Keeping First Nation women and children safe with poverty and housing shortages creating problems
Native Canadian women sold on U.S. ships, researcher says
Report says First Nations women from Thunder Bay, Ont., trafficked in sex trade in Minnesota
By Jody Porter, CBC News - Posted: Aug 21, 2013
An American researcher says First Nations women from Thunder Bay, Ont., have been sold on ships in the harbour at Duluth, Minn.
Christine Stark said the port at Duluth is notorious among First Nations people as a site for trafficking women.
The masters student at the University of Minnesota Duluth said she has anecdotal reports of women, teenage girls and boys, as well as babies being sold on ships for sex.
The Ontario Native Women's Association says it also has anecdotal reports of women being trafficked across borders, or provincial boundaries, into the sex trade.(Istock)
"The women and children - and I've even had women talk about a couple of babies brought onto the ships and sold to the men on ships - are being sold or are exchanging sex for alcohol, a place to stay, drugs, money and so forth.," Stark said. "It's quite shocking."
Stark said the sex trade on ships has been going on for generations, and includes Indigenous women from Canada.
Strong link between Thunder Bay, Duluth
"I have spoken with a woman who was brought down from Thunder Bay on the ships and talks about an excessive amount of trafficking between Canada and the Duluth-Superior harbor," Stark said. "There is a very strong link between Thunder Bay and Duluth."
Her current research is an offshoot of a 2007 report on prostitution in Minnesota, in conjunction with the Minnesota Indian Women's Sexual Assault Coalition. That report included interviews with 105 indigenous women in Minnesota who have been trafficked in the sex trade.
Stark said the stories that "women get brought out onto the boats and never come back" that she heard as part of that study begged further exploration. She's currently conducting interviews with 15 people to learn more about what happens on the ships.
The Ontario Native Women's Association (ONWA) said it also has anecdotal reports of women being trafficked across borders,or provincial boundaries, into the sex trade.
"We know that it's happening between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay, and there have been reports of it happening in southern Ontario across the U.S. border," said Kezia Picard, the director of policy and research with ONWA.
Poverty, lack of housing make women vulnerable
But Picard said more funding is needed for more formal research into how women are being spirited away.
"Another thing we're really trying to advocate for is additional research to understand what's happening and what sort of programs help women in this sort of situation to prevent it from happening," Picard said.
However, Picard said some of the reasons First Nations women are vulnerable to sex trafficking are all too familiar in indigenous communites.
"The reason that indigenous women and girls are sometimes trafficked has to do with all of these ongoing issues like poverty," she said. "Another one of the large risk factors for indigenous women and girls is the lack of housing ... women will sometimes engage in survival sex, not of their choice, in order to have somewhere to live."
Picard said the ONWA hopes to work with organizations in Minnesota and Manitoba to learn more about the cross-border sex trade, and explore ways of keeping indigenous women and their children safe.
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Families involved in sex trafficking of aboriginal women and girls
BY DON BUTLER, OTTAWA CITIZEN AUGUST 19, 2013
Family members are increasingly involved in the domestic human trafficking of aboriginal women and girls for the purposes of sexual exploitation, according to Public Safety Canada.
The assessment appears in a tender for research into trends and issues in the trafficking of aboriginal women and girls. It says the involvement of both family members and criminal organizations is an emerging trend that "appears to be a significant complicating factor" in their exploitation.
The research is intended to increase understanding of the trafficking of aboriginal women and girls in Canada. It will include at least 70 discussions with people who provide services to trafficked aboriginal women and girls or vulnerable communities, those who have studied the issue and people investigating or prosecuting crimes involving trafficked female aboriginals.
Public Safety wants the researchers to describe the extent and situations in which family members are involved in victimizing their relatives, clarify the relationship between human trafficking and domestic violence, and outline how gangs and criminal organizations are involved, with a focus on the trafficking of family members.
Experts agreed Monday that family members are involved in the trafficking of their own relatives in Canada, though it remains relatively uncommon.
Michèle Audette, president of the Ottawa-based Native Women's Association of Canada, said she has heard stories from aboriginal parents who sold their own children for sex to pay for their addictions.
"I listened to some families where, because of their addiction to drugs and drinking, every two weeks they were trafficking their own children," she said. "I was so shocked.
"It's a small number, but it's there. Because of that, we cannot stay quiet or deny this reality doesn't exist in our First Nations communities."
The Canadian Women's Foundation is funding a national task force on sex trafficking of girls and young women in Canada that has met with more than 150 organizations and spoken to 50 female survivors of sex trafficking.
Sandra Diaz, a member of the task force's staff team, said gangs and organized crime "are definitely at the helm of this enormous and serious issue that's happening right here in Canada."
The role that family members play, she said, is not fully understood. "We haven't seen that there is an epidemic of families trafficking their daughters in Canada." The task force looks forward to seeing the results of the Public Safety research "to get a sense of how big a percentage that is," she said.
"There's an enormous need for more research. We don't have data. It doesn't exist in a way that is comprehensive and deep. So any research is good research."
Joy Smith, MP for the Manitoba riding of Kildonan-St. Paul, has worked tirelessly on the human trafficking issue for more than a decade, and entered politics because of her concern about it.
She said people are more likely to sexually exploit members of their own family than they are to traffic them for payment. But she has encountered examples of familial trafficking by both aboriginals and non-aboriginals.
One Caucasian girl she worked with this summer was trafficked and sold for sex by her father. "Then her cousin got involved," Smith said grimly.
The same thing happens sometimes in aboriginal circles, she said. "One of the saddest cases I have seen was a young boy who was trafficked by his dad across Canada when he was eight years old for sexual services. The dad serviced his addictions from that."
A 2009 study of the trafficking of aboriginal women and girls in Canada by Anette Sikka, then an LL. D candidate at the University of Ottawa, said participants indicated that many girls entered the sex trade through familial or peer relationships.
Many "spoke of sisters coercing or forcing younger siblings into the sex trade to make money," Sikka's study says. Young girls command higher payments than older girls, it notes. "Many older women are unable to survive through their sex trade earnings, and thus engage younger family members into the trade."
Even when gangs are involved, girls in some First Nations communities "are related to members of gangs in the urban centres," participants in Sikka's study told her.
Though media attention has focused on human trafficking involving people from other countries coming to Canada, most trafficking is domestic, and almost all involves sexual exploitation.
According to the RCMP's Human Trafficking National Co-ordination Centre in Ottawa, as of this June, prosecutors had secured convictions against 69 individuals in 45 cases involving human trafficking since 2005. More than 90 per cent involved trafficking of people already in Canada.
"It is in many ways big business for gangs or organized crime," said Diaz. "Studies show traffickers in Canada can receive an annual financial gain of $280,000 for each woman or girl they've trafficked or sexually exploited.
"Many members of the Canadian public are unaware of how serious and significant the issue of trafficking of women and girls is here in Canada," she said, adding that better understanding was "critically important."
Smith described human trafficking as "one of the biggest businesses, the biggest sources of money, for criminals. It's alive and well here, and the predators are making lots of money."
Last year, the federal government announced a national action plan to combat human trafficking and is investing $6 million a year in the effort. But Smith said more needs to be done. In particular, front line services should be expanded, she said.