Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones and I discuss the disturbing trend of dehumanizing Indigenous women in Canada. The most recent case in point: the refusal of the Manitoba premiere to search for the remains of Marcedes Myran and Morgan Harris. This episode may be triggering for some as we discuss murder, violence, sexual abuse, policing, homelessness, sex workers, and the Pickton murders.
Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones and I discuss the disturbing trend of dehumanizing Indigenous women in Canada. The most recent case in point: the refusal of the Manitoba premiere to search for the remains of Marcedes Myran and Morgan Harris. This episode may be triggering for some as we discuss murder, violence, sexual abuse, policing, homelessness, sex workers, and the Pickton murders.
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>> Myrna McCallum: Myrna McCallum Metis, Cree lawyer and passionate promoter of Trauma Informed Lawyering. Welcome back to the Trauma Informed Lawyer podcast, folks. Season two. I believe that law schools and bar courses are missing a critical competency requirement in their curriculum. Trauma Informed Lawyering behavior. Becoming a Trauma Informed Lawyer will, among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs and biases call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy, guide your practice to avoid doing further harm to others and ask that you commit to remaining open to learn new and old knowledge you didn't know you needed before beginning your career. Your education starts right here, right now. This podcast comes to you from the traditional unceded territories of the Squamish, Sleil-Waututh and Musqueam People.
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>> Myrna McCallum : Welcome back to another episode of the Trauma Informed Lawyer podcast. Today I have old favorite of mine and hopefully yours, I'm sure yours, Dan Jones. He's been on the podcast a couple of times. He's a good friend of mine. I invited him on today to talk a little bit about the ridiculous, traumatizing wackness of the government's decision in Manitoba to not search the landfills for the bodies of Indigenous women. And today's conversation might be heavy for some and I totally get that. So do what you need to do. But yeah, I had to talk about it and there's no one else I want to chat with about it than, my good friend Dan.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : Here we go.
>> Myrna McCallum : All right, Dan Jones, you are a Trauma Informed Lawyer podcast favorite. Thanks for coming back on the podcast. How are you?
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : I'm, great. Thanks for having me again.
>> Myrna McCallum : Well, I'm really happy that you're back, although I'm not. I'm not happy about the subject that we're about to talk about today. I was listening, like many people across this country to APTN News. They had a live not that long ago, a couple of days ago, it was like a whole press conference around what's going on in Manitoba right now. And for those who are outside of Canada or who have no interest in media or listening to media, what you should know is that two Indigenous women were murdered. Morgan Harris and Mercedes Myron were murdered. And it's believed that their bodies were dumped in a landfill just outside of Winnipeg in Manitoba. And the premier, Heather Stephenson, has cited health and safety concerns and risks as a rationale for not searching the landfill. And that's a problem for lots of reasons. And I just thought, you know, having Dan on the podcast to talk with me about this and what the implications are for Indigenous women, I think is a conversation that needs to be. Needs to be had. So thanks for coming back, Dan.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : Thank you for Having me. And when you look at that topic and it's, it's, it is a topic, it's a topic, it's a Canadian topic about the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. And the problem is the statistics show when you look at when they started doing the research, it shows that 16% of women murdered in Canada are Indigenous Now that's a problem because only roughly 2% of the Canadian population is Indigenous women. But if you took the first 10 years off of that research that the RCMP did, it shows that 26% of the murdered women in this country are Indigenous and they make up 2% of our population because the, in murder of Indigenous women has increased while the murder of non Indigenous women have decreased. So you have this continuous story of missing and murdered Indigenous women and increases and increases and increases in a time where we're supposed to be better and we're just, I hate to say it, Canada, but we're not being better. You know, if you've listened to the podcast before, you'll know that I'm a dad of two daughters, but I I have a third adopted daughter who is an Indigenous woman. And she, I love her and her, she's got two daughters and a son. And all of these things make me so concerned and so wondering what are we doing as a nation that we continuously harm a population of women that are Indigenous to our country? And it just makes me mad.