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Decolonizing through Indigenous worldviewsDecolonizing correctionsBeverley Jacobs, Yvonne Johnson and Joey Twins Introduction Decolonizing corrections means that there is a complete transformative change of the criminal legal system called corrections - a foreign colonial prison system forced upon Indigenous peoples.[1] Indigenous peoples, and specifically Indigenous women, have borne the brunt of this system where we now see the highest statistics of Indigenous women in this system which “exemplifies Canada’s racist legacy of colonization.”[2] The female Indigenous population is only 5% in Canada, but 38% of Indigenous women make up the female federal prison population, and Indigenous women make up more than 50% of the federal prison population in the Pacific and Prairie Regions.[3] Indigenous girls represent 6% of the Canadian girls’ population, but 44% were Indigenous girls in custody in 2008-2009.[4] Indigenous girls are the fastest growing population in youth custody.[5] As noted by Patricia Monture-Angus: In 2000, Aboriginal women comprised 23% of the federal prison population when Aboriginal peoples made up only 2.8% of the general Canadian population. . . . This over-representation has been steadily rising since the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women reported in 1990. Then, Aboriginal women comprised 15% of the federal prisoners.[6] [7] The steady increase has not stopped. In only 10 years, the number of incarcerated Indigenous women in federal custody increased by 76.4%. In 2005-2006, there were 140 incarcerated Indigenous women compared to 247 in 2015- 20167 The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against women, its causes and consequences provided a more grotesque statistic in a 10-year span: “Between 2001-2002 and 2011-2012, the incarcerated Indigenous population has increased by 37.3%, while incarcerated Indigenous women have increased by 109%.”[8] This is disgusting. Of Indigenous women who do end up inside, 42% of them end up being classified as maximum security.[9] As a result, they are not able to access programs and services to assist in their rehabilitation. Fifty' percent of those inside are Indigenous women serving time in segregation/solitary confinement.[10] Solitary confinement and segregation arc documented as human rights violations,[11] and yet it is Indigenous women who continue to suffer this inhumane treatment inside prison walls. These statistics demonstrate that the system is in further decline. In 1990, almost 30 years ago, two Indigenous women, Lana Fox and Fran Sugar, addressed their experiences in prison during the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women as follows: We have often said that the women inside have the understanding to help themselves, that all that is required is the right kind of resources, support and help. The money spent on studies would be much better spent on family visits, on culturally appropriate help, on reducing our powerlessness to heal ourselves. But the reality is that prison conditions grow worse. We cry out for a meaningful healing process that will have real impact on our lives, but the objectives and implementation of this healing process must be premised on our need to heal and walk in balance.[12] In 1999, Patricia Monture-Angus noted that since 1990, the year the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women (TFFSW) reported, “further evidence was accumulated, such as the Arbour Inquiry, which demonstrates . . . that things have gotten worse for all federally sentenced women including Aboriginal women.”[13] Things are beyond worse today, almost 30 years since TFFSW and 23 years since the Arbour Inquiry. This chapter focuses on the experiences of two Indigenous women who were incarcerated at the same time as Lana Fox and Fran Sugar. Yvonne Johnson and Joey Twins share their experiences of how prison conditions continue to grow beyond worse. They have survived in a very dehumanized system that in many instances results in brutal human rights violations wherein the public is completely unaware of what happens inside jails. Prior to colonization, Indigenous peoples did not have a prison system. Without consent or conquest, Indigenous peoples have been forced into a Eurocentric criminal legal system with foreign principles of conflict and punishment. I am not saying that Indigenous peoples did not have conflict. Humanness and conflict are inevitable, but Indigenous peoples had ways and means of addressing conflict according to their sources of Indigenous laws. Indigenous laws are about balance in all of creation and amongst human beings. Indigenous peoples, through the practice of Indigenous laws, had a way of understanding someone who may have missed something, a teaching or a purpose that had been missed in their teachings which may have caused harm to someone else for some reason. To utilize an Indigenous conflict system goes directly to the core of that and to understand why a person would want to cause harm to someone else. Starting with that, it was about an imbalance if something was out of place or if something was done wrong. There was always ceremony, for example, that brought Indigenous peoples back to their original life path. The stories of experiential Indigenous women During my previous life as president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, I met many powerful Indigenous women who ended up in confined cages and spaces. I saw their power and their resilience from experiences of being traumatized on the outside before they ended up in prison but even more so when they end up inside. In knowing about Yvonne and Joey’s stories of their lives in jail, I have always been angry about the internal processes and human rights violations that occur on the inside. It is unbelievable what Corrections Canada gets away with inside. Yvonne Johnson and Joey Twins are two nchiyaw (Cree) women whom I met along my path when they were serving life sentences in federal prisons and now they are both on parole and leading healthy lives. I call Yvonne and Joey survivors of the colonial prison system because they both have been able to get out of the system: Yvonne was sentenced to life in prison with 25 years to apply for parole and Joey was sentenced to life with 10 years to apply for parole. Yvonne came out to look after her grandchildren. They both impressed me at how brilliant they are. I call them my friends today. I invited them to participate in the Decolonizing Law conference,[14] of which this publication is a result. Their powerful words need to be reiterated here because they experienced firsthand the colonial prison system and offered the best solutions