Sadia from FiLiA meets Hilla Kerner to discuss violence against women, particularly Indigenous women, in Canada.

Sadia: Hello everybody. Thank you for joining us once again, my name is Sadia Hameed. I am one of FiLiA’s prolific podcasters, and I'm joined today by Hilla Kerner and she is going tell you a little bit about herself, about the subject matter. 

Hilla: Thank you. 

Sadia: So if you could tell me a little bit about yourself, what do you do and who you are.

Hilla:  So I've been a collective member with Vancouver Rape Crisis and women's shelter for 14 years now. We are the oldest rape crisis centre in Canada, and we also operate a transition house for battered women. And our collective understands the important of not only providing frontline services to individual women, but fighting all forms of male violence against women, locally and nationally, and that include not just rape and battering, but also sexual harassment, pornography and prostitution. We are attached to abolition, which means understanding prostitution as an institution that is maintaining men's entitlement on women's body and is very harmful to the women who have been practicing prostitution.

That's partly why we formed the coalition to intervene this particular case.

Sadia: So how many women are in the coalition? 

Hilla: So the coalition is a national coalition of seven women's groups, including Indigenous women's groups. Cindy was an Aboriginal woman. We have Francophone women from the other side of Canada, from Montreal, from Quebec.

Canada is very, very big, but the organisations that joined are from across the country, including the Asian Women For Equality, its group, collective of Asian women who are fighting prostitution and sexual exploitation, because we do have a lot of Asian women in brothels in British Columbia and across Canada,  so women's groups from across the country. So it's several women's groups and it was a national coalition. 

Sadia: So you mentioned Cindy Gladue. Can you tell me about Cindy please? 

Hilla: So she was a young native woman and mother of three children. Who've been in this particular context of this case, her boyfriend arranged for her to prostitute for a truck driver from Alberta.

And there are cameras in the hotels that shows that she drank a lot. So there was the high level of alcohol in her blood, which we know is an issue always with consent when it comes to sexual acts. So that's very relevant in this case. And she met with this man one night and then she met him again in the following night and in that night, eventually as a result of what he did to her, she had such a terrible wound in her vagina that she died of a blood loss.

So, so, so many women are being physically very, very harmed in prostitution and nobody ever knows about those cases, but because she died, there were charges and there was a trial in Alberta. 

Sadia: And did this open up the conversation around violence against prostitutes? 

Hilla: No, mainly actually in the public discourse, mainly focused on the terrible, terrible oppression of Indigenous women.

We had two years now an inquiry, a national inquiry to the murdered and missing Indigenous women, because the level of violence against Indigenous women is even higher, dramatically higher than violence against non-Indigenous women in Canada. They are four times more likely to be murdered.

They are three times more likely to be victims of male partners’ violence. 4% of Canadian women experienced sexual harassment in the workplace in the last year, while 10% of Indigenous women with a paid job in Canada, experienced sexual harassment in the last year. So they are very, very, very vulnerable to male violence.

Sadia: That’s a really big jump from 4% to 10%. So why is that? Why are Indigenous women more vulnerable? 

Hilla: For a few reasons. First, they have much less choices than non-Indigenous women, they're in general much poorer. They generally have less education. Their family members have less ability to economically support Indigenous women. So have less choices in general. And we know the more choices we have, we're more likely to secure safety and security. And this is one aspect, women's poverty really, really limits women choices, but also because of the racism and the ongoing oppression of Indigenous people since colonialism started. They are being seen as being less.

And the third element that men who do harm women in general, but particularly Indigenous women, are rarely being charged and held accountable. So men know that they can get away and they will get away with violence against women in general, but definitely with violence against Indigenous women. We have terrible examples of Indigenous women who do come forward and complain to the police and get terrible, terrible treatment.

We have cases of police officers raping Indigenous girls and women across the country and not being held accountable. 

So the social messages, the message that men receive here in Canadian societies, you can do anything you want to Indigenous women, and you will get away with it. 

Sadia: How many women are coming forward with stories? Now, do you have any statistics? 

Hilla:  Statistics are always limited when it comes to violence against women, but yeah, there are CMP, which is a national police force in Canada, counted 1200 murdered and missing Indigenous women. And missing means they were murdered just they could not find their bodies, in the last 20 years.

