When I think about the challenges Indigenous and First Nations communities face in Canada today, it feels less like a checklist of social issues and more like a long shadow cast by history, one that stretches across generations and still falls over the present. It is a shadow shaped by choices made deliberately, systems built intentionally, and values imposed without consent. Among the most damaging of these impositions was patriarchy, a foreign social order enforced through colonial rule, law, and religion, and weaponized to dismantle Indigenous systems of balance, governance, and care.

Colonialism did not merely occupy land; it restructured society. In many Indigenous nations, women held central roles as leaders, decision-makers, knowledge keepers, and stewards of land and kinship. Authority was relational rather than hierarchical, rooted in reciprocity, accountability, and collective well-being. The imposition of European patriarchy disrupted this balance, replacing it with male-dominated governance systems that devalued women’s authority and severed them from power, land, and status. This was not accidental. It was strategic…