to decolonizing corrections. The following sets out their experiences, which are edited transcriptions of their presentations at the conference. Yvonne Johnson I was born and raised in Montana until I was 16 years old. My father was an American of Norwegian descent and an ex-Marine. My mother was Cree from Red Pheasant Reserve in Saskatchewan. Sadly, she passed away on March 24th of 2018. I am of the Red Race, of the Cree Nation, of the human being. I like to acknowledge all the ancestors, the spirits, and the helpers. I would like to acknowledge my friends Bev, Joey, and all others that are present that I may know or not know. When I was in the United States, the first time I ever hit jail I was six years old. In the jails down there, the toilet was a hole in the floor and a trough with running water through it, and the bed was steel frame with chain link to lay on. If they wanted to be extra mean, they took the mattress out. It was a real old city jail. In 1971, my brother was killed in Butte Count)' Jail when he was 19 years old. They claimed my brother was stoned out of his mind and admitted to being high, when he was to have committed an act that ended his life. My mother and father fought for a coroner’s inquest. Their finding showed no drugs in his system. Self- inflicted death still stood as cause of death. Mom was not going to let them get away with killing her son and passing it off as suicide in the jail. Apparently, my brother was not the only one the police were to have killed. Mother wrote letters all the way up the line, with no support or acknowledgement of brother’s death. Then they closed Butte jail. My mother became the first woman truck driver in an open pit mine in Butte, Montana so that she could feed her kids. She said she was going to get trained for a man’s job with a man’s pay. She was to become the first woman in the Teamsters’ Union, one of the toughest unions there was in 1972. Mother bought a car and headed out to Wounded Knee, answering the call from the American Indian Movement (AIM). She went on and traveled with Dennis Banks and Russell Means. She was part of the caravan of broken treaties. She was almost shot in the standoff at the church in Wounded Knee. She was a cook, and the man that walked in front of her when she was cooking got shot in the chest and was killed instantly. She ended up in Washington, DC, when President Nixon got voted in. AIM at that time dissipated. My mom came back to Montana, and she advised my father she wanted to move back to her peoples. Mom said she could not handle living in Butte anymore. Dad refused to come into Canada, so they divorced. She loaded us kids up and we went with her back to her reserve, to Red Pheasant Reserve, Saskatchewan. My mom married a white man, so they alienated us on the reserve and did not give us any support of any kind. We did not get Christmas gifts at Christmas time. We had to pay for all our firewood, haul our own water. Good thing Grampa was a good hunter. My grandmother gave us use of her home and we lived on Red Pheasant for quite a few years. There was no running water. We would get itchy and sore between the legs from having to drink still water (sough water). All of us kids got severe diarrhea. We had no car, so we used an old car hood as a sled and pulled it by horse. We opened up an old oil drum with an ax and made sure any sharp pieces were curved back so as not to get stabbed or sliced on the metal. We walked the horse into the water and used a cloth to strain the buckets of water we took from what they say was a lake but it was a sough. We got sick but mom said we would get used to it and we did. At least in 1972 Gramma’s house had electricity. We had a wood cookstove and heated and cooked by firewood. My grandparents lived next to us in an old school bus they used to live in with a wood cookstove inside. I’m told my great-grandmother lived to be 116. She passed in 1976, the same year the United States celebrated being two hundred years old. She was free before they created reserves in Canada and then she was put on reserve. The government and churches moved in and started controlling and dominating everything. Prisons of grass, imprisoned by invisible walls, where the warden was the Indian Agent, the guards were NWMP, then RCMP, then city' police. Reserves ran like prisons. They stole the children and would not allow persons off reserve without written consent by the Indian Agent. No native was allowed off reserve to seek education. They had to be granted work release passes for seasonal jobs, usually called Indian jobs like cleaning farms lands called rock pickers, fence builders, bailing hay, sugar beating, etc. Once all the wild game on reserve was gone, Grampa would sit for days and wait for the game to cross the line to feed his family. If the police were informed that we had wild meat, they would confiscate it. We would have to hide it in the bush when we knew they were coming. Persons were rewarded for ratting on others to gain favours or more funding from the Indian Agent. Grampa would leave the reserve if he found work, but the Indian Agent demanded his slice of his pay. My great-grandfather was Chief Big Bear. He was hung in North Battleford in the so-called retribution of the Frog Lake Massacre. They took all the native peoples from reserves around the area and kids out of the local residential schools and they made them go into town and watch as they hung my relations out there. Big Bear’s descendants. Big Bear’s people. The kids cried and suffered and they told them over and over “this is what is going to happen to you.” They went back into residential school and many were killed there too. Many of them didn’t come out. They started the “Wheat Trade” in Saskatchewan where they wouldn’t allow native people to have anything but basic farm implements so they wouldn’t be able to self-sustain themselves. My grandfather used to sneak off reserve to go hunting. There was nothing on reserve for them to be able to hunt to cat so they starved them. Work them one day then they starve them three days. Same thing inside the federal prisons. Mother was born in a tent on the reserve. They didn’t report her to the Indian agent because at that time they were stealing the children. My grandmother took my mom to be baptized when she was 4 or 5 and a report was put in by the church to the police. They came to kidnap her and all her siblings that came behind her and put her in the Dumas/Thunder Bird residential school. They kept her there till she aged out at 16 years of age. She tried to run away from school but was deceived by farmers who offered to feed them, just to be picked up by RCMP and taken back to school. She ran because a priest tried to rape her. She