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah, well, makes me mad. It also makes me, you know, fearful. Like really fearful. And I've been listening to some tiktoks out there listening to folks comment about this. Apparently the Indigenous lead feasibility system study that was done, was by like a former police officer who has participated in searches of other landfills in Ontario and Michigan I believe. And they have said like this can be done and it can be done in a safe way. Yeah, there are risks and like there are risks to anything, but it can be done. One of the comments that was made was that to do nothing is going to do a lot of harm to the families. And we know that there were like protests and there were blockades. I understand the other day there was an order, to take down the blockade and then the police went in there and took it down. And I also understand that for, you know, like there are non Indigenous people who are very involved in this particular issue that are supporting a search of the landfill. But the premier of Manitoba, Heather Steffensen is like opposed.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : Well, and that makes no sense to me as a, as a previous homicide detective I, I spent four years in our homicide section at the eminent police service. There would be nothing to me that would stop us as homicide detectives who are looking for the bodies of homicide victims. Because you have to realize. And one of the things that I always said and the people I worked with always said it was you speak for those who can't be, who can't speak for themselves. That was our job. That like literally your job as a homicide detective is to speak for those who can't speak for themselves and to, to leave somebody's body, body in a landfill and not recover that body so that body can be returned and in. Taken to ceremony, taken to whatever your beliefs are. That body needs to be returned so you can have some semblance of closure. And for the, the, the articulation of it's not safe is absolutely in my mind ridiculous. It's inhumane. And one of the things that you said, Myrna, on one of your podcasts is to dehumanize is to traumatize. And if you're not, if this. I don't care of the premier, I don't care if it's the police, I don't care who it is. You go and find those women because you're dehumanizing by them by leaving them there. And. But to dehumanize is to traumatize. And it's showing that we as a society don't care about Indigenous women. And that's wrong.
>> Myrna McCallum : Absolutely. It is sending the message that Canadian society doesn't care about Indigenous women. It also is sending the message that Indigenous women are trash. They can be left in a landfill. That's the message. That's one of the messages I'm hearing. And I'm like, we are absolutely not trash. Like, I know, Dan, without a doubt, if a white woman, blonde, blue eyed, went missing and was thought to be in a landfill, not only would the government move heaven and earth to start searching, but like civilians would be stepping up and organizing. There would be so much involvement. And there's just this idea in my mind that, you know, Indigenous women are regarded by many as having no value and so should be in the trash. And the other message which is really terrifying is it sends a message to those who harm Indigenous women or who fantasize about harming Indigenous women that if they want to murder us, all they have to do is dump us in a landfill and nobody will look for us and they will get away with it.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : Well, and you know what? And this is one of the, probably one of the lowest Points of my policing career was a moment in time where there was a homicide of a woman. She was, 76 years old and she had just been visiting her 94 year old mother and she was murdered in her garage. She was a white woman. And we were doing a bunch of door to doors. I went from. I was in beats at the time, but I got seconded to homicide section to work this file. And we were doing door to doors on 118th Avenue in Edmonton, which is a high crime area. That was my beat at the time. And we're doing door to doors. And one of the young Indigenous sex trade workers that I know said to me, because we were losing a lot of sex trade workers at the time to homicides and they were being dumped in short park and we'll talk about that in a minute. But she said, how come you never do door to doors when one of us goes missing? And then she said to me, no, no, I understand, we're just hookers. And I remember as a, I don't know how, how old I was. I wasn't that old, but I'd been on the job for about five years at the time, so I was probably 27. And I remember thinking to myself, what have we done where we make these young ladies think they're just something? I don't care if it's just a hooker, just a drug dealer, just a whatever. But we as a police service and as a society have made this young lady think it's okay that we don't do door to doors when they go missing, but we do door to doors when a, white woman is murdered in the neighborhood. And then that brings me to the point of from 1988 to 1998, we had several Indigenous women, not just Indigenous women, but the vast majority were Indigenous women taken from the streets of 118th Avenue and areas there were sex trade, areas and they were murdered and dumped just outside of Shewood park, which is east of Edmonton. And it took 10 years, 10 years to develop a task force called Project Care, which was between the Edmonton police service and the rcmp. Ten years and later in my career we had cats getting killed in a neighborhood, a very rich neighborhood in the west end. And it took three weeks for a task force to be developed because those cats are being killed. And everyone thought it was a budding serial killer turned out to be an owl. But you look at that, 10 years of sexual workers, the vast majority of who were Indigenous being taken from Edmonton, murdered and dumped outside of Edmonton. And it took 10 years for us to develop a task force. And that, to me, shows that we do not honor nor do we provide support or safety to Indigenous women that are experiencing vulnerabilities.
