Interviews with Indigenous Women Leaders

August 9 is recognized by the United Nations as the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. In 2021, the United Nations is calling for states to create new social contracts in collaboration with their Indigenous peoples to address the systemic discrimination that is experienced by many Indigenous nations and communities across the world.

In Canada, G(irls)20 recognizes the historical and ongoing violence experienced by Canada’s numerous and diverse Indigenous communities. G(irls)20 is dedicated to ensuring the full participation of young Indigenous women and gender diverse Indigenous individuals in decision making spaces. For this year’s International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, we wanted to share our platform with Indigenous women within our community to broadcast their messages, experiences, and insights.

We are grateful to Rachel Agnew and Samantha Craig-Curnow for their time.

Earrings designed and beaded by Rachel. Find more of her creations on Instagram @HeartBerryBeads.

Interview with Rachel Agnew

Please introduce yourself! Feel free to share anything that you would like G(irls)20 and our community to learn about you (everything from your passions to your favourite food).

Hi, my name is Rachel Agnew. I’m a mixed Ojibwe woman and I come from Garden River First Nation. I am a law student, a small business owner, beadwork enthusiast, and I’m very interested in beadwork revitalization. I also own and run my business called HeartBerry Beads. My favourite food is bubble tea!

How do you see Indigenous sovereignty, resurgence, and reclamation aligning with the collective revolution for gender equity? What does Indigenous sovereignty, resurgence, and reclamation mean for cis-women, Two-Spirit, gender variant, gender non-binary, and transgender individuals?

I think one of the best things about Indigenous sovereignty and resurgence is how it can play into so many other different movements. We don’t allow ourselves to be traditionally and contemporarily to be constricted by certain binaries that exist in other parts of societies. Especially in our communities, we’ve always been champions of breaking the gender binary.

It depends on every nation, and I think that’s one of the most interesting things to me; as Indigenous peoples we are often looked at from a pan-Indigenous lens where we are seen as all having the same experiences, same upbringings, and same world views. The reality is that so many of our communities have incredibly unique and individual worldviews.

So many of our communities have always been governed by matriarchal systems, where women have always led and dictated decision making. Other than that, we also have so many communities where gender binaries in themselves were never prevalent, we were able to walk through the world unconstrIcted by things like gender, that are so prevalent in our larger global society.

I think that Indigenous sovereignty and resurgence, especially reclamation, hinges on focusing on these values and how they can help us transform our systems of oppression.

Do you have any additional comments that you would like to add (e.g., messages for others, a call to action, a message about your work)?

A little shameless plug: while it’s great to support large corporations that are donating to Indigenous groups and Indigenous fundraisers, one of the best things that you can do is actually support Indigenous entrepreneurs. Specifically, northern Indigenous women that are entrepreneurs, Indigenous peoples in remote communities who cannot access a lot the commercial things that urban Indigenous peoples have such as Wi-Fi and networking opportunities for my business. There’s a lot of incredible creatives in northern communities that don’t have the same access to resources; one of the best things you can do is seek out those individuals and support them directly because they’re so under appreciated.

For me and a lot of other young Indigenous women, we have been taught and conditioned that you can’t highlight your cultural identity in order to succeed as a business owner, as an academic, as really anything at all. We’ve been taught that you have to compartmentalize and hide your cultural identity in order to succeed.

But for me, I found what made me thrive has been incorporating every aspect of myself into my work and allowing that to shine through. I think other people appreciate it and it brings a more genuine appeal to what I’m doing, I’m able to show why beadwork is significant to me and to my community. Beadwork has significance! It’s not just something that I do for aesthetic purposes only, which I think is something that is easy to worry about, especially as creatives, makers, and small business owners.

At the end of the day, I know that my customers appreciate the sentiment, the teachings, and the intentions behind my words just as much as they appreciate the aesthetics of it, which I think is so important. There are so many young Indigenous women – Indigenous youth in general, are learning that there’s so much value in our work. Not monetary value, but the value of enlightening society and how much people want to learn through our work.

interview with Samantha Craig-Curnow

Please introduce yourself! Feel free to share anything that you would like G(irls)20 and our community to learn about you (everything from your passions to your favourite food).