ran only to be returned to the very priest who attempted to rape her and actually beat her unconscious where others were made to watch and bear witness. I brought my mother home to die amongst family rather than in a hospital or care facility. One day, I bathed my mother before she passed on and when I rolled her over, I saw the scars on her buttocks that the priest gave her at residential school for attempting to run away. The pain, hurt and suffering she went through which was most likely the reason why she married my white father. She was no longer an Indian that anyone can do anything to. She went back and took all her younger siblings out of residential school, all four of them. Now the next challenge mother had to face was not losing her children into the child welfare system. It is just like a cow and the butchers. As soon as the baby cow drops, they scoop it, cut it up and sell it. In essence, that is what they do to native people and their children in child services. My mom was beaten for speaking Cree. Yet, now in 2018,1 am sitting on the city transit bus, with a lot of people from other countries and they were speaking their language freely. I sat on the bus and cried because I don’t even know my own tongue. They don’t know how lucky or blessed they are to be able to come here as free citizens while native peoples are not in their own country. I got arrested. I believe and I will go to my death saying this: it was really highly politically charged then and it still is. In the end, I got sentenced to life, 25. The other man who stood trial with me, and who had all the evidence against him stood trial with me. Same court room, same jury, same evidence - the jury came back with second degree on him and first degree on me. He got life, 10 and I got life, 25. All circumstantial evidence other than a witness statement by my own cousin who made many different statements and whom the Crown got her to say just what they did. Just for the sake of mentioning, there were at least three other murder ease convictions, none for first degree though. Lighting case, Blue Horn Case and Omcasso Case - all over turned because they found their one eyewitness in all these cases came forward after saying they were being manipulated by Crown to give evidence as they had. I made history first, first degree-conviction of a native woman. I lost hope in my witness ever coming forward to clear me as she is dead now. There were statements made in court like “these people, they arc not like us.” Those were the exact words they said. He turned around and said “Yvonne has had a lifetime of sexual abuse, therefore she took it upon herself to become a vigilante and slay a man she believed was a child molester.” I never knew this man to be a child molester. The police did and my other co-accused did. I never knew for fact until I actually had a victim reconciliation and I heard it from their voice. A confirmation that I had to sit in prison 25 years for. I got sentenced on March 20, 1991. I sat for 30 days to launch an appeal, and eventually, I was denied an appeal. I was sent to Prison for Women (P4W). I tried to stay in the province because that’s where my kids were. My request to stay in Province was denied. A Placement Officer said, “The only place you are going is Kingston Prison for Women. This is the only place you will be housed because of the severity of your crime. I have your file right here.” He opened it and all that was there were newspaper clippings of my conviction, a transfer warrant, and pen placement order for P4W. He also said, “you are sentenced to life and life you shall serve till you die,” and this does happen as I saw women die of cancer in there. I hit there April 25, 1991. That’s where it took me a while to get my groundings to try and fight for an appeal. I never did make it to the Supreme Court because they were saying I was in P4W and not eligible for representation of a lawyer in Alberta via Alberta Legal Aid. I was now officially a resident in Ontario. When I tried to get a lawyer and get legal aid to pay for a lawyer in Ontario, I couldn’t find one that was legally entitled to work in Alberta. I knew that was it. I definitely got officially screwed again. I let my lawyer go as I felt he did not represent me to the fullest he was capable of as he failed at trial and again at the appeal. A lot of things were happening in the prison at the time. There were repercussions from the large numbers of suicides and the riot as well as the taking of CSC to court over the deaths and everything going on within the prison. There was a mention of closing P4W and replacing it with five regional female prisons across Canada. I affiliated with the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) at that time. We sat down with Sharon Mclvor, Kim Pate and Patricia Monturc at that time and we fought tor the new prisons to be built across Canada. At this time, the Commission headed by Justice Louise Arbor was under way as well. Then the first and only Native Women’s Healing Lodge was built which would become a federal prison in Saskatchewan along with five others across Canada. That is when I first met Bev. Bev became the chairperson of the NWAC. There were a lot of things happening but basically the justice system is flawed. More than flawed if you read the results of Arbour’s Commission Report. There was a call for a total revamping of both native and mainstream justice penal systems for women, or so I was led to believe. You will see the victims that say, “there is no justice for the victims,” and then you see the so-called offenders saying “well, the justice is not working. It is warped.” If you have everybody on all sides saying the system isn’t working or balancing out, then I say go back to the way the native people did it. When I was in court, I wanted so much to get up there and tell them exactly what happened in my perspective. That couldn’t be done in court of law the way that it was done. The question is why are we there and why are we expendable? We arc not all hateful, crooked and spiteful. But we will stand to fight. We will fight for a helpless child or a helpless woman when there is nobody there to protect them. How many murdered and missing women do they have to take? Most of our men are in prison because of fighting on the streets. After my book was published,[15] the same people that got me incarcerated came at me again. They used me to abolish the 15-year review and to press the law that says people who are convicted with an offence are no longer allowed to talk about it or to share it even if it may bring good change to things. Scott Newark showed up at a place where Kim Pate was and walked up to Kim and said, “Yvonne Johnson is never going