>> Myrna McCallum : Absolutely not. I mean, I think about, like, indignity, right? Like, in love, we talk about, you know, like, indignities to human bodies and all of these things. And I think about some of the ways in which I've heard of Indigenous women being murdered from, you know, having their bodies set on fire and, you know, rolling over them. The truck that happened just outside of Saskatoon, many, many years ago, a woman went missing. She was a mom, she was in college, but she went out on Friday night with some of her friends, never made it home. And, you know, months later, this is what was. This was the discovery. And it really haunted me and stayed with me that somebody could do that to a human body. And then I was thinking about the Picton. The Picton trial and the Picton inquiry and the evidence that surfaced. And we heard a lot of the evidence in media and in the court, and. But there, I, as a former prosecutor, heard even more evidence. I didn't ask to hear more evidence. I happened to be at a. At a Crown conference. And, an individual who was a prosecutor, maybe the lead prosecutor, at the time, was speaking to us. And I don't remember what. Why he was invited or what he was asked to speak on. This was long before anyone ever talked about trauma, Right? But he just started to talk about just how traumatized, essentially. I don't even think he said the words that he was traumatized, but he just started spewing words that now, in retrospect, helped me understand. The man was incredibly traumatized by what he saw, and, you know, what he was exposed to. And he started recounting things that wasn't released in media of, some of the ways in which these women were murdered. And it made me, like, physically sick. And what I want to say about that picked, in whole Picton thing coming back to what's going on in Manitoba, is they searched his farm. That was a massive search. And they recovered. I can't remember how many remains, but they.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : Too many. Yeah.
>> Myrna McCallum : they recovered so many. and I'm sure at first glance, that would have looked insurmountable. It would have looked complicated. It would have looked like it was ridden with all kinds of hazards. And they found a way to do it. And I find that anytime you want to do something, you find a way to do it. You don't want to do something, you throw up all of the problems. But this is why it's not going to be successful. And I think right now it's so fucked to me that this thing is happening in Manitoba. Almost like on the heels of the whole, like, search for the billionaires in the ocean. Like, if they can go look for the gelatinous remains of some billionaires in the ocean. Like, you can't go and look in a local dump for a couple bodies.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : Well, and, and, and, and that the Picton thing is interesting too, right? Because I don't know if you. I don't know if you paid attention. I don't know how much you looked at that. But Kim Rossmo. So Kim Rossmo was, a Vancouver police service member. Kim Rossmo is actually the developer of geospatial profiling. And Kim Rossmo, as a Vancouver Police Department member, was saying to the police department that there is a serial killer likely living in the area where Pickton was killing women in the Vancouver area. And he was shut up by the police because it was going to be bad for tourism. Kim Rossmo left the police. He's now a professor at, I think Texas now University of Texas. But he literally wrote a book on criminal investigative failures. And he talked about Pickton specifically because he actually had identified the location where Pickton was. And they shut him down because they didn't want to interfere with, with tourism. And what that says to me is that Indigenous women. Because the vast majority of pictures victims were Indigenous and some were from. Actually, I, I know two. I actually knew two of them from the Edmonton area who went to Vancouver to work as streets in Vancouver. I actually knew them. And it just showed that we do not care as a society. And I, I'm being very, very, very purposeful on that term. We do not care as a society about Indigenous women. We just don't. It's. It's, you know, we don't honor Indigenous women. And when you think about. And this is the part that bugs me, that bugs me so much, is when you think about the history of where we are. We're sitting in Turtle Island. I'm, on three, six territory. And matriarchal societies were prevalent in this con, in this continent prior to first contact. And what happens when the European. My people, the European people came over? We did not like that women had power. So we shut it down. We shut it down and we changed things. And the sad part is we're still doing that today. We're still shutting down Indigenous women's strength and power. Because for whatever reason we fear, it