Hi, my name is Samantha Craig-Curnow, my spirit name is Nbi-Kwe. I am Anishinaabekwe from the Chippewas of Rama First Nation. Right now, I serve as the Associate General Counsel for Rama First Nation. I went to Osgoode Hall Law School, and I decided that it would be a good idea – right in the middle of law school – to have a daughter.

I have one young girl and she is three and a half, her name is Isla. So my experience with law and law school has always been a little hectic. I think that is something that is not talked about often, but it happens more than we expect. The reality of professional studies and professional development for mothers is a really unique niche that does not get the attention it deserves.

On August 9th, the United Nations observes the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. The 2021 theme states: “Leaving no one behind: Indigenous peoples and the call for a new social contract.” Though Canada states that they seek to address this, there are ongoing delays with actually implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Could you please share your insight on the impact (or lack thereof) of the UNDRIP?

Generally speaking, I think that the impact of the UNDRIP has the potential to be profound. The United Nations Declaration is a landmark piece of international law that has contributed to the way that law is interpreted across the world. When it comes to Canada however, we know that there was resistance to UNDRIP from the beginning. Then, once it was finally ratified by Canada, nothing was done with it for quite some time. There were caveats on the acceptance of it.

Now, as on June 21, ironically, National Indigenous Peoples Day here in Canada, we had the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act receive royal assent. The impact of that legislation has been very controversial and the reason for that is that by subsuming UNDRIP into Canadian law, we are subjecting it to the Canadian Constitution. When this happens, there are inherent limits placed on the power of UNDRIP through its place under the Canadian Constitution.

So, section 35 tells us that Indigenous peoples have rights. When the constitution was interpreted for the first time once it was in place, there was a limitation placed on the extent of those rights. We now have a test from the R. v. Sparrow case, where Indigenous peoples’ rights are subject to a justifiable limit. The problem with this lies in the fact that the constitution was written in such a way that the internal limits of the constitution were not set to apply to Indigenous rights.

This interpretation by the court and the subjugation of UNDRIP to Canadian law places limitations on Indigenous and Aboriginal rights in a way that many people would say was also not contemplated by UNDRIP itself. Subjecting UNDRIP to the Constitution brings this wide scope of the document into the realm where it is subjected to legal limits.

This is incredibly problematic in a lot of ways. For example, article nine where there's a right to belong to a nation without discrimination. We know that the Indian Act places significant limitations on who can formally belong to an Indigenous nation through limitations on Indian status. Article 12 provides that an Indigenous person has the right to manifest, practice, develop, and teach spiritual and religious traditions and the right to access in privacy, those religious and cultural sites. Yet, in Canada in 2017, we had the Ktunaxa Nation v. British Columbia case heard at the Supreme Court, where the Ktunaxa Nation’s right to access the Great Bear Spirits in the mountains was limited because it was determined that their access to that space was not necessary for them to practice their spiritual and religious beliefs.

This is so problematic in that it fails to understand the essential components of spirituality for many Indigenous people. Also, when we see this broad language that gives full and complete access to those spaces subsumed under the Canadian constitution, then we have a problem where this great document that was intended to provide so much access and space is no longer effective.

All of this is to say that UNDRIP itself continues to be an incredible document that in my work, I reference on a very regular basis. However, the UNDRIP Act in Canada does not serve to implement the true spirit of it as a piece of international law.

This one is really near and dear to my heart so I'm really excited to talk about this! The impact of the resurgence of Indigenous systems of governance, justice systems, and just the shift away from colonial structures, has the potential to be a complete game changer in terms of the way that women of all kinds are impacted by the law and by society.

In some cases, we're going to see these governance structures be re-established within Canadian law. When this happens, if we're talking about, for example, Haudenosaunee communities, you're going to see a matriarchal society in which the women are the decision makers. They are put in positions of power in a unique structure in which women are not subordinate to men, the way the patriarchy has established in Canadian society.