to get out of prison.” He said they were going to be there in the courtroom showing full force. I had to go back to the court in which I was sentenced under. I had to go back to the same judge, the same racist area of Wctaskiwin, and under the same conservative stronghold. I knew that if I walked into that court I might as well walk out and throw myself back at the prison. One thing they were not expecting was that I got a change of venue and it was sent to Edmonton. One of the reasons I was granted a change in venue was because I would have been denied the possibility of a fair and unbiased court proceeding in Wctaskiwin. The Crown did not want any one on my jury that had any knowledge of my book or had bias against the 15-year review or were racist or bias against native peoples. One jury member was excused because of her hate towards native peoples and was very angry when dismissed. Her final words were “that is ok there are lots more on that jury who also hate Indians.” The jury themselves also excused a person who they overheard talking hate while waiting to be called in to the courtroom for possible jury selection. I was blown away by that. When the court was done, the jury unanimously said I could apply for parole. Even though I was granted the possibility to apply for parole did not mean I was actually going to get it granted within this system of Corrections Canada, which is not the same as a court of law. I was about to get my 15-year parole review. Even the National Parole Board was staffed against me. At that time, I fought for Elders to sit at the parole hearing. They pulled back all the Elders. I fought to have Circle Talks at parole hearings. They pulled that back on me. They stomped all over it. It was a mess. By the time they left it was called an inquisition. I was granted my 15-year review where I could apply for parole. I was granted possible parole eligibility at my 17th year of sentence but I did not receive day parole for and up to the 20-year mark of my sentence. They kept me in one form or another for 25 years. Twenty years in the main prison system and then another four plus within the halfway house system. In fact, I felt like I served the whole 25-year sentence before I was granted my full parole. Even though I am now out on full parole, I am still serving a life sentence of parole until I literally die. So in all actuality, I am a current serving inmate but doing it in the public sector release with the least amount of security under law. So me and the law are married, I guess, til death do us part. The government shall run DNA testing and fingerprinting on me to make sure I am who I am at death, the government will be the first one to kick the dirt in my grave to make sure I am there. They keep my file active for years afterwards just in case I pop up actually alive somewhere. When the system started carrying the drum, they were trying to say that native women cannot sit at the drum. In P4W back then, we had a few strong people and leaders like Joey Twins who were there prior to me going there. She taught me strong women songs and many other songs. She taught me how to be strong. She suffered a lot in there but they never broke her. The problem was, with me, they couldn’t nail me. Couldn’t pin me down. Couldn’t segregate me because I would stay 24/7 alone and in my own room. I did not associate with anybody. I did not talk to anybody. I had a few friends that I was around with during sisterhood gatherings. Joey Twins I’d like to acknowledge our higher power, the Creator and our sacred medicines our sacred fire, that water, the beautiful water that gives us life, and also acknowledge all the Elders across Turtle Island for all their hard work and accomplishments and all our powerful leaders. I’d like to acknowledge Yvonne, Bev, Myrna and each and every one of you in this room and your families as well. I pray that everything will be good today. It will be an awesome day. My name is Joey. My Indian name is “Firestone Woman Who Holds The Fire.” To translate that in Cree, I wouldn’t even know how to begin. No fault of my own. I come from a reserve and back in the 1950s I spoke Cree fluently as that was our main language. After I was 6, I was put in a residential school right on the reserve. I stayed there for two and a half years and then I became part of the ’60s scoop into a non-native community in the town ofWrigley, Alberta. From there, I moved to Grande Cache, Alberta. I lived there for a while and then I started running away when I was 13 years old. I went to ВС. I started learning that hustle - how to survive as a 13-year-old kid. I didn’t feel that I belonged in that home. Even though I had one brother with me, I still didn’t belong there. My mother was murdered when I was seven years old, and to this day nobody has come to justice for that. Why? Because she was a native woman. I come from Cree, Scottish and French ancestry. I acknowledge that Scottish and French descent too because that is who I am. It took me a long time to speak for myself, but I had to because of our sacred laws. I stepped into that prison on June 13, 1979. There was only one women’s prison across Canada and that was in Kingston. I came from Alberta. I was only 18 years old and I got life, 10. My circumstances are the result of the injustice of the legal system. I’ve had two constables that basically wrote all statements against me and because of my past, you know the old school code that you just don’t rat out nobody and that in being a snitch you won’t survive on the street or inside. So, I stood tall. I was a little kid, 112 pounds, and I went to prison with women. I was scared. We flew from Edmonton right to P4W in Kingston and then the guards from Kingston Penitentiary (KP) came there and led us up with guns and then marched us in these body belts and shackles. We had to walk like this. You cannot move. I would be like one of the sisters that took their own lives in P4W. I believed that we had to suffer to become strong. I could’ve been one of those sisters to take my life, but I didn’t. I wasn’t a cutter. I didn’t have a tattoo. I didn’t have a cut in my arm. But I learned that behavior inside prison because that’s what is the common thing to do. There were 175 cells and wings. If you behave yourself, you can go down to the South Wing and North Wing which had 25 rooms on each side and you had your own key. I’d never been there. Maybe once and then was out that day. In 1981, I escaped from P4W and I lasted two weeks. I was caught in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and I thought, “I am doing a life sentence for something I didn’t do. So, I am going to enjoy myself and go out there,” and that is what I did. I partied for two weeks