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Australia’s first domestic violence shelter, Elsie Refuge added to NSW State Heritage Register

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Australia’s first DV refuge for women is added to the NSW State Heritage Register, recognising a legacy of creating safe places for women.

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Red Dress (MMIWG) (Historical / Global) 

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Red Dress (MMIWG) (Historical / Global) 

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Red Dress Day - Lekwungen Women's Honour Song by Bradley Dick - Yuxwelupton

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1/3 will be assaulted

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25 Years of V-Day: Ending Gender Violence, Fighting Tentacles of Patriarchy & New “Reckoning” Memoir

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February 14 marks the 25th anniversary of V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women, gender-expansive people, girls and the planet. It is also the 10th anniversary of V-Day’s One Billion Rising campaign, a call to action based on the staggering reality that one in three women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. The V-Day movement brings together activism and art to transform systems and change culture and was founded by the activist V, formerly Eve Ensler, author of the “The Vagina Monologues” and her new memoir “Reckoning.” This year the One Billion Rising campaign is focusing on “Freedom from Patriarchy and from all its progeny.” We discuss decades of activism, events planned this year, and what reckoning looks like with activist and V-Day founder V, alongside Monique Wilson, global director of One Billion Rising, and Christine Schuler Deschryver, director of V-Day Congo and co-founder and director of City of Joy, a revolutionary community for women survivors of gender violence in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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"A Backlash Against Our Existence": Laverne Cox Speaks Out on Violence Against Trans Women of Color

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Key characteristics of sexual violence/assault
• Use of coercion or emotional manipulation to obtain sexual activity • Use of physical force to obtain sexual activity
• Lack of consent or withdrawal of consent to sexual activity
(CASA House, 2010)

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Power and Control Wheel - Understanding the Power and Control Wheel

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• “Rape culture is a set of values and beliefs that provide an environment conducive to rape” (Boswell & Spade, 1996)

"culture" - collective experience.

Women who are not the direct target of violence are disciplined by the culture of rape and violence.

Collective consciousness.

1970s Radical and Marxist feminist made visible (consciousness raising)

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(38:12)

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Class in Gender Violence (13:00 - 18:00, dads & himpathy). 

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Class in Gender Violence (13:00 - 18:00, dads & himpathy). 

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Wealth facilitates VAW.

Power & control over women.

Often in workplaces

Web of relationships that protect the perpetrator

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Diddy and Our Culture’s ‘Himpathy’ for Powerful Men

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Chief Lady Bird is a Chippewa and Potawatomi artist from Rama First Nation and Moosedeer Point First Nation, who is
currently based in Rama. She graduated from OCAD University in 2015 with a BFA in Drawing and Painting and a minor in Indigenous Visual Culture. Chief Lady Bird's art practice is continuously shapeshifting, and is always heavily
influenced by her passion for empowering and uplifting Indigenous folks through the subversion of colonial narratives. She utilizes her social media platform(s) along
with digital illustration, acrylic painting, mixed media portraits, and murals to centre contemporary truths and envision Indigenous Futurisms by portraying intersectional Indigenous experiences and asserting our presence on stolen land. Specifically, much of her work is based on the
stories we tell through the reclamation of our bodies and sexuality, which often intersects with land sovereignty and language reclamation, and activates peripheral dialogues
about cultural appropriation, reconnection to land based knowledge and various forms of love (self love, lateral love, ancestral love). She hopes that her images can be a catalyst for reimagining our relationship with the land, each other, and ourselves. Chief Lady Bird has illustrated for notable organizations such as Flare Magazine, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Scholastic, Audible and Vice News to name a few.

Land
Recognition

We recognize the traditional and ancestral lands of the Haldimand Treaty on which we have the privilege of gathering. To the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee and Neutral First Nations, whose presence continues to enrich our communities both culturally and spiritually, thank you for your stewardship in helping us to foster an inclusive territory on which we live, work and play. May our presence today (and herein after) be one of unity and kinship, as we move forward in reconciling our history as a community and as a nation.

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Chief Lady Bird is a Chippewa and Potawatomi artist from Rama First Nation and Moosedeer Point First Nation, who is currently based in Rama. She graduated from OCAD University in 2015 with a BFA in Drawing and Painting and a minor in Indigenous Visual Culture.

