Missing Women : Decolonization, Third Wave Feminisms and Indigenous People of Canada and Mexico

Conference Background

From the northern border city of Juárez, Chihuahua to the west and east coasts of Canada, Indigenous girls and women are at far higher risk to be kidnapped, sexually abused or raped, and murdered.

According to the Native Women’s Association of Canada’s Sisters in Spirit initiative, there are more than 500 missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. In Mexico, thousands of women have disappeared and hundreds of women have been killed in Juárez since the early 1990s. This violence is now spreading throughout the country, leaving a trail of grief and trauma in its wake.

The conference “Missing Women: Decolonization, Third Wave Feminisms, and Indigenous People of Canada and Mexico” examines the consistent and alarming rise of missing Indigenous women throughout both countries.

Deemed feminicide, a phenomenon that has been described as “gender extermination”, the taking of Indigenous women reveals a violence spurred by sexualized racism thereby tracing the legacy of colonization.

While the conference provides a forum to examine this violence, it also maps a path to justice.

The Conference Website here

Purpose/Mandate

The goals of the conference are the following:

 to raise public awareness about violence against indigenous women on a global context, but specifically in Canada and Mexico;
 to participate in the ongoing development of a critical analysis of systemic sexualized racism;
 to create a forum for multi-disciplinary organizations to meet and discuss both the theoretical and the grassroots activist work that needs to happen to stem this tide of violence;
 to facilitate support and activist networks for family members of missing women.

Anticipated outcomes include:

 a public presentation of a nation-wide petition for a full investigation into and resolution of this injustice;
 documentation of the event in the form of a DVD and a written account for secondary and post-secondary educators;
 establish resolutions for change, which include the formation of an international network;
 preparations to host a second conference in another two years to discuss the progress made towards a healthy and safe Aboriginal community.

The conference is bringing together activists, including family members of disappeared women, academics, Elders, writers and journalists, artists and filmmakers from across Canada, the United States and Mexico who are addressing the violence of feminicide.

Speakers will discuss issues that are common to Indigenous women living in colonized countries, specifically patterns of violence, sexualized racism, the impact of residential schools, poverty, and the lack of access to education.

The Conference Website here

Who should attend?

 Family members with missing loved ones
 Academics
 Members of the community
 Activists
 Elders
 Members of faith communities
 Students
 Artists
 Members of the policing community
 Government workers
 Policy makers

Presented by Luther College in conjunction with the Women’s Studies Department and the University of Regina.

The Conference Website here

Speakers and Contributors

Cynthia Bejarano

Cynthia L. Bejarano, a native of Southern New Mexico and the El-Paso/Juárez border, is an assistant professor of Criminal Justice at New Mexico State University. Her publications and research interests focus on border violence; race, class, and gender issues; and Latino youths’ border identities in the Southwest.

Bejarano was recently awarded a 1.3 million dollar grant to assist migrant and seasonal farmworker children to attend New Mexico State University. She has been an advocate and activist working with the families of disappeared and murdered women in Ciudad Juarez for five years, and works closely with people at Casa Amiga, the rape crisis center in Ciudad Juarez. She is also the co-founder of Amigos de las Mujeres de Juarez, an NGO dedicated to assisting the women of Juarez in their fight for justice.

Gwenda Yuzicappi

Standing Buffalo First Nation member and mother of Amber Redman, murdered in rural Saskatchewan, Canada at age 19 on July 15, 2005. Her case was featured in "Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and Violence against Indigenous Women in Canada," a report released by Amnesty International that addresses the disproportionate number of First Nations women who have been abducted, and how these crimes have not been deemed a priority by numerous police forces.

Eva Arce

Human rights activist and mother of Silvia Arce who disappeared in Juarez on March 11, 1998. Eva Arce’s daughter vanished in March 1998 along with a friend, Griselda Mares. The Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States has accepted her case.

Paula Flores

An activist in the community of Lomas de Poleo in Ciudad Juarez, she is the mother of María Sagrario González Flores, who disappeared on March 11, 1998 in Juarez and was murdered in April, 1998. Her daughter is one of over 400 women who have been disappeared and slain in Juarez over the past 13 years. Paula Flores runs the María Sagrario Foundation, an organization that established the kindergarten Jardín de Niños Ma. Sagrario González Flores in Juarez.

