June 1 – 3, 2024 / Montréal, Canada
The following declaration was developed by the Aboriginal Women’s Action Network during the 4th World Congress on the Abolition of Prostitution in Montreal, PQ. All Indigenous Women and their organizations are welcome to sign on! Email us at awan.bc at gmail dot com
1. We, Indigenous women,[1] will not allow anyone or anything to break the ties that bind us. Despite the unrelenting forces working to divide us and the impacts of gendered colonialism, gendered racism, gendered poverty, intergenerational trauma, the misogyny and violence that pervades our lives and communities; we are profoundly aware of our connectedness to each other as women, to our ancestors, and to our lands. No man, no men, or these external forces will sever these ties.[2]
2. Our view of prostitution is that it sits on a continuum of male violence, alongside pornography, incest and childhood sexual exploitation, trafficking, rape, assault, coercive control, torture and other such ways that men violate Indigenous women and girls.[3] These forms of male violence have been an integral part of colonization, executed upon us through many patriarchal portions of the Indian Act, the sexual violence of the Residential School System, the coercive treaty-making process on the prairies, and other similar colonization instruments. With five centuries of resistance stories, told and retold by our aunties and our grandmothers, with our own lived experiences, and the experiences of our mothers, sisters, daughters and all our relations, we have come to understand the devastation of prostitution, the murders of far too many of us, and the formidable journey out of that destruction. [4]
3. We reject the racist assumption that prostitution was ever part of our traditional practices. We denounce the ‘common sense’ beliefs of Canadian society that our sole worth is as sexual objects to be bought and sold, purchasable or universally available to any man.[5]
4. We repudiate the claim that prostitution can be “sex work”, a freely chosen form of labour. The parallels between the rape and theft of our homelands and our environment, and the rape and exploitation of Indigenous women and girls are evident in the story-telling of Indigenous women. And we especially reject Sarah Hunt’s claim that “Indigenous sex work has been conflated with sexual exploitation, domestic trafficking, intergenerational violence, and the disappearance or abduction of Indigenous girls and women.”[6] Our grandmothers make it abundantly clear that there is a link, not a conflation, between the atrocities and vulnerabilities listed in that quote and our future opportunities. That unmitigated damage, or links are unveiled in research that shows the pipeline between children in foster care and trafficked children to survival prostitution.[7] With the denial of access to education, employment, health, housing and equitable social services, Indigenous women have minimal opportunities that are afforded to other Canadian women and both Indigenous and Canadian men[8] The result is that Indigenous women end up leading in all statistics for survival prostitution in urban centres and other parts of the country.[9] The term “sex work” serves to obscure the facts: the racist, misogynist, and classist realities of prostitution.
5. We stand with all our Indigenous sisters: our Inuit sisters, our Métis sisters, and our First Nations sisters, many of whom are women with disabilities,[10] and who withstand daily paid rape and extreme forms of violence and torture in prostitution. Survivors have told us about the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that comes from a lifetime of prostitution.[11]
6. We strive to obliterate the imposed patriarchy that has had devastating and deadly effects on Indigenous women and girls. The male violence that we contend with in our own families and communities often drives us into urban areas, seeking safety. As refugees in our own homelands, we encounter increased levels of male violence, including at the hands of johns, pimps, brothel owners and traffickers.[12] It is mainly at these sites that our sisters have been murdered and disappeared, an eye-popping and unremitting reality in which Indigenous women are excluded in remedying. [13]The Indian Act Chiefs, sometimes the perpetrators of the violence women and girls face, are the favoured bodies that governments fund, at the exclusion of Indigenous women.[14]
7. Poverty and homelessness are factors that force Indigenous women into survival prostitution in Canadian ghettos. And non-Indigenous agencies that service Indigenous women often become the ‘poverty pimps’ that draw on “harm reduction” models to maintain a holding pattern of keeping funding sources and service recipients in place. These horrendous conditions frequently result in drug addiction, a plight that in today’s toxic drug supply leads to their death. [15]
AWAN Demands
1. AWAN fully supports the Nordic model, also known as the Equality model which decriminalizes women in prostitution but criminalizes male demand for paid sex.[16] The second element of the Nordic model is comprehensive social programming for all women and girls. The third element involves societal education and public awareness regarding prostitution as a form of male violence against women and girls. We believe this model encourages true social change that works in our interest.
