The International Indigenous Policy Journal

Article Title

Racism Experiences of Urban Indigenous Women in Ontario, Canada: “We All Have That Story That Will Break Your Heart”

Authors

Anita C. Benoit, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto and Women's College Research Institute, Women's College Hospital, Toronto, OntarioFollow
Jasmine Cotnam, Women's College Research Institute, Women's College Hospital, Toronto, OntarioFollow
Doe O'Brien-Teengs, Ontario Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Strategy and Educational Studies, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, OntarioFollow
Saara Greene, Faculty of Social Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, OntarioFollow
Kerrigan Beaver, Women's College Research Institute, Women's College Hospital, Toronto, Ontario
Art Zoccole, 2-Spirited Peoples of the 1st Nations, Toronto, Ontario
Mona Loutfy, Women's College Research Institute, Women's College Hospital and Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario

Abstract

The objective of our mixed-methods research study was to present the discourse on racism experiences of Indigenous women living in two urban Canadian cities. A failure to recognize the impacts of racism on Indigenous women in Canada has emerged from the literature. Sharing circles, interviews, and a questionnaire including validated scales were used to collect data. The findings demonstrated that urban Indigenous women experience a number of racism events that span individual, collective and institutional, and cultural racism. The diversity of racist events was better captured in the questionnaire, whereas the roots of racism were understood more clearly in the qualitative findings to be an extension of historical colonial events to current day manifestations.

Acknowledgments

The authors of this manuscript would like to thank all the study participants who shared information and told part of their stories around racism. ACB was supported by Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Aboriginal Research Methodologies, Institute of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health Quantitative Research, and Canadian HIV Trials Network Postdoctoral Fellowships. This study was supported by Alternative Funding Plans Innovation Fund and CIHR Social Research Centre in HIV Prevention—LaVerne Monette Award, and it was in part supported by the CIHR fellowships. We would also like to thank staff at the Ontario Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Strategy and 2-Spirited Peoples of the 1st Nations for feedback on the research process and study participant recruitment. Furthermore, the first author would like to acknowledge the support by staff of the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network Research and Policy Unit in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Benoit, A. C. , Cotnam, J. , O'Brien-Teengs, D. , Greene, S. , Beaver, K. , Zoccole, A. , Loutfy, M. (2019). Racism Experiences of Urban Indigenous Women in Ontario, Canada: “We All Have That Story That Will Break Your Heart”. The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 10(2) . Retrieved from: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/iipj/vol10/iss2/1
DOI: 10.18584/iipj.2019.10.2.1

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