http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/si8_e.html

Aboriginal people have been politically disempowered and economically marginalized. As their ways of ordering social relationships have been systematically ignored or devalued, they have had few opportunities to express themselves or apply their energies in rewarding, self-affirming ways. As a result, they experience extraordinary levels of frustration and anger.

Human beings feel anger and our self-esteem suffers when we are unable to meet our basic needs. In fact, we are biologically equipped with surges of adrenalin to respond forcefully to such threats to our survival. All cultures have generally found ways to control aggressive behaviour and channel energy into problem solving. But when cultural pathways are undermined, as they have been through Aboriginal people’s experience of colonization, then the culture loses its control over individual behaviour and eventually violence may erupt. Harvey Armstrong, a psychiatrist with long experience in mental health services among Aboriginal people, describes the dynamic this way:

Nature’s way of solving problems are many, but when her creatures were threatened with the frustration of their needs, their survival, their territory, their food, their mates, water, shelter, or other things needed for survival, aggression and violence has always been one of the last and most desperate solutions. Violence is different from predation in which prey and predator, usually of different species, supply food for one another. Violence is really a phenomenon that occurs within a species….

The capacity for violence is in all of us and really does require external and internal structures to prevent it from erupting….

Oppressed and disadvantaged groups in society have no security that their needs will be met and meet constant frustration in fulfilling their basic needs. They have more stresses and frustrations, and are more likely to turn these frustrations, at either themselves, or those who are nearest and dearest to them, resulting in violence against spouses, children, and elders.¹⁰⁵

Armstrong goes on to say that acting out violence is easier for the perpetrator if he can convince himself that the victim is less than human. Most Aboriginal violence is directed at other Aboriginal people, particularly family members — not at the administrators, employers and merchants who are the direct source of frustration. Social scientists’ explanation of this phenomenon, which is observed in other colonized peoples and disadvantaged social groups as well, is that not only the self but the whole group with which the individual identifies — in this case Aboriginal people — is held in low esteem.

 [ accepted]

Clare Brant, a Mohawk psychiatrist, has elaborated further on social factors precipitating violence:

There is an erosion of the self-esteem in Native men by chronic unemployment, [which contributes to] poverty, powerlessness and anomie. Any threat to this fragile self-esteem will be vigorously defended against, usually by aggression….Indian men…unemployed and idle, are constantly humiliated by having their families being supported by the welfare system. The little work which does exist on many Native reserves, such as community health representatives, child protection workers, cleaning staff, and secretarial staff, is often awarded to women. A power struggle ensues when the Native woman is the breadwinner and the exercise of intimidation and violence may be the last resort of the down-trodden warrior.¹⁰⁷

To say that family violence has its origins in imbalances of power is not to excuse it. Roy Fabian, of Hay River, Northwest Territories, presented an analysis of the origin and expression of cultural self-shame and cultural self-hate that echoes the psychiatric explanation. Fabian went on to state categorically that men who abuse women have to take responsibility for their behaviour and that, by the same token, government and churches that have abused Aboriginal people have to take responsibility for their actions.¹⁰⁸

In looking for solutions, we begin by drawing attention to the structural origins of violence in relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal societies. We do so because without changing these power relationships and without alleviating poverty and powerlessness, measures to reduce family violence will be patchwork solutions at best. Solutions based on individual therapy may even be destructive in an unrelentingly oppressive political, economic and social environment, because they can reinforce the perception Aboriginal people have of themselves as being weak and morally inadequate.¹⁰⁹

Anomie, the third factor in Brant’s trilogy of causation, is likewise more than a symptom of personal or family dysfunction. As we explained in Choosing Life, our special report on suicide, the rules governing individual and group behaviour have weakened as a result of deliberate interventions by Canadian governments aimed at replacing Aboriginal cultures and norms of behaviour with more ‘civilized’ ways. The policy agenda of assimilation, as implemented through the Indian Act, residential schools and community relocations, is documented in Volume 1 of our report. Among the tragic consequences of this failed policy are the scores of Aboriginal youth and young adults with no attachment to Aboriginal ways — they may even distrust them; yet they do not have a foothold in non-Aboriginal society either, or any sort of commitment to its rules.¹¹⁰

In too many Aboriginal communities, or among subgroups within Aboriginal communities, violence has become so pervasive that there is a danger of it coming to be seen as normal. This is another reason why Aboriginal family violence must be addressed as a distinctive phenomenon, with Aboriginal-specific strategies: Aboriginal people are challenged with rebuilding nations and whole communities, as well as restoring the capacity of Aboriginal families to nurture caring, respectful, law-abiding human beings.

 [ accepted]