I STAND #INUNITY
I STAND #INUNITY
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Glossary

This page is #InUnity’s resource list. Here, you will find definitions for common terminology and links to articles. If you would like to see something added to this page or have a suggestion, please send us a message!

Common Terminology & Articles

Allyship

  • People who work continuously to develop an understanding of the personal and institutional experiences of the group with whom they are aligning themselves. Being an ally is an action not a title, so it is inappropriate to refer to oneself as one.

Harris, Tamara. “The Real Work of Being An Ally.” Huffington Post. January 30, 2017. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-real-work-of-being-an-ally_us_588fb030e4b080b3dad6fa12

Ceded Territory

Colonialism

Colonization

Cultural Assimilation

  • A gradual process by which a person or group belonging to one culture adopts the practices of another, thereby becoming a member of that culture. Cultural Assimilation can be forced.

Diversity

Ethnocentrism

  • judging another culture solely based on the standards and values of one’s own culture. Also, a belief in the inherent superiority of one’s own nation or ethnic group. http://www.suffolk.edu/campuslife/27883.php

Highway 16/ Highway of Tears

  • A stretch of highway in British Columbia that is a notorious spot for murders of Indigenous women. Due to a lack of public and affordable transit, many Indigenous women resort to hitchhiking to get from reserves to cities. Many murder cases are not considered by police. It is believed that lasting systemic racism has perpetuated the lack of action and attention from local governments to install alternative means of transportation. Currently, the local government has implemented billboards advising women to not hitchhike. But, these billboards do not address the root of the problem. Some community members say that simple changes, like implementing a shuttle bus, could make a difference for the community and allow women realistic transportation options other than hitchhiking.

Morton, Katherine. “Hitchhiking and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Billboards on the Highway of Tears.” Canadian Journal of Sociology. Vol 41, No 3. 2016. https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/cjs/index.php/CJS/article/view/28261

National Film Board of Canada. Finding Dawn. Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 2009. https://www.nfb.ca/film/finding_dawn/

Inclusion

Indian Act (1876)


Bill C-31:

  • Bill C-31 is an amendment to the Indian Act created in 1985. The Indian Act is problematic because it disproportionally discriminates against Indigenous women compared to Indigenous men. The 1985 amendments reinstated status to people who were previously denied status for discriminatory reasons. However, the Act continues to deny status to children who marry non-Indigenous people. The child of a woman whose status was reinstated under Bill C-31 will not pass on status to her children if the other parent is non-status. This effect is often called the “second generation cut-off”, which over time, has the same effects as the 1951 Indian Act.  

Bonita Lawrence, “Reconfiguring Colonial Gender Relations under Bill C-31,” “Real” Indians and Others: Mixed-blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 64-81.  

McIvor Decision:

  • The McIvor Decision is a federal court case where an Indigenous woman, Sharon McIvor, pointed out gender discrimination in the Indian Act, specifically in how it defined who was ‘status’. The main argument was that if in the same situation, Indigenous men faced less discrimination than Indigenous women when applying for status. The Courts used the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to determine the constitutionality of the Indian Act. Both the appeal and trial Court agreed that section six of the Indian Act was discriminatory and that discrimination was not overruled by section one of the Charter. The appeal Court left the decision on how to correct the problem with Parliament with a twelve-month timeline. The memorandum looks at how membership in Indian Bands may be impacted if the trial Court’s views become law. McIvor has appealed the decision and has since been waiting to hear from the Supreme Court.  

R. Brent Lehmann to National Centre for First Nations Governance, “Memorandum: Summary of the McIvor Decisions,” 14 June 2009, Ratcliff & Company Lawyers, Vancouver, File 09-0061.  


Indigenous (Use of)

  • A blanket term for original inhabitants. ‘Indigenous’ is not an appropriate term if you are speaking about a specific group. It is a useful term if:
  1. You are referencing an organization that has adopted the term as a self-identifier;
  2. You need a word comparable to “European,” “African,” or “Asian” that means “all peoples originating from North America”; or,
  3. You are drawing attention to a colonial framework, particularly “the Other” as defined by settler-colonialists.