>> Myrna McCallum : can't help but feel really sad because there's all, like, all this work that I do now is really centered on, like, how do we bring healing into our workplaces? How do we bring healing into our systems? How do we bring healing into our own lives and into our own homes? How do we start to, like, how do we do that just as a collect, like, as a. As all human beings. And recently, through this, like, love bag course that I created that was just for Indigenous professionals, I was beginning to invite Indigenous people together to explore some of the ways in which we become traumatized or we engage in traumatizing behavior as a result of, like, the legacy of the residential school system. All of the things that, you know, either compel us to internalize our own oppression or we begin to oppress others. Right? And a lot of what I talk about is. Centers around two things. One is, like, how. How important self regulation is, like feeling and believing that you are safe in your body. We, I think we can't really talk about safety in the body without talking about. And confronting the reality that for many of us Indigenous people, we lacked safety from a very early age because either. Either we were having to parent our parents. So taking, like, feeling safe for ourselves wasn't okay because our parents were, like, messed up and we had to take care of them because either they were just coming out of residential school or they were raised by parents who went to the residential school system. One byproduct of that whole fucking thing is that it turned many of us into sexual predators and abusers where we perpetrated on our own family members, groomed our own family members, did all of these. We know this, right? And sexual abuse, we know, like, Dr. Gabor Mate has talked about this. He worked on the downtown east side in Vancouver for 10 years, and he has said every Indigenous woman he met living on the downtown east side as a homeless person or as a drug addict had one thing in common. They had all been sexually abused as children. There is something about sexual abuse that rips something out of you. You can see through somebody's life why engaging in behaviors that either disconnect you from yourself are going to be attractive to you. So whether that's addictions of all sorts and. Or why you would engage in sex work, like, why you would do that, especially if you have no. And this. I'm not speaking for all sex workers. I'm just speaking for this particular. Those particular women who were abused as children who are feeding addictions. Who are, homeless who are engaging in sex work because they have no options and have no sense of, like, well, being in their own bodies, and no sense of autonomy and no sense of dignity and no sense of hope and all of these things. And so there is, like, I'm talking about this in this long, winding way because there is a path that has led to where we arrive. And it's not like any little Indigenous girl at 3, 4, 5 thinks, oh, I want to be an addict when I grow up. I want to be homeless. I want to be a sex worker. I want to be murdered. Absolutely not. And as I think about this idea of promoting self regulation and promoting to my own people, like, we have to tell ourselves that we are safe in our bodies and how, even if it feels like, foreign, because we've never actually felt safe when things happen. Like what's happening right now. Dan, I have to tell you, I don't feel safe in my body. I. I was driving out here the other day. I was driving, from. From Vancouver to Saskatoon. I'm in Saskatoon today. I decided to come visit my grandkids, for the summer. And I pulled off, at a roadside stop, somewhere up on the Coquihalla Highway. And I went. It was just a roadside stop where there's lots of truckers. Like, you know the stops, right? It's not a convenience store. I pull over, I go in, and right on the doors is a picture of a missing Indigenous woman. And then on the other door is a missing Indigenous man. I go in and, because I had spilled something in my car and my hands were really, like, sticky. So that's why I pulled over. I needed to wash my hands. And so I go in and I start to wash my hands. And then I start thinking, holy fuck, I need to hurry up and get the hell out of here. Because first off, no one knows where I am. No one would know that I pulled over at this roadside stop. I see two posters of, two missing Indigenous people, and there's nothing around me but a bunch of truckers. I need to get out of here right now. And I didn't even, like, dry my hands. I just got the hell out and I kept going. And so since that, that moment on the drive here, I've just been thinking about how I don't feel safe. I, don't feel safe in my body. I. I worry about my daughter. I worry about my son, who are very visible Indigenous children. I worry less about Blueberry, who looks like a little white girl. genetics, you know, it is what it is. But I'm just struggling, Dan, because it's like, how. How do we, as Indigenous people, how do we even begin to engage in healing in a meaningful way when this country tells us that you, like, safety in your body is a privilege that you are not entitled to?