because I was going to be doing a life sentence anyway so I thought that I might as well have a good time. In 1983, I started getting angry emotions. I thought, “Why me?” Then, I thought that I needed to be tough. I needed to be tough to survive. So, I changed my way of thinking and made my spirit to be hard and cold. The guards treated us like garbage so why not act like one. I got very notorious in prison. I did things that I am ashamed of today. But it was all for a reason, for a justifiable cause and, as I was speaking earlier, “harm with harm.” I didn’t come into prison to harm people. But after being kicked down and kicked around by guards you begin to learn to stand up and defend yourself. I had enough kicks. That’s what I felt. I started gaining some weight and muscle, smoking cigarettes, and dipping into drugs to cope. I was never exposed to prisons in my life. I had never done time before. I got life, 10. Being a little kid on the block, I met Shaggy. She was a good friend of mine and still is a good friend. I’ve never forgotten her or the other sisters. I always acknowledge everyone when I speak because they are a part of my transition to become strong. In 1984-1985, I took a guard hostage. They put a woman with a charge of killing her child in general population down in a wing. That is unacceptable. I have a hard time with that. I have been violated and molested as a child. To this day, I don’t tolerate that kind of behaviour from anyone. Children arc defenceless. We cannot defend ourselves when we are children. That’s an old school code. When you were charged with killing a child or molesting a child you go to protective custody (PC). That was where Karla Homolka was. But you know what? When I once was speaking out about that, somebody said, “We are all PC - protective of the creator.” It took me a long time to process that in my thinking and my spiritual and emotional mind because of the old school code. We didn’t talk to the guards and they didn’t talk to us. You always have to watch your business. See no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil. Just do your own time and that is the only way you will survive. When I got into taking the hostage, I was left out there by myself and I had to pull it off myself. I grabbed one guard and told her to listen and that I was not going to hurt her. I grabbed her and pulled her down and told her to sit on the floor. I knew that they had guns and if something like this happened they could shoot me. I told her to sit there and do as I say. It lasted 20-25 minutes (if that). I turned my back to talk to somebody who was in the cell because they were locked up and it was just me and that guard. When you put your word into something you have to follow through with it. That’s your word that’s all you have in life. That’s the way I thought and that’s the way I think. As I turned my back, she started running towards the other guards and then all of these guards rushed my way. I thought I was going to get the shit kicked out of me. They came down and all I remember is getting crunched in the head and I thought that I needed to do something for myself. I was overpowered and I knew that so I let the pain take over. They dragged me into segregation and I stayed there for a year. I got a year in segregation back to back, 18 months for forcible confinement and three months for possession of a concealed weapon. My weapon was just a little stick. There was no blade. I told the guard it was a stick and I wasn’t going to hurt her just do as I say. That was to exchange the PC women from the wing for her. It was an exchange thing but it didn’t happen. During that year I was in segregation, after about six to nine months of being in the hole, with no doors but only bars, the bars started moving. During that time, I was working on reading and writing. I got my education in segregation and I walked into prison with a grade 9 education. Today, I have college. I did it inside in a maximum-security prison and now I am a paralegal. In 1994, there was a riot. There were eight of us. At that time, my friend Ellen Young was getting medication from the medication line. I was doing crafts that afternoon. I used to do a lot of leather crafts. I didn’t think anything of it. I put my little scissors in the back of my pocket and then I heard commotion in the medication line. I peeked over through the little window between the A and В range and I see Ellen. She had cut herself. The guards arc trying to take her to segregation and the guards smacked her down on the floor. I thought, “No, this isn’t going to happen!” She was traumatized already and going through emotional stuff, so why are they taking her to the hole? That is what I was thinking. I had to do what I thought was right. I went running and people followed me. I don’t remember the exact words but the guards were telling me to get away. But, I said no! I told them that she is lashing out and cutting and asked why they were taking her to the hole. They are going to put her in segregation because she was cutting herself. Do you think that is right? I don’t. Everybody started fighting with the guards. The guards were fighting back with us. It was like a free for all on the range. We kicked their asses. I remember this guard named Gerry. He was a 6-foot guy and managed the whole institution. He had a hard time coming up the stairs because he was so big. He called my name and I turned and he sprayed mace right in my face. That stuff burns. I have been tear-gassed before and didn’t think it would hurt but it did and it burnt my face. I started running down the range. I didn’t know where to go. I went into this one cell and saw my friends and told them that I needed to hide in the cell. There were these metal trunks in there and I told them that I can’t fit and to move the trunk and push it back and then I got in there. All I remember is the guards saying, “Lock down! Lock down!” They locked the cells down and I am in the one cell. They were coming around with some guards upstairs. My friend in the cell who is from up north on the reservation said, “The guards are coming!” I said, “I know. I can smell them.” Am I scared? Yes, I am scared. I didn’t know where anybody was out of those women they were fighting. They brought the dogs in to sniff us out. They came to cell 16, where I was. Through the two bars I can see the dog and I thought “Oh no!” but I wasn’t going to give up. They were 6-foot muscle built men all dressed in black and they said, “Joey Twins! Get out of the cell now,” like robots. I thought if I should do it or not but it didn’t matter anyways. I don’t feel nothing. I don’t care. I had that mentality. They opened the cell and came in and I see their big combat