It’s under our noses

Last week in Iqaluit, a well-intentioned group of people marched through the mean streets of Iqaluit to draw attention to violence against women, under the slogan “Take Back the Night.”

It’s a great way for people to make a statement against violence in Nunavut. Given that Nunavut, among all Canadian provinces and territories, owns the highest per capita rate of violent crime, this is an essential statement that isn’t made often enough.

Unfortunately, it’s also an event that tends to distort the real nature of violence in Nunavut: where it happens and why it happens.

“Take Back the Night” is a kind of brand name given to a series of protest marches that like-minded people, over the past 30 years or so, have organized in cities throughout North America and Europe. The first one, held in London, England in 1970, was organized to protest the dangers faced by street prostitutes. Since then, the “Take Back the Night” brand has evolved into an institution focusing on street safety, at night, for women living in urban centres.

But in Nunavut, and even in rapidly-growing Iqaluit, the streets are safe. The greatest dangers lurk at home, behind closed doors and curtained windows. In Nunavut, violence is a domestic affair, occurring among people who know each other intimately. If you’re a victim of violence in Nunavut, chances are you’ve been victimized by someone you love and trust, or by someone you’ve known all your life.

The evidence in support of this is so overwhelming it’s hardly worth repeating. Spend a week or two in court and you’ll hear the same stories repeated over and over again: teenage girls molested while sleeping on a relative’s couch, wives battered into submission by jealous husbands, drunken brawls among siblings, and elders bullied out of their pension money.

It’s also a gross over-simplification to portray it as a kind of war committed only by men against women. The 200 or so people who marched in Iqaluit last week walked right in front of a housing unit where, not so long ago, a woman killed her live-in boyfriend by plunging a steak-knife into his heart. They walked along a street where a middle-aged man was kicked to death by a drunken teenage boy. They passed an apartment unit where another middle-aged man was bludgeoned to death in a drunken fight.

Women and children may suffer more from violence than anyone else — but they’re not the only victims. The now badly outdated form of 1970s-style feminism that inspires the Take Back the Night movement does not take this, and other common-sense realities, into account.

The greatest single cause of violence in Iqaluit, and Nunavut, is obvious. It’s called booze. Again, the evidence in support of this is so overwhelming it’s hardly worth repeating. Any RCMP member will tell you that roughly 90 per cent of their calls are generated by alcohol abuse and its bloody consequences. But perhaps because it’s right under our noses, no one can see it.

There are other factors, of course: the persistence of cultural norms that excuse violence, overcrowded housing, undiagnosed mental illness, stress, ignorance, and poverty. But next time around, Iqaluit’s anti-violence marchers might consider a different route, one that leads through each of Iqaluit’s notorious bars and private clubs. And how about a change of name? Take Back the Home? JB