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : And that's, to me, that's the thing, right? Like. And I look at the research that we've done when we've looked at the victimization of men and women incarcerated in western prisons in the country of Canada, in the prairies, and we did research at the Edmonton institution for women, and 73% of our sample was Indigenous and 100% of our sample had experienced sexual violence. So we're incurse. And if you start to look at the incarceration rates, the incarceration rates of Indigenous women have gone up exponentially. We're incarcerating trauma. That's what we're doing. We're incarcerating trauma. And instead of trying to address it, we're incarcerating it, which makes no sense. And I. And I look at. I look at. I look at my daughter Nicole. I look at her. Her daughter, she's got two daughters. And those two daughters are, you know, one's just about to graduate high school, and they're in the United States. And even in the United States, the treatment or the racism that happens is ridiculous. Right? And there's no safe space right now, in my opinion, for Indigenous people in this country. In the United States, there's no truly safe space because we have. And. And interestingly enough, I've actually met with. I was. When I. My. One of my old jobs at EPS at the Amnon police service was I worked with newcomers, to Canada, and newcomers to Canada were told, beware of Indigenous people. They were literally told that as they were coming through the borders that Indigenous people are dangerous and are violent and they're. And you don't want to be around them. And I remember talking to people and they were actually coming from Syria. I remember having this conversation. And they were literally told that as they were coming to this country that Indigenous people are dangerous. And we have unfortunately set a narrative in this country, in my opinion, where we don't honor Indigenous people, but we treat Indigenous people in our country as an other and as a danger. And that. That if you're scared of something like our. Our. Our biology tells us to be afraid of something that doesn't look like us. So if you're afraid of something that doesn't look like Us. But then we are going to have our be told that something doesn't look like it's a scary. We double tap the very fear that's there. And it creates this intense fear of Indigenous people and we have not ever honored it. And if you look at and, and I watch TV like you watch movies, you watch old movies, even the movie Dances With Wolves, and, which is not a horrible movie, but at the same time it just shows such a differentiation of Indigenous peoples compared to other. And it shows the ceremonies as some kind of mystical, magical, unrealistic, when really the ceremonies are beautiful and they're healing. And I can tell you from my own personal experience as a, as a white, man, a munio, a settler, one of the greatest healings for me is Indigenous ceremony. I smudge in my house all the time. I go to sweats as often as I can. And what I've found from a, from a, from a settler perspective is that's where I'm most comfortable from a spirituality perspective. But we've never ever from a country perspective looked at Indigenous culture as beautiful as it is. We've kind of just pushed it aside for sure.
>> Myrna McCallum : And just a point on Dances With Wolves, Dan, Like, I'm sure many would say that that movie promoted a lot of harmful stereotypes. One of them was that the only good Indigenous woman is a, ah, is a white woman who is playing an Indigenous woman. Yes.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : and you look at Pocahontas, right? If you really look, if you really look at the history of Pocahontas. Pocahontas was a teenager, 12 year old. Not even a teenager. A 12 year old. We ended up with a white man, a 12 year old. It was a, it was, it's a story of child sexual abuse and we've made it a Disney movie.
>> Myrna McCallum : I know, it's fucked.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : It's fucked. I don't think there's another word for it. It's fucked.
>> Myrna McCallum : It's fucked. I mean, I should like get in touch with my friend Jennifer Podemski and pitch, some kind of documentary about like the treatment of Indigenous women in this country and we'll just call it, it's Fuck. Like, I don't even know what to say, say anymore about, about the state of things. Like it feels like it's, it's all devolving and, and I'm not getting into these conversations on social media about like, well, it's going to cost $184 million and who's going to pay for that? And well, it's going to be this. And you need this, and then what about this? I don't want to even participate in that conversation because like I said, there's either the people who the put up the barriers, because that's what you do. You deflect when you don't actually want to solve a problem. And people who are solution finders, like I am, look to see how the hell do we make this happen and then we make it happen. But I know without a doubt, if it was white women in that landfill, people would move heaven and earth. They would be galvanizing. They would be like, I don't care what it costs. We're getting our daughter, our sister, our child, our granddaughter, our mom, our auntie. We're getting them out of the landfill. But because they're, as you said, like, just, Like this. Just a practice. They're just an Indian, or they're just an Indigenous woman, or they're just a sex worker, or they're just a. Whatever the message is, like, well, that's where they belong. And I know some fucking racists have been saying exactly that shit on social media. Social media.