And there were a few, there was one very famous inquiry here in the province that we are at in British Columbia because prostituted Indigenous women from the Downtown East Side of Vancouver just disappeared. They disappeared and the police kept ignoring the friend and their family saying, something happened to our woman. 

They ignored the fact that say women stopped collecting their welfare checks. They did not come to see their children. So those women often because of the oppressions that they're dealing with losing their children as part of it. So they're being taken care of either by the family or by the state. So, and for years and years, the police ignored reports on missing women. And then it turned out that many of them were killed. 

We know in general police disregard reports on male violence against women. Sexual assault is classic. Doesn't matter your class, doesn't matter your race. It's much harder for the police to ignore murders. But not in the case of Indigenous women, they also ignored murder.

That's why we formed a coalition. We also doing other things like we were at an inquiry, a national inquiry on the murder and missing Indigenous women. My collective Vancouver Rape Relief, we received standing, which meant that we conducted cross examination of the expert witness that the inquiry brought forward. in those submissions we brought forward what we know about violence and Indigenous women and half of the women who call our transition house are battered women and are Indigenous women and most of them on welfare. So from our own very basic frontline work, we know how poor they are and how commonly they are being hurt and harmed how fast the social services are to apprehend babies of Indigenous women instead of offering support to young mothers who are struggling instead the state is paying a fortune to foster families. 

Sadia: How quickly do they do that? 

Hilla: We just had a case that they came in the three days after the birth, when the woman was still in the hospital. There is such a contempt, I think, and patronising in disregard for Indigenous women, it's basically, I don't know if you're familiar with the residential school system of apprehending children from Indigenous families and putting them in church led so-called educational institution, that they were raped and starved and -  

Sadia: The children were being raped and starved?

Hilla: Yeah. The system of residential school is over in the eighties, they shut down the last residential school, but the concept of the states violently interfering instead of supporting Indigenous women and Indigenous families caring for the children is still very, very aggressive. So the residential schools are over, but the damage that they did for generations of Indigenous people is still very, very much alive.

But the continuation of a apprehending children, instead of offering different forms of support, including economic support, housing and stuff like that is still very much existing. 

Sadia: So proportionately, how many non-Indigenous women have their children removed in comparison to Indigenous women?

Hilla:  So I can give you the provincial stats. We have 4% of women in British Columbia are Indigenous, but 50% of children in care in British Colombia in state care are Indigenous. Half of the children who have been apprehended are children of Indigenous women. So it's many, many, many times more than the 4%

Sadia: Do you have any sort of interactions with your government and have you shared your findings with anybody in government? 

Hilla: These are well known facts. These are well known stats. If people are interested on our website, there is a section called ‘statistics’ and we gathered very wordy, very lengthy state based research, and we just extracted the data to make it reader friendly. But these are well known stats. It's the government wants to know, the government have it all. It’s very, very accessible. 

Sadia: Are they doing anything about this?  

Hilla:  Very little, very little, the welfare rates in all the provinces are unliveable, which pushed women to poverty.

Public transportation is scarce in lots of rural places and reserves and costly, which means women have to hitchhike or rely on favours of men. And they are vulnerable that way as well. The rate of men who've been charged and convicted for male violence is very, very low. 

What has been done obviously is way too little and some reforms like increasing women's economic security is a very simple reform.

Having support services for young mothers, instead of apprehending the children is a fairly simple reform. It just requires a different thinking and a political will. 

Sadia: In comparison, do you think non-Indigenous women are more likely to get all the services and access to everything that they need? 

Hilla:  No, but much more than Indigenous women, really.

When it comes to sexual assault, women never get justice. Then they think it's similar where you are all over the world. I don't think we have really good examples of criminal justice system holding men accountable. And we actually, we would rather not to rely on the state. We would rather that we will have communities who are holding men accountable, but we're not there. On the contrary. So I think this is a universal situation. 

Sadia:  What do you think about the people and including women that think that prostitution is a choice? 

Hilla: Some people are just ignorant about the real oppression that women are still facing all over the world. There is something so sophisticated in the promotion of such harmful practices like pornography and prostitution is empowering and liberating.

And it's not that I  do not think that some women choose it. I'm sure there is a section of women, there is always a story about the woman who paid for her PhD, I'm sure there are a few like that. For those women who choose, we cannot sacrifice a millions and millions of women who do not have that choice.