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The shockingly high rate of violence against Indigenous women shows the long tail of colonisation | Maree Corbo and Amanda Alford

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When Aboriginal women seek help, they are more likely to face discrimination or not receive a timely response from the systems supposed to protect us all

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Idle No More started in November 2012, among Treaty People in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta protesting the Canadian government's dismantling of environmental protection laws, endangering First Nations who live on the land. Born out of face-to-face organizing and popular education, but fluent in social media and new technologies, Idle No More has connected the most remote reserves to each other, to urbanized Indigenous people, and to the non-Indigenous population.

Led by women, and with a call for refounded nation-to-nation relations based on mutual respect, Idle No More rapidly grew into an inclusive, continent-wide network of urban and rural Indigenous working hand in hand with non-Indigenous allies to build a movement for Indigenous rights and the protection of land, water, and sky.

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Idle No More started in November 2012, among Treaty People in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta protesting the Canadian government's dismantling of environmental protection laws, endangering First Nations who live on the land.

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Background

As we begin yet another year, the Wet'suwet'en land defenders are still under continued surveillance and criminalization by the British Columbia (B.C.) provincial government and the Canadian federal government. At the source of the struggle is, the Coastal GasLink's (CGL) pipeline construction that is cutting the Wet'suwet'en territory into two. The construction of the pipeline has been opposed by all five Wet'suwet'en clans. The Wet'suwet'en hold title and rights to their 22,000 km2 territory and their Chiefs say they have not consented to the pipeline according to their laws and customs.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) clearly stipulates that states should consult and cooperate with Indigenous Peoples in good faith to get their free, prior and informed consent. But in this instance, it hasn't been the case because The Hereditary Chiefs were reasonable and open to cooperation and even proposed an alternative route that wouldn't cut the Wet'suwet'en Peoples' land into two, but CGL rejected it on the grounds that it was too expensive.

The B.C. provincial government and CGL bypassed the Hereditary Chiefs by making an agreement with the band councils - an elected Indigenous peoples governing body created by the Indian Act. Indigenous Peoples under the leadership of their Hereditary Chiefs resisted this divisive technique. Determined to build the pipeline without the delay that further negotiation would have entailed, CGL, and the B.C. provincial government and Canada's federal government opted for violent responses that are reminiscent of past colonial repression and trauma.

How have land defenders been criminalized?

In December 2018, the British Columbia Supreme Court (BCSC) granted CGL an interim injunction which prevented the land defenders from blockading pipeline construction in Wet'suwet'en territory. Again in December 2019, the BCSC granted an interlocutory injunction order, which includes enforcement provisions.

Since then, these injunctions have been used by the government of Canada and the Province of B.C. to undertake constant surveillance, harassment, and the forceful removal and jailing of Wet'suwet'en land defenders. Hereditary Chiefs, and matriarchs were arrested and jailed using a highly militarized police force on their territories. In three large-scale police raids (January 2019, February 2020 and November 2021), a total of 74 people were arrested and detained, included among others, legal observers and members of the media. These raids were highly militarized with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) using helicopters, dog units and assault weapons not to mention involvement by CGL's private security company. In such raids they bulldozed and burned down buildings and desecrated ceremonial spaces.

Nineteen land defenders were charged with criminal contempt in July 2022 by the B.C. Prosecution Service for allegedly disobeying the 2019 interlocutory injunction order to stay away from pipeline construction sites, even though these sites are situated on the community's unceded, ancestral territory. Five of the land defenders pleaded guilty to violating the injunction's terms in December 2022 as a result of the constraints placed on them when they were prosecuted, including being prohibited from being on their ancestral territory. The remaining land defenders will go on trial in July, September, and December 2023. If found guilty, they could be sentenced to prison.

At home and abroad the criminalization of land defenders is escalating

The criminalization of the Wet'suwet'en Nation is just one example of the continued struggle of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. For example, Will George of Tsleil-Waututh Nation has received a 28-day jail sentence at BCSC in 2022 for defending his sacred obligation of defending and protecting Tsleil-Waututh's land and waters. The decision was appealed to the B.C. Court of Appeal on 24 January 2023 and a decision remains pending.