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : You're 100, right? I. I said this. I used to say this all the time, too. I'm like, if from 1988 to 1998, before they started Project Care, if that was all girls from the University of Alberta going missing, we would have had a project here within three minutes. But because it was Indigenous women from the street, it became their nothing, right? And. And I'd literally, I'd literally sit there. I'd literally sit. I'd sit there with my wife. We'd be watching the tv, and. And a girl's name would come up, and Tara would be like. And I would start. I would start to cry. And Tara's like, you knew her. I'm m. Like, I knew her. I know her mom. I know her dad. I know her family. And as a police officer walking a beat, that was the beautiful thing about walking a beat is you got to know people, right? But you got to know them, and you got to know them so well that they became part of your story. And I would literally sit there, and I'd be like, oh. And as a cop, not being able to do anything about it, because there was nothing you could do, because what is. You're not a homicide detective. You're not a. And I'm not. I'm not part of Project Care. I'm just the guy. And it was one of those funny and interesting things where a friend of mine Teresa, Strong, who I can say her name because she's fine with it. And she's been on podcasts and with me before. She's a Metis woman and she was a sexual worker and a gang member. And when the whole thing came out about street, checks and, and carding, she said street checks saved my life because Dan would street check. I would. And I would street check in a way. And this is where I think we need to change some of the way we think about things. It's not about what the police do, it's about how the police do it. And I would go up to a lot of women that worked on my sex work, workers that worked on my beat and I'd be like, I just want to write down this time that I'm with you because if something happens, I want to make sure we know the last time you were seen and I want to log it down, because I want to make sure you're safe and I want to help you be safe. And I can tell you right from my perspective and my experience that never was, I was never told no. And it was the, you are looking out for us. You are our guardian. And unfortunately I was the Guardian of 140 sex workers in my beat. And we lost a lot of them and they got dumped and they got left in a field or they got lit on fire. Because you said that earlier. One of them I can remember specifically, she was dumped and burnt and I was like, it was, it was a kick to the frickin guts every time. Because these people were part of my story, these women were part of my story and I cared for them. And as a police officer I could do nothing to stop it.
>> Myrna McCallum : It's heartbreaking. Like I listen to you and I just think about how heartbreaking it all is and you know, even this language about like I, I don't even really want to talk about sex workers. I want to talk about these women as they're somebody's daughter. Maybe in many cases there's somebody's mother and some cases there's somebody's grandmother, there's somebody's sister, there's somebody's and there's somebody's community member. I think when media starts promoting people, identities as like a street person or a homeless person or an addict or a sex worker, these are the ways in which we start to other and dehumanize 100% and I don't want to participate in that. Like these, these women, Morgan Harris and Mercedes Myron, we've been seeing their family members all over the media, and I love that because it's helping to push against whatever media is saying who these women were as Indigenous like, how they lived their lives, and. And compelling us to. To think about them in, in broader terms. They are mothers and they are daughters and they are sisters, and they are all the things. And I just. I'm really scared, Dan. Like, and I'm scared. I'm scared and I'm sad, and I am. Like, how do we as like a, people. I mean, and not to say that you have the answers to this, but, like, how do we even heal as a people?
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : I don't. I don't have the answers at all.
>> Myrna McCallum : No, I don't either.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : But I. I believe this. There's one thing, and I think it's this one thing that we haven't done enough of, and it's proximity. Proximity breeds care and love, and distance breeds fear. And I think. And it was funny. I was at my, After my oldest daughter got married in Newmarket, I walked Nicole, my. My adopted daughter, down the island, Hawaii, and we went to a luau. We went to a luau. And it was. And I struggle with the commercialization of it, but the community. And you're sitting there and. And you're watching this, and it was. It was. They told stories and it was beautiful. And I think what we haven't done enough in this country is make proximity to Indigenous communities accessible. Right? Like, I've gone to. I'm so fortunate. I've. I'm so fortunate. I've been to powwows, I've been to sweats, I've been to ceremony. But we don't do enough making sure other people go to powwow. Right? Like celebrating the beautiful culture that is Indigenous people is something we need to do in this country, because then you would hopefully see society less likely to excuse the murders of Indigenous women as just. Right. And. And you're right. I 100 agree with you that these I don't like. I look at the women that I. That I dealt with. They were mothers, they were daughters, they were sisters, they were friends. They were connected in so many ways to people. And they, in the media, makes them just, whatever word you want to use and which is wrong. And it's time that we stopped just up people. And it's time that we started being proximate to people because I. And I. And I've said this for. You've heard me talk about on my own podcast and your podcast. I have been so fortunate and experienced so much love and so much acceptance from the Indigenous community where I've been given a Cree name, I've sat in ceremony, and it heals me. It's helped heal me, and it continuously helps to heal me. And on days when things aren't going great, the first. One of the first things I do is I go down to my bundle and I grab some sage, or I grab some white birch fungus, or I grab some sweetgrass and I smudge. And it freaking helps so much. But I think what we haven't done as a country is celebrate Indigenous history and heritage the way that we should. And I think that's a first step, because if you do that, you're proximate. And when you're proximate, you love and care, and it's really hard to dehumanize them.