boots and the dog was right there. So, I thought ok I will come out. I called out but they didn’t give me a chance to get out. The one guard put his knees on my back. They were really cruel and brutal and I knew that. I knew they weren’t going to be nice to me or anyone of us because of what we did with the guards. After that, they had me handcuffed. My arms were hurting with my hands up like this and my feet weren’t even touching the ground. One female guard came in and said we are going to do a strip search and I said, “Fuck you!” I hear the rest of my comrades coming in. I don’t know who was all involved. All I know was that I was there. There were seven of us involved. We were locked up in segregation. I asked for toilet paper, but they wouldn’t give any to me. They turned off our water on the taps and toilet. It was cold because they opened the windows. I am sitting on the bed. I am still hyped from this. My adrenaline was high and they finally came in and he said strip search and I said, “Alright I’ll make this easy.” They told me to get on the ground on my knees and to face the wall. That is what I did. They patted me down and got me up and told me to strip. That is what I did. I wanted toilet paper and I wanted water. I asked for blankets and he said no. The other women, I heard them asking for a pad or tampon. These were women on their moontime and they were denied their rights. It’s an honorable time when you are on your time especially as a woman. We were treated as garbage. We were given a cup of water once in a while. I was eventually given six of those little sheets of toilet paper and horse blankets. After about three days, the construction workers came in. I remember seeing the warden. There is a video on this. They came in my cell first. I was sleeping. The beds are bolted into the wall. I was so mad I had this rage. I didn’t know I could do that. I pulled the bed right out of the wall I was so angry. If you see that video you can see the two legs sticking out from when I was sleeping when they came in. They marched me out into the hall and I had no clothes on. I told the women to do what they say because they are going to hurt you. All these construction workers went into my cell, took the bed out, and then were going into other cells to do the same thing. I couldn’t believe it. All the stuff I have done in my past and I have never been treated like that. Humiliated. Degraded. I didn’t expect any better but not this. We had pajamas but mine I cut down to here and I had a bandana and armband. When they came in, they cut our clothes down. I try to make humour out of the most degrading, humiliating and saddest times. Not that I think it was fimny. A couple days later, at midnight, I was taken to KP. We stayed there for about six to nine months. That’s were Kim Pate and everybody came to visit us. We were at a men’s institution and it was a protective custody place. All pedophiles, rapists, you name it. The most disgusting men you could hear about. So, here we are, being housed in a big range and we are on a 22-24 hour lockdown. My lawyer, Chip O’Connell, came to see me and I told him I was happy to see him. He asked me what happened. I told him that I don’t want to talk too much because the walls have ears, but there is a tape out there of them doing this to us. I explained as much as I could. He took CSC to court to release that tape because they were not going to release that videotape. We filed an injunction in Kingston. Correction Services of Canada is the most corrupt organization in Canada. I say that with pride because I know'. They released the video but it was a video when we were being transferred to KP. I told Chip that it was not the video and that there is a video of them treating us this way with the strip searches down the hall and everything with women screaming. It was a really crazy time. They went back to court and finally released that tape. We viewed it and at that time and I didn’t realize everything that was happening. It w'as a very traumatic experience. After that, we spent nine months in the hole. We wanted to transfer back to P4W. They wouldn’t take us. So, we had to take them to court again to release us from KP and back to P4W. We won our court challenge and got to go back. After that, a parole officer came and told me what management was saying, “If you agree to plead guilty of all your institutional charges, you will all be released from segregation.” I have three assaults on guards and possession with concealed weapon for the scissors I had in my pocket. I w'as allowed to have them and I had a permit for them. Not realizing that I had them in my pocket, I got additional time for that. The life sentence, 10,1 got the first time, I ended up doing 36 years inside. Not because I was an angel, but I did it for a reason. All of us native women, we did proposals to advocate on our own behalf - to make change. When I think about it and why I did what I did, it is because we wanted to be heard. We had to suffer and go through all that stuff. I didn’t say, “We are going to riot and beat up the guards today ” It wasn’t like that. There had to be an action to a reaction - that is what happened. We had a reaction after the action. In 1998, the prison permanently closed because of the Arbour commission. We had to do four phases and I sat on all of them because they needed a recommendation to close that place down. The women can go to prison closer to their homes. If you are from out West you can go to Edmonton, BC or wherever. The recommendations that myself and our sisters made it a better place for us so we can cook and be treated like the civilized human beings that we are. Also, I knew that having a heart and compassion enabled me to walk out with integrity. I have done sweats, ceremonies and fasts. All of that. I was not always like that. I was a hard ass because I had to hold down the ship. You cannot be weak here, here, or in your spirits or you will be walked on. Don’t be too humble because somebody is going to walk all over you. I got out in 2012 and I am now in a halfway house in Brampton, Ontario, where we have a sweat lodge and a teepee. I am so gratefi.il. It is a stepping stone to full parole and I should be on full parole in June 2019. I believe in our Creator and the Seven Grandfather Teachings because that is what was put into my path when I was a little kid. I believe and live that and breathe it every day because that is how I walk in this life. Miigwech. Thank you. Considering some of the issues Learning about the life experiences of Yvonne and Joey, you can see the many deeply layered, complex and well-articulated issues presented about how the colonial corrections system needs to change. Some of the issues