Virtuous imperialism or a shared global objective? - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 72

the challenge of situating itself and examining its role in … a global eco-
nomic and political framework' (Witt 1999:17). Gayatri Spivak writes that
indigenous and non-Western feminism increasingly becomes marginal-
ized within mainstream feminism (Spivak 1999). Thus feminist analysis,
from both the global North and South, highlights features of the security
dynamic that have been isolated, ignored and made invisible because the
realities of gender and 'other' have not been acknowledged. This has been
very much the case in relation to indigenous approaches, and especially gen-
dered indigenous approaches.
The 1995 Beijing Declaration of Indigenous Women exemplifies this
well. Self-described as those who continue to suffer multiple oppressions 'as
Indigenous peoples, as citizens of colonized and neo-colonial countries, as
women, and as members of the poorer classes of society' (Beijing Declaration
of Indigenous Women 1995), this group of women were well placed to give
voice to the concerns of the marginalized and least secure. Personal, economic,
environmental, community and physical security become inevitably inter-
twined in their vision of what poses a threat, to them, to their children and
to their children's children. In response to the increasingly dominant pres-
sures of international trade, neo-colonialization and 'science', the Declaration
explicitly acknowledged the potential and likelihood for 'ethnocide and gen-
ocide' by progressively eliminating biological and cultural resources, while
continuing to exacerbate conflict over lands and communities (ibid.). The
threats identified in the Declaration include those that would be addressed by
narrower conceptions of security, but then go well beyond traditional security
parameters, recognizing and acknowledging the sources and origins of threats
that are shared. Joyce Green and Cora Voyageur demonstrate the dynam-
ics of the non-dominant and insecure position of indigenous women in the
Canadian context, noting the multiple insecurities such as poverty, hunger,
social and identity marginalization, political isolation and domestic and soci-
etal violence faced by many aboriginal Canadian women (Green and Voyageur
1999). Aboriginal women have not been recognized by Canadian government
platforms on human security.
Insecurity originates within democratic states as well as non-democratic,
North and South, although the degree and nature of these threats often differ.
Security defined by elites is not necessarily security as defined by those who
are insecure, regardless of location. But we respond to security differently
depending on the location, and determine its human security implications
on the same basis. In 2001-2002, for example, during Canada's heyday of
human security, over 28,000 people fled violence, over half of them children,
with less than 11,000 able to find safe shelter or refuge, forcing many to
return to the violence they fled from. This was a case of structural violence
in a society with limited opportunity to flee certain types of violence, both
societally as well as institutionally. State mechanisms to respond to this sort
of violence were and are weak, and the seeking of refuge by certain groups