>> Myrna McCallum : I love that you mentioned that because you mentioned it previously on another podcast episode about, like, proximity. And that's really important. I mean, you know, one of the reasons why I. I don't talk a lot about reconciliation is because I'm more interested in relationships. Like, if you wanna. You wanna learn how to build relationships with Indigenous people and figure out why that's important. Yeah. Call me in if you want to, like, advance reconciliation as an organization. I'm not your person. Like, no, I don't want to put my energy there. There's other people who do that, and that's great. That's not me. I think it all. It all begins and ends in relationship. When I saw the aptn, broadcast, I just felt like I wanted to talk about this. And as. As I was listening to you, Dan, I was thinking about, like, who. Who is this episode for? And I mean, I could say all the things, oh, this is for all the allies. Oh, like, what can you do? And use your voice? And it's actually, I don't. Maybe if you feel compelled, if you're an ally listening to this, that's great to educate yourself and do what you can. It's really for other Indigenous women that I'm recording this episode, and it's. For me, this episode is really just to say if you don't feel safe, you're not alone and not feeling safe. This country, this country has been built on. On ensuring that we don't feel safe. And Justin Trudeau and all his reconciliation rhetoric has done nothing to actually pick up the calls for justice that, you know, the MMIWG Report provided. And because of his, like, lack of action and because others have not been so mobilized to Take this up like they have with the TRC's calls to. This is the state that Indigenous women will live in. And how do we get to a place of healing and self regulation when this country has told us that we're not entitled to feel safe in our bodies? I don't even know. I think this is going to be a question I'm going to put together one day when we're having a talk. And I might have to bring him on the podcast to have that conversation, so everyone can hear what he thinks. But, I just feel really sad for us and I feel really frustrated because if we don't get to feel safe in our bodies, how the fuck do we ever get to a place of healing? How do we heal our own traumas? How do we heal the intergenerational burdens and legacies that have, like, been passed on to us? How do we ever get to a place of, like, truly thriving when we are denied safety in our body?
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : You can't. And I said this on my, my podcast with my brother the day on Just Us and justice and other things. And I can't remember who we were talking might have been talking to Tabitha Campbell, who's an Indigenous PhD, who, I'm, I adore, but I'm so tired of politicians wearing ribbon shirts and ribbon skirts as performative actions. If you aren't doing something. The fact that we have 160 communities in this country that don't have clean drinking water, all Indigenous communities, by the way. 160. And we haven't addressed that. The fact that, that. So there's a safety issue. You can't even drink your water right. And the fact that we have Indigenous women being murdered at a higher rate than any other population in our country, the fact that sadly 60% of those murders are as a result of domestic violence. The fact that we haven't talked about domestic violence being a man's issue. It's. We expect women to, Indigenous women specifically, to stay safe by being away from the people that they are being victimized by. And instead of saying, no, it's not about you being away from them, it's about them understanding their role as in domestic violence. It's about men understanding that they too are a part of domestic violence. It's about men understanding that if it's not for us, we would not have as many murders as we have because we are the problem in domestic violence. And then when you take away the domestic violence thing, and let's go to the other stuff that happens on the street with sex trade workers. It's a men's issue. It's not the women's issue about trying to maintain their safety. It's about men understanding our role as human beings to make sure we keep people safe. And I'm not talking about toxic masculinity. I'm not talking about masculinity at all. I'm talking about the m. The failure of our educational systems, understanding that our role as men in violence is terrible. The fact that one in every. What is it?