2. We are deeply opposed to the total decriminalization or legalization of prostitution, a system that disproportionately targets Indigenous women and girls.
3. We demand that federal and provincial governments focus state programming related to gender-based violence on autonomous Indigenous women’s groups, instead of the current targeting of Indian Act Chiefs’ organisations. Further, we demand that governments acknowledge and recognize, through policy and legislation, the importance of Matriarchal Traditions to many First Nations across the country.
4. We demand an end to the exclusion of the wisdom and authority of Indigenous mothers in the onslaught of child welfare authorities across the country. The gendered colonialism, gendered racism, and gendered poverty that targets Indigenous mothers for the apprehension of our children is a crime of genocide and the construction of a pipeline into prostitution and other forms of marginalization. Indigenous mothers must have a privileged voice in the creation, governance and operation of new Indigenous child welfare authorities.
5. Because Indigenous women with disabilities are targeted by pimps and human traffickers, due to their increased vulnerabilities, and their higher degree of marginalization, we demand that in addition to research and analysis be earmarked for increased understanding and improved services designed, directed, implemented and maintained by Indigenous women with disabilities.[17]
6. Indigenous women experience sexualized violence in all spaces across this country and beyond. We demand that Indigenous women in prison be free of sexualized violence while incarcerated. This includes ensuring that frontline staff in prison are female, and that male-bodied prisoners not be permitted into women’s prisons. Ultimately, AWAN demands that prisons for women be abolished.
7. The many intersectional forms of oppression that Indigenous women contend with have resulted in extreme marginalization, a situation that can be remedied by a “Guaranteed Liveable Income.” With the amount of labour required to do healing work, to obtain an education and to establish a quality of life, Indigenous women in prostitution, would significantly benefit from GLI and enhance exiting opportunities.
8. We demand targeted health and healing programs by and for Indigenous women. This includes, but is not limited to detox and inpatient treatment programs, exiting services for Indigenous women to escape prostitution, literacy and higher education, life skills and employment programs, and many more. AWAN is especially disturbed by the absence of exiting services that are run by and for Indigenous women. The two barriers are the ‘harm reduction models’ that prevent speaking about leaving prostitution and the Christian programming that currently exist.
9. Unlearning patriarchy and misogyny is a daunting task that absolutely must occur. The expression, “nothing about us, without us” is fitting in this circumstance. This third element of the Nordic model is best fulfilled by further research on Indigenous women in prostitution, demographic data on the pipelines from child welfare and trafficking into prostitution and needs assessments on the ability of Indigenous women to escape prostitution.
We, Indigenous women and girls, have survived over 500 years of attacks on our cultures, our bodies, our lands, and our lives. We refuse to abandon our future generations to the colonial sexist violence that is prostitution and we demand an immediate end to the male demand for paid sex. We demand a return to our traditional values that place Indigenous women and girls in high esteem.
[1] Aboriginal Women’s Action Network – AWAN is a radical feminist group that was founded in 1995 and seeks to confront patriarchy, misogyny, racism, poverty, and other forms of oppression that Indigenous women contend with.
[2] Native Women’s Association of Canada. “Understanding NWAC’s Position on Prostitution.” Native Women’s Association of Canada, 2012, nwac.ca/assets-knowledge-centre/2012_NWACs_Position_on_Prostitution.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2024.
[3]Kerner, Hilla. “Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter: Written Closing Submission for the National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.” National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Dec. 2018, www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Vancouver-Rape-Relief-Final-Written-Submission.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2024.
[4] Smiley, Cherry. Not Sacred, Not Squaw: Indigenous Feminism Redefined. Spinifex Press, 2023.