And for women who really have a choice. I say go choose something else because the slavery of the rest of us is not worth it. So I think the choice element for women is wishful thinking. 

I've met a lot of women in prostitution who, when I met them, they exited prostitution and said at the time I would say I choose it. I could not, I would've never admit how little choices I had and how terrible it was for me. 

A lot of research correlation between addiction and prostitution, because it's very, very hard to deal with that. So women use drugs and alcohol to numb that reality. And I'm saying for the sake of intellectual debate, you think it's choice?

Bring us true liberation, bring us true quality, then have women choose it.

Sadia:  And the moment you do have proper economic equality for women, they are less likely to choose it. But also when have you ever seen an aristocrat or a Royal going to prostitution? You know, they could choose it too. But if you have that level of comfort, you don't need to choose prostitution.

Hilla: And the argument is our minimum wage and terribly exploitive jobs that prostitution is better. yeah, we should not have minimum wage and terribly exploited jobs either. 

I think that for us as feminists, we know the concept of consent means there was not any coercion. There is not any pressure for us to actively and enthusiastically engage in sexual act.

Once the money is there. Once we do it for money, such a powerful coercion. Women would've not done it if it was not for the money, 

Sadia: What do you need help with? I mean, what can we do? How can they help because there's going be lots of women listening who I'm sure had no idea that this was happening, that the inequality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous women was so huge? 

Hilla: I think Canada really cares about its international reputation. So I think protests in front of Canadian Embassies, petition to Canadian Prime Minister do have a strong effect here in Canada.

Like where I come from it's not the case. In Israel which is a racist, capitalist, fascist government really do not care about what the rest of the world is saying, but it's not true about Canada. Canada is very caring about international reputation and international image. So for women who are listening and they want to write group letters and with concrete demands for women's equality.

In terms of poverty, criminal justice system of holding men accountable, supporting women's motherhood, offering housing and education. They are very, very simple demands that we already know from our own lives and from the rest of the world that are increasing women's safety and security. 

So I think for the women who are listening, who are not from Canada, putting some pressure on the Canadian government making public statement is very effective.

Sadia: How many Indigenous women do you have in terms of numbers in, in Canada? Like roughly, obviously, and how many non-Indigenous women do you have? 

Hilla: I don’t have the absolute numbers, but we know that it's 4%.

It's a small minority. And because we operate in a very limited democracy that you need majority to have your rights met, which is not true democracy, which true democracy means that the majority are taking care of the rights of the minority and protecting those rights. So it's a very small population. Because of the devastating impact of blunt murders, residential schools and other forms of colonialism. 

Sadia: Who are the main perpetrators for these women? 

Hilla: All men. We looked at any woman who call us, and we have approximately 1200 new calls from women every year, we keep the story of what they told us, because sometime it's the only place that there is a record of what that man did to that woman. The women who call us and it's, of course it's not a sample of what's going on in general.  From looking in one rape crisis centre in an urban setting, 45% of the Indigenous women will call us. The men who committed the violence against them, especially if it was within the family was an Indigenous man, the other 45% was white men and the rest was other men of colour. At least in urban setting, Indigenous women are vulnerable to all men's violence. 

So it's really all men, all men, all men know that they can harm Indigenous women. They can prostitute Indigenous women, they can rape Indigenous women and sometimes they can kill Indigenous women with immunity. 

Sadia: Gosh! So, when a woman experiences any kind of abuse, sexual violence or anything other than having being murdered by somebody outside of her community, and she goes back to her community. Are there any repercussions from within her community for her being victimised? 

Hilla: Not that we are familiar with. It's not like other communities when I know there are some conservative communities that if a woman was sexually assaulted or raped, I know it's true for the Orthodox Jewish community, and it's true for some Muslim communities that she brings shame on the family that is not the treatment of Indigenous women. I think not exceptionally. 

Sadia: Well at least that's one less thing that they have to contend with. 

Hilla: It's very rare to meet Indigenous women who have not been sexually assaulted and raped and more than once. So in one way, as women in the world, we are all vulnerable to male violence as women within my own collective, we all experienced male violence and so many in the world. That's what it means to be a woman in the world, but definitely when it comes to Indigenous women, they will experience many, many forms of violence against women from a very early age. 

So we have a shared experience of male violence, but they also have an exceptional, exceptional experience of really, really bearing the brunt of male violence against women.

Sadia: Are the attacks more likely to be more violent against Indigenous women? 