Luby, Brittany, Kathryn Labelle, and Alison Norman. “(Re)naming and (De)colonizing the (I?)ndigenous People(s) of North America- Part 1”. ActiveHistory.ca. November 7, 2016. http://activehistory.ca/2016/11/renaming-and-decolonizing-the-indigenous-peoples-of-north-america-part-ii/

“Terminology.” First Nations & Indigenous Studies. University of British Columbia. 2009. http://indigenousfoundations.web.arts.ubc.ca/terminology/

Lateral Violence/ Horizontal Hate

Marginalization

  • Refers to the relegation to the fringes of society due to a lack of access to rights, resources, and opportunities.
     

Hanson, Erin. “Marginalization of Aboriginal Women.” First Nations & Indigenous Studies. University of British Columbia. http://indigenousfoundations.web.arts.ubc.ca/marginalization_of_aboriginal_women

MMIW

  • stands for “missing and murdered Indigenous women”

Oppression

  • The systemic and pervasive nature of social inequity woven throughout social institutions as well as embedded within individual consciousness. Oppression fuses institutional and systemic discrimination, persona bias, bigotry, and social prejudice in a complex web of relationships and structures that saturate most aspects of life in our society. http://www.suffolk.edu/campuslife/27883.php

Power

  • Power in unequally distributed globally and in Canadian society. Some groups or individuals wield greater power than others, thereby allowing them greater access and control over resources. Although power is often conceptualized as power over other individuals or groups, other variations are power with (used in the context of building collective strength) and power within (which references an individual’s internal strength). Learning to see and understand relations of power is vital to organizing for progressive social change. http://racialequitytools.org/glossary#power
     

Prejudice

  • A pre-judgment or unjustifiable, and usually negative, attitude of one type of individual or groups toward another group and its members. Such negative attitudes are typically based on unsupported generalizations (or stereotypes) that deny the right of individual members of certain groups to be recognized and treated as individuals with individual characteristics. (http://racialequitytools.org/glossary#prejudice)

Racism

Racism (Types of)

Institutional Racism:

  • Institutional racism refers specifically to the ways in which institutional policies and practices create different outcomes for different racial groups. The institutional policies may never mention any racial group, but their effect is to create advantages for certain racial groups and oppression and disadvantage for other racial groups. (http://racialequitytools.org/glossary#institutional-racism)
  • For example, city sanitation department policies that concentrate trash transfer stations and other environmental hazards disproportionately in communities of colour.

Internalized Racism:

  • Internalized racism is the situation that occurs in a racist system when a racial group oppressed by racism supports the supremacy and dominance of the dominating group by maintaining or participating in the set of attitudes, behaviours, social structures and ideologies that undergird the dominating group’s power. (http://racialequitytools.org/glossary#internalized-racism)

Individual Racism:

  • Individual racism refers to the beliefs, attitudes, and actions of individuals that support or perpetuate racism. Individual racism can be deliberate, or the individual may act to perpetuate or support racism without knowing that is what he or she is doing. (http://racialequitytools.org/glossary#individual-racism)
  • For example, telling a racist joke or believing in the inherent superiority of whites.

Structural Racism:

  • The normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics – historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal – that routinely advantage Whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of colour. Structural racism encompasses the entire system of White domination, diffused and infused in all aspects of society including its history, culture, politics, economics and entire social fabric. Structural racism is the most profound and pervasive form of racism – all other forms of racism emerge from structural racism. (http://racialequitytools.org/glossary#structural-racism)

Resilience

Stereotype

  • Blanket beliefs and expectations about members of certain groups that oresent an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment. They go beyond necessary and useful categorizations and generalizations in that they are typically negative, are based on little information, and are highly generalized. https://www.uml.edu/docs/Glossary_tcm18-55041.pdf
     

Unceded Territory

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)

  • The UN Declaration ensures that Indigenous peoples’ rights to cultural integrity, education, health, and political participation are protected. It provides recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights to their lands and natural resources, and the observation of their treaty rights. The UN Declaration also requires countries to consult with Indigenous peoples with the goal of obtaining their consent on matters which concern them. It recognizes Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination to “freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” Initially, Canada was one of four nations to vote against UNDRIP, whereas 144 countries voted for it. Canada has since reversed their positions and now officially endorses it.
  • https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.umb.edu/dist/3/2339/files/2015/08/UNDRIP-Summary-si40km.pdf
  • http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf

Worldview