or just to give them funds, but to “join forces with them, and follow their lead,” says Zárate. It is by combining and mobilizing resources — human, material, socio-cultural and financial — that partners can produce the “broadest, deepest and most sustainable impact possible.” 
Some of the ways in which PWRDF and partners address issues are through:

  • Strengthening language, culture and traditional knowledge. 
  • Promoting healing and health for women and youth. 
  • Creating youth councils to provide appropriate counselling and suicide prevention, as well as youth empowerment, education and training programs. 
  • Providing services and programs that include HIV and AIDS education, outreach and prevention, support and counselling for all Indigenous people who are living with and/or affected by HIV and AIDS.

As churches, “we must work collaboratively with Indigenous peoples to right the injustices that exist,” Zárate says. “This involves acknowledging that our wealth and standard of living as a society is built on lands and resources that have been stolen from Indigenous peoples and that our society continues to benefit from these territories while Indigenous peoples suffer.
“It is not an ‘us’ and ‘them’ scenario,” Zárate concludes. “We are complicit in the injustice. As a result, we have a choice – we can do nothing or we can work with Indigenous peoples to find effective and genuine solutions.”

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