Hilla: I think the numbers of the murders shows that, yes. And it's not like we know women from all from all races and ethnicities are being murdered, but often by their husband. But I think strangers, men that are strangers to the women, when it comes to Indigenous women will be more careless with taking women's lives.

Sadia: Did the Indigenous women get that same level of support from mainstream and domestic abuse and sexual violence services. So non-Indigenous women's services. Did they step up to the mark before the Cindy case? 

Hilla: It's very complicated. I think most frontline services are trying to avoid taking a position on prostitution. I think a lot have been horrified by this particular case but they try to avoid making a political analysis of how this case is an example as to why prostitution is not an answer for the plight of Indigenous women, because it has all the making of those who promote prostitution argue for like that. There was a third party negotiating for this act. There was camera, it was indoors, all the things that supposedly guarantee women's safety. And of course they didn't and they don't, but I think unfortunately many, many women's services will not take a position on prostitution because it's not a popular position within the mainstream.

And also a lot of women's groups, because of the funding and the pressure, do not have the freedom to act publicly or to do what we do, form a coalition and intervene with the Supreme Court. 

And also, which I think is a mistake. A lot of, a lot of women's group will say, well, we want to leave the floor for Indigenous women to speak up, which I think absolutely, we should give them the mic. We should give the platform to Indigenous women, but we cannot not uphold our own responsibility to speak up against violence against Indigenous women. 

Sadia: And actually there there's something to be said for standing beside somebody, rather than you do it for yourself and we'll just back off, particularly when women's services do get a lot of resources in comparison to activists or women who form coalitions might not have the same amount of resources that women's services do. Service providers actually get a lot of funding and they don't act radically.

To me, like listening to everything that you've said, there's nothing actually, even though women's services, think it’s a radical stance to take. It's actually not a radical stance because all you're asking for is women's fucking rights. you know, it's quite offensive to hear the mainstream women's services aren't piping up about this. They aren't kind of animated by this because they're trying to safeguard their funding. That's quite an offensive to hear actually. So it doesn't matter how many Indigenous women experience exactly the same fate as Cindy, to safeguard their funding they're just going to sit back and deal with the cases that are straightforward, that don't have any complexities that don't involve any difficult discussions when actually the problem is that once upon time they had to fight to simply exist, you know - 

Hilla: Yeah. I think it's true. In many, many countries that the anti-violence against women movement has been de-radicalised. Front line services was a radical thing. It's us between the men who want to kill the woman and the woman. It was a political weapon an entry point to change the world.

So I think a lot of women's services and frontline services are now being pressed to narrow just to that aspect and to depoliticise the overall works that they do.

Sadia: It's quite sad, but actually the biggest losers then are the poorest women experiencing the most complex issues, which in your case would be the Indigenous women. In the UK it has been BME women and traveller women as well 

All that means is that we have a huge amount of women that are completely unrepresented and nobody's speaking for them. And we have some women who, you know, have the luxury of being able to come and use services that are de politicised, that haven't got any real complex issues.

They've been victims of awful issues like domestic abuse and sexual violence. Of course, that in itself is awful. But what about the women who have other issues on top of that, are they just to be pushed to one side so they can secure their funds? I find it quite offensive actually.

And I realise that this in part came from funders, but also women's organisations quite happily allowed themselves to be depoliticised and that's not acceptable. 

Hilla: I think that the more we fight for the most dispossessed and the most oppressed women, everybody else will benefit from that.

But fighting for white middle class women, or like women on company boards and capitalist companies, I don't think should be a priority for us. I think the safe agenda is to fight for those at the bottom. All other women will benefit from that. 

Sadia: Of course and naturally every other woman does benefit from that.

When you fight for ones that are the worst, the most at risk, everybody benefits. But if you're only focusing on those that are comfortable enough to go, come and get therapy and come and get like support then you end up leaving quite a lot of women behind.

Hilla: I think a lot of women in privileged position in the academy, in politics, in businesses and other capitalist endeavours, they do not understand that they are only there because of the women's liberation movement. I think they totally fell into the capitalist neoliberal propaganda that says -You achieved what you achieved because of what you personally individually did -

And they do not understand how much they owe the women's liberation movement, which means how much they owe to women who do not have those privileges yet.

What happened to the case where Cindy died?

