Women and Gender

Many students experienced sexual abuse at the hands of school faculty, local clergy members, lay persons from the local community, and other students. Some victims of sexual assault in Residential Schools have remained silent about their experiences for multiple reasons, including shame, fear of disbelief, and symptoms of psychological trauma that are harmful to retell to the survivors. However, given the number of survivors who have reported sexual assault, and the extensive research already collected on the conditions of Residential schools, it is inarguable that sexual violence was widespread throughout the institutions, having immediate and long-term effect on Indigenous peoples and their communities. This is affirmed by Mel H. Buffalo, an adviser to the Samson band in Alberta, who says that "every Indian person I have spoken to who attended these schools has a story of mental, physical or sexual abuse.". Several incidents of sexual abuse and neglect occurred under Principle McWhinney at the Crowstand IRS. Following incidents of abuse in 1914, D. C. Scott, Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs, instructed that female students be sent home. It was deemed the institution was no longer safe to continue mixed education of boys and girls.

The Churchill River Power Company established a dam on the Churchill River at Island Falls, near Sandy Bay, to supply power to the Hudson's Bay Mining and Smelting mine in Flin Flon, Manitoba. The mine began receiving power from the dam in 1930. The company claims that in 1928 it held public hearings concerning the project, and that there was not a community established at that location until after the dam was constructed and Aboriginal inhabitants moved closer to the project for work. The Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation states that they had established a reserve on that location before the dam project started, but once the company expressed interest in the land the federal government took the reserve lands from the band. The project employed many Cree workers. The working conditions for these employees were usually very poor, and they were often paid in rations rather than money. Between 1930-35, Etienne MacDonald (1984), Moise Bear (1984) and Mathew Nateweyes (1984) confirmed that the Cree workers were being paid in groceries at a rate equivalent to thirty cents an hour. In addition, overtime hours, which were frequent, were not remunerated. In 1935, workers on the dam successfully organized to raise their pay to 35 cents an hour (in cash) and reduce work hours to an eight hour day.

The herbicides used were very powerful. They made the workers tired and sleepy, yet they were unable to sleep because of the itching. The herbicide killed both trees and animals. Women were therefore asked not to pick berries from the powerline area. The water quality was also affected, as garbage and sewage were often dumped in the river. Some residents recall the high number of infant and child related sickness and death during this period.

Sandy Bay was only two miles away from the dam, it did not receive power from it at first. It was only in 1958 that the people of Sandy Bay got a powerline.

In 1920 the Superintendent General was given the power to decide whether a woman who had lost status through marriage was eligible to live on reserve. Until this time, this power had belonged to the band council. It also became the role of the Superintendent General to approve the payment of annuities to an Aboriginal woman who lost status through marriage. Until this time, she would automatically continue to receive annuities or her portion of band funds, even after losing her status. The Superintendent-General was also given the power to provide transportation for children to a school, apply the annuities of a child to the upkeep of a school, and enforce compulsory attendance of children aged 7-15 at schools.

An 1890 amendment to section 16 of the Indian Act legislated that "no Indian could be granted more than 160 acres of land." This created barriers to the agricultural and economic development of reserve farmers, as they were unable to expand their farms to produce commercially. This amendment also added sexual offences to the jurisdiction of the Indian Agent. Jurisdiction over this offecse was removed in 1892, but restored in 1894 along with prostitution and vagrancy. The addition of sexual offences increased the jurisdiction of the Indian Agent gave the agent further control over the lives of Aboriginal peoples, especially women, and is reflective of paternalistic perceptions of Aboriginal women as sexually deviant. Departmental officials, missionaries, and teachers were strictly forbidden from trading with Aboriginal peoples.

Superintendent J.F Graham wrote a circular distributed to Indian Agents advising them not to recognize polygamous marriages by prohibiting husbands from collecting annuities for more than one wife. This circular also states that the practice of adoption between bands and the transfer of band status is "very objectionable" and should be discontinued, except in exceptional cases as decided by the Superintendent General. It further states that any chiefs whose band members are found to be misrepresenting themselves to receive greater annuity payments (ex. by presenting themselves for payment with more than one band) were liable to be removed from their position as chief. Most Indian Agents were under the assumption that an anti-polygamy law was in place until 1890 – they had assumed it was illegal because the Indian Affairs Department had instructed them not to recognize such couplings. Following this ordinance, men who were in polygamous marriages would have to choose one wife in order to receive annuities, rendering many women "semi-widows".

Section 80 of the 1880 Indian Act forbade First Nations from trading or bartering the presents that they were granted as part of treaties. This 1880 amendment also called for a repealing of section 20 of the Indian Act, which was then replaced with a new section regarding the devising of property by will upon the death. The amended section stated in 20.2 that in order for a widow to receive up to one third of her husband's land, she must be of good moral character, living with her husband at the time of death. The amended section also stated in 20.7 the Superintendent General of the Department of Indian Affairs "shall have power to decide all questions which may arise respecting the distribution, among those entitled, of the land and goods and chattels of a deceased Indian, and also to do whatever he may, under the circumstances, think will best give each claimant his or her share, according to the true meaning and spirit of the Act."

According to the Indian Act, First Nations women could neither vote nor be elected to band counsels until the Act was amended in 1951. The vote for First Nations women came roughly 33 years after suffrage was granted to white settler women within Canada in all provinces exempting Quebec (1940).

Beginning in the late 1800s, Euro-Canadian government officials found various reasons to victim-blame Indigenous women for widely felt poverty and distress. Officials claimed that they were dirty, gossipy, had no understanding of money and the economy, and most of all were immoral. This is exemplified in an 1886 controversy that arose from a newspaper article published by missionary Samuel Trivett, in which he wrote about the promiscuity of Indigenous women and the frequency of their inappropriate relations with NWMP officers, without consideration if . Canadian officials responded by denying inappropriate behaviour on the part of the NWMP. Although, they conceded that if there were incidents of such behaviour, the blame rested with Aboriginal women, who were inherently sexually promiscuous and seductive, thereby taking advantage of male police officers. Please see related database entry titled "History of Racist and Gendered Perceptions of Indigenous Women."