Every. There's three women a day in North America that die by men who say they love them. Three times a day, women die by men who say they love them. We human traffic 60,000 women per year in North America and Indigenous women are human trafficked at a higher level than non Indigenous women in this country. And that is because there is a market of men who are willing to pay for those sexual sex trafficked victims. And we need to stop with all of the. And start making this a man's issue, a male issue of addressing domestic violence, sexual violence, human trafficking, sexual assault, like that's a man's issue. We need to own that. And the failure of us owning that puts it on the women. And the women then become re victimized and they become victim blamed because they put themselves in a position that's not true. They put themselves in whatever position they did and some man did the violence against them. And we have to stop, start addressing that as a man's issue, as a male issue, as a way to. Let's stop victim blaming. Let's start addressing these things. Let's teach our boys to be compassionate, kind and loving. And let's teach that that's okay. Because I think one of the problems in our society is we don't allow men to feel. And as a result of that, we hurt. We hurt because we are hurt. So all of us. And that's not an excuse. And and I will tell you from my own personal experience, my own therapy, my own background, I have been a very mean person at times. And I can be extremely vicious. And I, I had heard a quote the other day and it hit me very, very close and deep. You have no idea how much violence it took me to be this gentleman. And that's meant something to me. And I think I'm a good dad, I think I'm a good husband, I think I'm a good whatever. But I think those things became such a strong issue for, for me that's pretty powerful, Dan, how much violence it took to become this gentle. And I feel it. I feel it, too. I mean, I'm incredibly gentle with my grandkids, but only because of how much violence it took to. To get me to that point. I mean, I knew exactly who I didn't want to be. my mom taught me that, actually. So that was the takeaway from all that violence. I really appreciate you making time on your time off to have this conversation with me. I mean, we don't have the answers about how we make it better and how we motivate people who have power to act and men who have a responsibility to do better, to actually do better. But I think it was important to just. I needed to have this conversation with you, and I needed to say, I don't feel safe. And I really. I know for sure if I don't feel safe, so many other Indigenous women out there and listening to this podcast don't feel safe either. And then the struggle is like, how do we ever get to a place of true healing and self regulation? I don't know, but I'll have conversations with somebody, Gabor or someone else or many others about this. But it's a conversation, I think, that needs to be had.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : I agree. And I think we need to have these conversations more often than not, because I think oftentimes people sit and they feel unsafe, they feel these things, and they feel isolated as a result, because they feel like it's just them feeling that. Right. And I think. I think of my. My grandkids, I think of my granddaughters, and I think of them as 16 years old and younger, growing up in a society that doesn't allow them to feel safe. How we need to make sure. We need to move past that and change things and start to make safety for Indigenous women a priority.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah, exactly. And this government needs to answer those calls for justice, for fuck's sakes.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : Yeah, quit. Quit talking about it and wearing ribbon shirts and actually start doing it.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right, Dan. I really hope that, you know, in the next month or so, we're going to see this premiere, have a change of heart or a change of mind, and that the search of that landfill gets underway, so that the young women I've been watching on TV talk about their mom and their family member get to have that closure and get to have that ceremony and send their. Their. Their own people off in a good way into the spirit world. Because as long as their bodies are in a landfill, that's not going to happen.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : And it has to be. We have to change the way the government looks at things and it's not about whatever safety they're talking about. It's the priority of these young ladies and their lives and the worth that they have in the world. And I think we have failed in this circumstance, in my opinion to explain and express the worth of these women.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah, yeah. Like it sends the message is Indigenous women are not entitled to dignity. Indigenous women are not entitled to safety. Indigenous women are not entitled to security. Indigenous women are not entitled to respect. Indigenous women are not even entitled to a fucking proper burial. That actually Indigenous women are not even entitled to fucking justice. Like the guy who did this is likely gonna get away with it. And ah, if it's not murder, it will be a lesser charge and he'll walk in a couple years.
>> Ret. Police Officer Dan Jones : Well, it's, and, and you know what? I, I was on the news the other day talking about this with the two Metis hunters that were killed by the white men. And the one individual, one of the white men is going up for early parole. He's going up for early parole. And I, and I said on the news, I said we devalue Indigenous lives. When you look at statistically, the report from Ivan Zinger, the correctional investigator, shows that Indigenous people get parole less likely than their non Indigenous counterparts. They are in jail longer, they get parole, they don't get parole. And now we're going to parole someone early on the murder of an Indigenous of two Indigenous men. And they're white. What we're doing is we're showing blatant systemic racism and we're, we're, and we're saying it's fine and we need to stop, we need to stop devaluing Indigenous lives.
>> Myrna McCallum : Hell yeah.
>> Myrna McCallum : That's our show for today folks. Thanks so much for listening. If you have any comments, feedback, rave reviews, you know where to find me at the trauma informed lawyer on Instagram, the trauma informed lawyer on LinkedIn. Or you could search my name. You can also check me out on twitter @thetil podcast.