Stories from the Road - Activist Harsha Walia makes connection between displaced women & oil sands

Activist Harsha Walia makes the connection between violence to the land and violence against women in Vancouver's downtown East side. Visit www.bit.ly/breaking-ground-blog to learn more about the Breaking Ground: Women, Oil & Climate Change delegation!

I think one of the connections between the tar sands and urban areas like the Downtown Eastside (DTES)

is particularly that of displacement,

and particularly the impacts on women.

And so one of the things that we know a lot and talk a lot about in terms of the tar sands

is that it's a story of environmental degradation and industrial genocide,

particularly on Indigenous lands and for Indigenous communities.

But one of the things that we don't talk a lot about

is how the tar sands is also a story of displacement and violence against women,

and again particularly for Indigenous women.

And so one of the impacts that we're seeing here in Vancouver

in the DTES which is the poorest postal code in Canada,

is the ways in which from Alberta and also from BC,

both provinces that are really heavily resource -extractive in terms of their economies,

a lot of Indigenous women in particular are being displaced into urban areas like the DTES.

72% of Indigenous women in BC currently live off-reserve,

which means that Indigenous women as a result of the resource extraction as well as other factors,

are ending up in major urban centres,

And in these urban centres like the DTES

we're seeing women experiencing really really high rates of violence.

The DTES is the epicentre of the crisis for missing and murdered Indigenous women,

it also has extremely high rates of child apprehension, of police violence, of women in the prison system,

um and also health concerns for women,

women face a lot of violence in the drug trade and the sex trade,

and in the informal economies, of the survival [*or "of the surviving?"*] economies,

this neighbourhood has some of the lowest life expectancy rates,

and so, um, y'know, we know this about the DTES,

and we know this about a lot of other major urban centres

in terms of the vast inequality that exists,

in terms of homelessness,

and y'know, what we know as urban slums or urban ghettos.

But what we don't talk about is what actually brings people into urban centres,

and what brings people into urban centres, particularly women,

is displacement from the land.

And so there's a very clear connection between violence on the land and violence against women in urban areas.

And there's a very clear connection between resource extraction and its impacts on the land,

and the forces that displace people, particularly women, into urban areas.