See also: “Aboriginal Women’s Action Network Final Submission to National Inquiry.” National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2018, www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/AWAN-Final-Written-Submission.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2024.
[5]CLES. “What We Know About the Nordic Model.” Native Women’s Association of Canada, nwac.ca/assets-knowledge-centre/CLES-What-We-Know-About-the-Nordic-Model.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2024.
“Because we believe in equal opportunity for all women Racism is pervasive in the sex industry, where sales are driven by exoticism, submission, and stereotypes. Racialized women and Aboriginal women are over-represented in the most dehumanizing forms of prostitution such as street prostitution, bestiality, and sado-masochism.”
[6] Hunt, Sarah. “Decolonizing Sex Work: Developing an Intersectional Indigenous Approach.” Selling Sex Experience, Advocacy, and Research on Sex Work in Canada, edited by Emily Van Der Meulen et al., UBC Press, 2013, pp. 82–100.
[7] Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law & Reform v. Attorney General, 2023 ONSC 5197, Court File NO.:CV-21-659594, DATE: 20230918. See also: Native Women’s Association of Canada, Native Women’s Association of Canada. “SYSTEMIC INEQUITIES AND INTERJURISDICTIONAL ISSUES IN HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND MMIWG2S+.” Native Women’s Association of Canada, nwac.ca/assets-documents/Issues_in_Human_trafficking_and_MMIWG2S.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2024.
See also: Palmater, Pam. “From Foster Care to Missing or Murdered: Canada’s Other Tragic Pipeline: How the foster-care system—which disproportionately affects Indigenous children—shows that Canada hasn’t learned from past policies.” Maclean’s, 2017, macleans.ca/news/canada/from-foster-care-to-missing-or-murdered-canadas-other-tragic-pipeline.
[8] Statistics Canada (2023) Intersectional perspective on the Canadian gender wage gap, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/45-20-0002/45200002203002-eng.htm
[9] Farley, Melissa et al. “Prostitution in Vancouver: violence and the colonization of First Nations women.” Transcultural psychiatry vol. 42,2 (2005): 242-71. doi:10.1177/1363461505052667
[10] Alimi, Sonia, and Mikayla Aguie. “Canadian Women and Girls with Disabilities and Human Trafficking: A Brief Prepared for the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights for their study on Human Trafficking in Canada.” DAWN Canada, edited by Sandhya Singh, 15 June 2018, www.dawncanada.net/media/uploads/page_data/page-63/dawn_brief_on_human_trafficking_and_women_with_disabilities_june_15_2018.pdf.
[11] Sarson, Jeanne, and Linda MacDonald. Women Unsilenced: Our Refusal to let Torture-Traffickers Win. Friesen Press, 2023.
[12] Ibid, Melissa Farley
[13] ONWA, et al. National Action Plan and Federal Pathway Will Not End Genocide of Indigenous Women and Girls. 2021, www.onwa.ca/post/national-action-plan-and-federal-pathway-will-not-end-genocide-of-indigenous-women-and-girls. Accessed 31 May 2024.
[14] “Aboriginal Women’s Action Network Final Submission to National Inquiry.” National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2018, www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/AWAN-Final-Written-Submission.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2024.
[15] Native Women’s Association of Canada. “Poverty Reduction Strategy: The Native Women’s Association of Canada Engagement Results.” Native Women’s Association of Canada, 2017, nwac.ca/assets-documents/Poverty-Reduction-Strategy-Revised-Aug23-4.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2024.
[16]“Real change for aboriginal women begins with the end of prostitution.” The Globe and Mail, 14 Jan. 2015, www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/real-change-for-aboriginal-women-begins-with-the-end-of-prostitution/article22442349.
[17] DisAbled Women’s Network of Canada, pg7, Canadian Women and Girls with Disabilities and Human Trafficking, Sonia Alimi and Mikayla Celine Aguie, June 15, 2018,https://dawncanada.net/media/uploads/page_data/page-63/dawn_brief_on_human_trafficking_and_women_with_disabilities_june_15_2018.pdf