Criminalization of Indigenous land defenders is not unique to Canada. It is part of a global pattern of attacks on Indigenous peoples whose defence of their rights and territory puts them on a collision course with powerful companies and the governments who support their projects. In Guatemala, Amnesty campaigned with Maya Q'eqchi' communities to seek the release of their leader Bernardo Caal Xol, unjustly jailed for more than four years without evidence of having committed any crime. This criminalization was in retaliation for Caal Xol's leadership of peaceful efforts to stop a hydroelectric project built on a sacred river without meaningful consultation or the consent of affected Indigenous people, in violation of human rights standards and with devastating consequences for food security, access to water and health.

From North America to South America, Amnesty International continues to document and denounce flagrant attacks on Indigenous peoples and their rights amid the ongoing legacies of violent colonization, racism and enslavement. Far too often, Canadian companies are involved. Our campaigning is led by and seeks to amplify the powerful voices of Indigenous resistance and leadership.

Although there has been a growing body of national and international laws and standards that guarantee the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their traditional lands, that hasn't helped ward off violent government crackdown. The ongoing criminalization of the Wet'suwet'en land defenders and other land defenders in Canada and elsewhere is in violation of their rights and serves as a reminder of colonial expropriation and systemic racism and the need for more concerted action to change this deep-seated structural problem.

What is AI Canada planning to do about it?

In AI's strategic plan 2022 -2030 one of its human rights priorities is "equality and justice" with five focus areas: Indigenous rights and environmental justice; racial justice; gender justice; people on the move; and crisis response.

The Wet'suwet'en case touches three of our five focus areas. That is why in addition to its past and ongoing campaigning work, currently AI Canada (French-speaking and English- speaking sections) in partnership with the Wet'suwet'en Nation are working on a qualitative research project documenting the continued criminalization of Indigenous land defenders to inform further campaigning on this issue, particularly in light of the upcoming criminal contempt trials against the land defenders later this year. We are also making a joint submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, who will be visiting Canada from March 1-10, 2023. We are strongly encouraging the Special Rapporteur to visit Wet'suwet'en Territory to meet with the Hereditary Chiefs, matriarchs and land defenders.

The gender aspect of Indigenous land defenders' criminalization

It is also worth noting that, the Wet'suwet'en are matriarchal. This means that the Wet'suwet'en Peoples' struggle brings the intersection of indigeneity, race and gender to the fore, because women land defenders have also been criminalized. AI will incorporate gender sensitive intersectional analysis as a key part of research and campaigning in order to understand the differential and gender specific impacts of criminalization on women land defenders.

TAKE ACTION We must show Wet'suwet'en land defenders they are not alone in their struggle.

Despite being affected disproportionately by climate change, the continued struggle of Indigenous Nations for their right to free, prior and informed consent over land and resources magnifies the injustice Indigenous Nations are facing in Canada. Their fight is closely tied to climate justice. Therefore, we must show our solidarity and allyship with the Wet'suwet'en Peoples' struggle against CGL whose pipeline is causing damage to the environment, destroying fishing grounds, aggravating climate change through mining and transportation of fossil fuel and violating Indigenous Nations' sacred places and rights.

In a time of growing climate crisis, Indigenous Peoples are doing their part to fight climate change through their care for the land, the animals, the water, and everything that sustains us. The reward for their care shouldn't be criminalization and violent crackdowns.

We must show our solidarity and call for an end to the criminalization and violent crackdown on Indigenous land defenders.

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Criminalization of Wet'suwet'en land defenders

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As we begin yet another year, the Wet'suwet'en land defenders are still under continued surveillance and criminalization by the British Columbia (B.C.) provincial government and the Canadian federal government. At the source of the struggle is, the Coastal GasLink's (CGL) pipeline construction that is cutting the Wet'suwet'en territory into two.

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It is evident that even in modern society, the objectification of women is still prominent. Violence against women has almost become a trend and a social norm, with it being displayed throughout the media.

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the hypersexualization of women’s bodies in media can be seen in the music videos and various ads, etc

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the hypersexualization of women’s bodies in media can be seen in the music videos and various ads, etc

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Being a person of colour is somehow a crime that is systematically punished- therefore one cannot exist comfortably and safely no matter how they present themselves in society. Being yourself is somehow wrong.