Indigenous people on the land we call Canada experience heightened levels of gender-based violence largely due to settler colonialism, which systemically and culturally demeans and victimizes Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit and LGBTQIA+ people. It is thus vital to examine this ongoing violent means of colonization when discussing the prevention of gender-based violence in Canada, as it has and continues to lay a foundation for the state itself. The statistics below help to illustrate the disparities between the levels of gender-based violence that Indigenous people, and non-Indigenous people experience in Canada:

As such, the following pages dive deeper into some of the specific causes and manifestations of gender-based violence against Indigenous people.