The men who killed her was acquitted in the first round. It was public outrage, that was led by Indigenous women, got the prosecutor to appeal this judgment. And then Alberta Court of Appeal ruled that there were many, many mistakes in the trial that the judge used very old jury instructions that do not capture all the feminist reforms that have been done to sexual assault law. And they ruled for a retrial, a new trial. And the accused appealed that, and the case was heard in the Supreme Court of Canada, which we, as a coalition, made our argument as well. And the Supreme Court of Canada accepted the original appeal ruling that there will be a new trial. So now we are waiting for a new trial in a provincial court about this murder.

So there is no decision yet about this particular man. The Supreme Court of Canada completely disregarded our feminist argument about prostitution and about violence against women. 

But we, we rarely do stuff really to impact the state. What we achieve from that is sharpening our own analysis and creating a lot of educational materials.

And because we were the only intervener that had our position, we got quite a lot, uncommonly these days, mainstream media exposure. So we used this as a to express our support in Indigenous women and to strengthening the movement analysis of violence against Indigenous women in particular in prostitution.

So we are waiting for a new trial. And hopefully this man will be held accountable, but also that the judgment will reflect some useful analysis about Indigenous women in general, violence against women in general, prostitution and how harmful it is in general. 

Sadia: So were there other women's groups involved during the case and during the hearing?

Hilla: Yes, we had the Aboriginal Women Action Network. We had French Group Against Sexual Exploitation, which I cannot pronounce their name in French. We had the Asian Women For Equality. We had an exiting group from Alberta. And we had Eve, which is Exploited Voices Now, formally Exploited Voices Now Educating, which is a group of women who've been in prostitution and exited prostitution and now advocate for abolition.

And we of course, the oldest rape crisis centre in Canada and we operate a transition house. So it was a good combination of frontline expertise and good analysis and violence against women violence against Indigenous women and violence against women in prostitution.

And we also try to work, when we do national work, to work in a coalition, because it has much more impact, not just on the institution, but on the movement as a whole. 

 Sadia: Exactly. Yeah. It makes the campaign much, much stronger, 

So your coalition is everybody from Canada?

Hilla:  Yes

Sadia: Do you have women and groups from outside as well? So if other women's groups from other countries wanted to join, if they're listening, would they be able to do that? 

Hilla: No because it’s a very particular coalition for a very particular cause and the members needed to be Canadian members to get status as intervener from the Supreme Court of Canada.

Sadia: Do you have any like final words or anything that you'd like to say or ask our listeners at all? 

Hilla: That I know that in England there is wonderful work, not only on violence against women, but on other issues. And I appreciate the ongoing solidarity and the support that we got from women activists, all over the world.

I think now there is great leadership from British women about the impact of the gender discourse on women only spaces. So we appreciate that. 

I think all of us, what we need to do is we need to think globally and act locally, but think globally because together and only together, we can really create global social change. 

And there are many, many exciting examples from all over the world. And my advice to women or individual women come together as a group. 

There is so much power of the things that we can do together. Three women, five women, 10 women. And in this era of internet, we can connect, we can teach each other.

But there is something about coming together as the old, old practice of consciousness raising, understanding our own oppression and we strategize women's liberation. And to remember that no women is free until all of us are free.

Sadia: Yes. Quite right. So on that note, what I would like to do is give all of the women that want to organize and protest outside the Canadian embassy. I wanna give you guys a shout out, please get in touch so that we can start planning something so that we can really shame Canada into doing something about this. You know, we won't stop until things change. 

Hilla: Our website is very accessible. It's Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter. There is like a contact button that you can send us a general email and we're happy to support any local organising on this issue and others. 

So if you Google it, it will get to our address, which is Rape Relief, shelter. BC. CA. But if you Google Vancouver Rape Relief, it'll get you to our website. 

 Sadia: Brilliant Vancouver Rape Relief and when we do start organising this, we'd like to keep connected with you so that we can, get as much information out there as possible about what's happening and try and force some change.

Thank you so much for speaking with me. I had no idea about any of this and I've certainly, I've been very, very shocked by what I've heard. And I think a lot of our listeners will be as well.

I'm really hoping it'll spur them into action to do something. I know we've got some really fiery women at FiLiA and some of the listeners are going to be pretty fiery too. So I'm really hoping that we'll be able to do something about this. 

Hilla: Great. Thank you very much for having me -  until we win.