include support to the women, acknowledging the intergenerational traumas, including all types of violence against Indigenous women and their children, and finally, solutions to change the system. I argue that there has to be a complete transition and transformative change to a complete abolition of the prison systems for Indigenous women. First, I would like to address the link that both Yvonne and Joey made regarding intergenerational traumas and all of the types of violence that has occurred against Indigenous women and that has resulted in the overrepresentation of Indigenous women in federal and provincial prisons. The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry (MMIWG National Inquiry) called the violence against Indigenous women genocide,[16] and I totally agree. Some have identified this as femicide[17] and epistemicide. However the violence has been 3 described, Indigenous women, girls and two-spirited Indigenous peoples have taken the brunt of colonial state and systemic violence. The MMIWG National Inquiry notes: As the evidence demonstrates, human rights and Indigenous rights abuses and violations committed and condoned by the Canadian state represent genocide against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. These abuses and violations have resulted in the denial of safety, security, and human dignity. They are the root causes of the violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people that generate and maintain a world within which Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people are forced to confront violence on a daily basis, and where perpetrators act with impunity.[18] I believe Canada and its institutions (i.e. Corrections Canada) are perpetrators acting with impunity. We had highlighted this issue of impunity through NWAC’s Sisters in Spirit research reports and found that of the numbers of murders of Indigenous women and girls that were included in the study, nearly half of the murder cases involving Indigenous women and girls remain unsolved and that no charges were laid in about 40% of the cases.[19] Although these figures were contested by the R.CMP[20] in its report[21] on MMIWG, it was noted by the MMIWG National Inquiry’s interim report that the most significant issue our partners identified is the role that police forces and the criminal justice system play in perpetrating violence against Indigenous women and girls. There is an overall lack of trust in the justice system - including the police, courts, coroners, and corrections - and a belief that women and families are not receiving the justice they deserve.[22] I must note here that I, along with many Indigenous and non-Indigenous lawyers, academics, organizations and activists, participated in a Legal Strategy Coalition on Violence Against Indigenous Women (LSC) to prepare for the MMIWG National Inquiry. The LSC researched, reviewed and analyzed 58 reports that were prepared by federal, provincial and territorial governments and government agencies, national Aboriginal organizations, international human rights organizations and Canadian civil society organizations over the 20 years concerning violence against Indigenous women in Canada.[23] A Master List of Report Recommendations organized by theme was compiled with approximately 700 recommendations reviewed.[24] Specifically, Theme 13 focused on community-based justice and made reference to six reports dating back to 2001 up to the most recent report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2015.[25] The recommendations in these reports focused on safety and security of Indigenous women, funding for preventative and proactive community justice, restorative justice and services that are culturally and community based. Although some of these recommendations might be implemented in some communities, any positive results have not been reflected in the reduction of the numbers of Indigenous women in federal and provincial prisons. The MMIWG Inquiry provided 231 Calls for Justice “directed at governments, institutions, social service providers, industries and all Canadians”[26] which were described as “legal imperatives” and arise from international and domestic human and Indigenous rights laws, including the Charter, the Constitution, and the Honour of the Crown. As such, Canada has a legal obligation to fully implement these Calls for Justice and to ensure Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people live in dignity.[27] We continue to wait for implementation of these Calls for Action as well as the 700 other recommendations made in the 58 reports mentioned above as well as the many Commission and Inquiry recommendations, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommendations further noted below. In my former life as president ofNWAC, we partnered with the former executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and now Senator, Kim Pate, and the Strength in Sisterhood to complete a report called Human Rights in Action (HRIA).[28] All of us were “committed to working to decrease the use of prison and to developing release strategies.”[29] We traveled to all of the federal prisons for women and had Circle Talks with women inside to advise of the work we were to embark upon. This was when I met Joey Twins and Yvonne Johnson. Part of this work was to do prison advocacy training for the women inside to:
During this work, we knew that there were human rights violations occurring inside. We were also very well aware of the intergenerational traumas and the circumstances that Indigenous women faced prior to them entering the criminal legal system. NWAC and Justice for Girls found: The state has effectively trained many aboriginal women to believe they are on their own in circumstances where they lace violence. . . . when women are forced to meet violence with violence, the travesty is they are then susceptible to facing criminal charges.[31] We continued to be disappointed that the system and the state continued to abuse and violate the women. A large number of Indigenous women and girls are criminalized because of the intergenerational traumas, historical traumas and current traumas that they have lived and survived.[32] As noted by Alysa Holmes, “colonial victimization of Aboriginal women should be considered a significant factor in their overrepresentation in prisons.”