When it comes to Anishinaabe ways of governing, we weren't necessarily a matriarchal society but there was an equality that was not reliant on gender. Yes, we had roles that were impacted by how you identified, but that wasn’t necessarily male or female. We recognized multiple genders within the Anishinaabe nation. This system existed in a way where there was consensus-based decision making, which values contributions from all people and allows them to be recognized in a meaningful and equitable way.

The other thing that is really important is the impact of the Indian Act and moving out from under it. Once these communities have moved to a point where they’re not subjected to as much of the Indian Act or any for that matter, whether through self-governance agreements or an assertion of sovereignty or jurisdiction, the Indian Act and the continual inequalities that are reinforced by it lose a lot of their power.

For example, I have been living on and off the reserve my entire life. My grandmother grew up here and my family is all here – in fact I’m sitting in the band office right now next to my cousin who is working in the next cubicle. Yet I didn’t receive my status until 2012, after the McIvor decision in 2009. Despite the fact that I have always been here in this community, I was not legally recognized as part of this community for a very large portion of my life.

This disempowerment that comes from not being able to belong in community according to law has a pretty severe impact on the way that women interact with their community. I know my grandmother, when she married my grandfather, she was forced to leave here. She couldn’t live here anymore because she lost her status.

The result of that was that my father and my aunts were not entrenched in the community, the way they could have been. This has resulted in generational impacts. Because this act was focused on women, it meant that it further contributed to that disempowerment. Moving away from that system, from the control of the Indian Act will serve to empower women to engage in community to help rebuild social structures and governance structures. All of these are things we so badly needed in our communities, to learn ways to engage and bring community together.

We know that it’s the case that so many women are subject to patriarchal views in society. That is one of the impacts of the Indian Act as well, it transplanted the band council system onto communities and took power away from women in its own way. This is similar to what we’re seeing for all women across the whole world—domination through patriarchal understandings of rights and power. For Indigenous women, it is the intersectionality of racism, violence, social policy, poverty, and trauma that have had serious impacts. All of this put together has resulted in the MMIWG (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls) movement.

Empowering community and empowering governance structures and sovereignty are the building blocks to alleviating those experiences by Indigenous women. I’m so lucky because that’s some of the work that I get to do in my role. As an in-house lawyer I don’t necessarily get to go to court and have big, dramatic legal battles but what I get to do is work with community to reinvigorate those community structures that we are seeing here in our community, break some of these barriers that are preventing the true development of our community in amazing ways. I’m getting to see that firsthand and it’s just been an amazing experience.

Do you have any additional comments that you would like to add (e.g., messages for others, a call to action, a message about your work)?

I think one of the biggest stories or messages that I have shared and continue to share, especially to young Indigenous women is that your path doesn’t have to be straight and you don’t have to put one foot in front of the other, going in the same direction constantly. When I went to Queen’s University straight out of high school, I believed that I wanted to be a doctor, and that Queen’s University was the best in the world, and that everything was going to be smooth sailing.

A year and a half later, I was living back home dealing with mental health issues and feeling so incredibly lost and dejected. It was like I was never going to succeed at anything. But that failure was an incredible experience for me to learn. It was tough in the moment but I took this weird path where I went to college before I went back to university. I used an articulation agreement from that college and was also able to rely on the supports that I had acquired in college to continue on and finish my undergrad.

From there, I was able to apply to law school and I was able to keep those supports in place because I did the last half of my undergrad at York University, then Osgoode at York as well. All these things had a domino effect and put themselves in place. I am of the opinion that Creator was waiting for me to be in the right place to be able to do all of these things.

I would not be in the position I am now if I hadn’t decided that I wanted to bring a little person to this world. All the things lined up to get me in this place and in this job. I’m not saying that you can leave everything up to fate and not pursue and persevere, but sometimes those life experiences are so much more than just failures. For those Indigenous women out there, who were thinking maybe they’re too old to go to law school or they can’t afford it, there are ways to overcome that and if you do, you will join an incredible group of amazing people.

ForaAugust 9, 2021