Lourdes Portillo

Lourdes Portillo was born in Chihuahua, Mexico and moved to the United States in 1960. Her films focus on the representation of Latina/o identity, human rights, social justice and Latin American realities. An equally important aspect of her filmmaking is experimenting with the documentary form. Her most recent film, Señorita Extraviada (Missing young woman), released in 2002, is a documentary about the disappearance and death of young women in Juarez and the search for truth and justice by their families and human rights groups. It received a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the Best Documentary Prize at the Havana International Film Festival, and the Néstor Almendros Prize at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. It premiered on P.O.V. and received more than 20 prizes and awards around the world. The film inspired a number of governmental and non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International to conduct intensive investigations into the disappearances and murders of women in Juárez. Lourdes Portillo made her first film, a dramatic short called After the Earthquake, in 1979. Some of the other documentary, dramatic, experimental and performance films and videos she has made are the Academy Award-nominated Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (1986); La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead (1988); Vida (1989); Columbus on Trial (1992); Mirrors of the Heart for the PBS series “Americas” (1993); The Devil Never Sleeps (1994); Sometimes My Feet Go Numb; 13 Days, a multi-media piece for a nationally toured play by the San Francisco Mime Troupe (1997); and Corpus (1999), a documentary about the late Tejana singer Selena.

Isabel Arvide

In two decades as a journalist, Isabel Arvide has written extensively about drug trafficking and Latin American cartels, corruption, and violence in Mexico. In 1996, Arvide wrote the book Muerte en Juárez (Death in Juarez), which chronicles Arvide’s investigation into the disappearance and murder of her friend, Heidi Slauquet. Since publishing the book, Arvide has accused Mexican authorities of complicity and corruption, linking the killings of women in Juárez with powerful drug cartels and complicit government officials.

Arvide’s journalistic work on the murder of girls and women in Juárez has made her a target for death threats and assignation attempts. She has also been arrested and detained twice for defamation against a state prosecutor in Chihuahua.

Arvide is known for her political commentaries, novels, erotic poetry, biographical writing and interviews. In 1984, she was the first woman to receive the National Journalism Prize for her work, her daily column is published in 15 newspapers across the country.

Kim Erno

Kim Erno is an ordained ELCA pastor with more than 20 years of parish ministry experience. He has worked with various solidarity organizations related to El Salvador and Mexico. Before this assignment, he was a mission developer serving a Latino community in Washington, D.C. He is the program director for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Transformational House in Mexico City.

Laura Madison

Laura Madison from Toronto is a research Criminologist, consultant and media Analyst. In one element of her ongoing research she has investigated disparities in media coverage with regards to missing or murdered native woman.She also looks at issues in Policing sciences and the government response to missing persons. She volunteers with Policing agencies in Ontario to assist in matching found human remains with missing persons.She is also the founder and curator of the Lost Treasures Community Arts Project which she uses to educate police in training and the general public about missing woman across the country.

Ian Peach

Currently seconded to the Office of the Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians as a Special Advisor, Ian Peach has been with the Government of Saskatchewan for thirteen years. Prior to coming to Ottawa, he was the Director of the Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy, where he had previously been the 2003-04 Government of Saskatchewan Senior Policy Fellow and, later, the Research Director. Prior to his secondment to the Institute, he was Director of Constitutional Relations in the Department of Intergovernmental and Aboriginal Affairs and, for five and one-half years, a Senior Policy Advisor in the Cabinet Planning Unit of Executive Council.

In his nearly 20 years of public service, Mr. Peach has been involved numerous intergovernmental negotiations, including the Charlottetown Accord, the Calgary Declaration, the Social Union Framework Agreement, First Nation self-government agreements, and the Canada-Saskatchewan Northern Development Accord. He has also been involved in developing Saskatchewan’s policies on a broad range of issues, including Saskatchewan’s argument before the Supreme Court of Canada in the Quebec Secession Reference and key cross-government strategies to address the socio-economic disparity of Aboriginal people in Saskatchewan and northern economic development. Born in Halifax, N.S., Mr. Peach holds a Bachelor of Arts from Dalhousie University and a Bachelor of Laws from Queen’s University and will be returning to Queen’s in the fall to pursue a Master of Laws.

Adrian Stimson

Adrian was born and raised in Sault St. Marie, Ontario and lived on a number of First Nations across Canada including his home reserve Siksika Nation (Blackfoot). His formative years were spent in Saskatchewan on both the Gordon’s First Nation and Lebret. After completing his BFA at Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, Adrian moved to Saskatoon to complete a MFA at the University of Saskatchewan. Though he initially trained as a painter, he now considers his practice interdisciplinary.

As artist-in-residence at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, Adrian has been researching and experimenting with his personal blend of environmental art and activism, Indigenous knowledge, and sustainable communities. Stimson is currently working on the legacy sculpture in honour of missing women for the conference. His work will be featured in the Healing Gardens near the First Nations University of Canada.

Amber Dean

Amber Dean is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. In her dissertation she is tracing what lives on from the women disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside by examining representations of the women in media, memorials, and art. She is also theorizing the links between colonization of Western Canada and the disappearances and murders of Indigenous women from Western Canadian cities. With Vancouver writer Anne Stone, Dean recently co-edited a special issue of the journal West Coast Line on representations of murdered and missing women.

The Conference Website here