[33] As a result, there is not only an overpopulation of Indigenous women and young women in prison but there are outstanding questions as to whether they should even be in there suffering in the first place. We learned this from the voices of Yvonne and Joey here. The corrections system is a colluding partner in upholding ongoing colonial violence. There have been many recommendations for change to the corrections systems made by many organizations including Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS), NWAC, Amnesty International, and the Office of the Correctional Investigator. The Office was established in 1973 under the Inquiries Act as a direct result of a commission of inquiry’s recommendation for an external grievance body to independently review offender complaints.[34] The Correctional Investigator has been providing recommendations for change since that time. There have been reports and inquiries with hundreds of recommendations for reform of the broader criminal legal system that might include some specific recommendations of the corrections systems. The 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) stated: Reform of the existing system has been the focus of many inquiries preceding ours. . . . During its research phase, the Alberta task force on the criminal justice system assembled a list of 708 recommendations for reform from all the Aboriginal justice reports between 1967 and 1990. In its own 1992 report, Justice on Trial, the task force made 340 recommendations of its own. Several hundred additional proposals have been made in other reports, bringing the total to as many as 1800 recommendations for reform. ... It is clear that the reason is not the lack of sound recommendations but a lack of concrete implementation.[35] Although there are now thousands of recommendations to reform the whole criminal legal system since RCAP, there are few reports that focus on corrections and federally sentenced Indigenous women. In 1996, The Arbour Commission of Inquiry into Certain Events at the Prison for Women in Kingston provided 14 detailed recommendations specific to women’s corrections.[36] What prompted this inquiry was a 1995 special report of the Office of the Special Investigator in which CSC had “closed the book on these events.”[37] In 2004, the Systemic Review of Human Rights in Correctional Services for Federally Sentenced Women provided 19 recommendations for action “to ensure that the treatment of federally sentenced women is consistent with human rights law.”[38] What prompted this review by the Canadian Human Rights Commission was the result of CAEFS, NWAC, the Canadian Bar Association and the National Association of Women and the Law and others bringing attention to the “human rights situation of federally sentenced women, particularly Aboriginal women and women with disabilities.”[39] In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission made Calls to Action to all federal, provincial, territorial and Aboriginal governments that address corrections and the criminal legal system, specifically, which are from Numbers 30 to 42. Number 30 and 38 specifically related to the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people and Aboriginal youth in prison and Number 31 specifically related to realistic alternatives to imprisonment:
Although the TRC did not address specific gendered recommendations (i.e. the overrepresentation of Indigenous women, specifically), the calls to action to address the overall general overrepresentation of Aboriginal peoples and youth were highlighted. Most recently, in June 2018, the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women did a “study on Indigenous Women in the Federal Justice and Correctional Systems.”[40] There is a total of 96 recommendations, most of which refer to the implementation of previous recommendations of other reports and inquiries as well as the TRC Calls to Action. Conclusion Despite all of these recommendations, nothing has changed for Indigenous women in federal prisons. In fact, the over-representation of federally sentenced Indigenous women and young girls is horribly worse now than ever.[41] The recommendations made since 1990 have not made a difference. The studies and inquiries and the millions, maybe billions of dollars over the last 30 years to prepare these reports are not making a difference. As noted in the TRC report: It is assumed that locking up offenders makes communities safer, but there is no evidence to demonstrate that this is indeed the case.[42] I would argue that locking up Indigenous women and young girls does not make a community safer and in fact, causes more harm than good. So, in my humble opinion, there is only one answer to decolonizing corrections, and that is to completely abolish the prison systems.[43] This is not a novel idea, as many organizations and advocates have been fighting for this for a long time. Justice for Girls is an organization that supports the abolishment of prison for girls, as noted by Amber Dean: Abolishment of girls’ imprisonment represents an important step towards achieving the broader social justice, dignity, and equality that girls are entitled to under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, substantial changes in social attitudes and structural inequalities are also urgently needed: instead of investing significant economic resources into forcible means of protection or behaviour change, we need to begin to directly address the circumstances that compromise girls’ safety (such as substance abuse and sexual exploitation) and invest in voluntary programs and supports that facilitate girls’ development.[44] The movement towards prevention and empowerment along with the abolishment of prisons will provide a better future for Indigenous women and girls. As noted earlier, there were no prison systems prior to colonization. Indigenous peoples knew how to address conflict. Individuals who caused harm to someone else were accountable to everyone, including their own family and to the family of the person they caused harm to. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples affirms in article 5 that Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions, while retaining their right to participate fully, if they so choose, in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the State.[45] It is thus a right of Indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own Indigenous legal orders to resolve conflict. And it is time to end the current archaic and brutal colonial prison system. As noted in her conclusion of the Arbour Inquiry, the Honourable Louise Arbour stated: Section 3 of the CCRA asserts that the purpose of the federal correctional system is to contribute to the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society. . . . The society in which many women offenders live is neither peaceful nor safe. By the time they go to prison, they should be entitled to expect that it will be just.[46] There is no just in federal prisons for Indigenous women. 12 (Re)bundling nehiyaw askiy
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