and the started up in this historic area, we paint traditional motifs and famous personalities. and we reflect the life of people who are living here in the beautiful times that they were living in. and we also reflect the simple bank dad's life, embody a simple life from history, now restored in brilliant color, one brush stroke at a time, gillian wolf, al jazeera. ah, it is good to have with a fellow adrian sitting here in the headlines. and i was here of the world health organization says that the all the chrome variant has been detected in 38 countries that's up from 232 days ago. it's called on countries to focus on preparing health systems. instead of imposing travel restrictions. as we're talking about omi called lead, it's also not forget that the predominant variance right now still remains the delta

variance. so all make on may be on the rise. and we may come to a point where it takes over to be the dominant variance. but at this point, the very dominant variant remains delta, the top health official in the us as the vaccine manufacturers are already working on contingency plans. including the possibility of an on kong specific booster, the very and has been confirmed and at least 10 states. they do have plans that have multiple contingency. one is to wrap up the production of the vaccines that they already have. the next is to make, for example, a buy balance where you have the vaccine against both the ancestral strain and the new variant. and the other is to make a variant specific boost. the degree to which they're going to be doing that they are now assuming they may have to do that. and being prepared for that. iran

chief negotiator has told us here that world powers cannot reject dropped proposals that it's submitted during talks in vienna to go stations and aimed at bringing the us back into the packs and ensuring that iran is once again complying with it. the u. s. is again warning that it's prepared to take action against russia if it invades ukraine. the number of russian troops has been rising along the border. if you p. s. government says that it's pushed to grow and rebels. rebel fighters out of that positions in the fall regions fight against now said to be limited to the area between the towns and batty. and dessie. video obtained by al jazeera appears to show to brian forces retreating north. the government recently launched a counter offensive after 2 grand faces advanced towards the c o. p as capital had us have about those the headlines, more news i was 0 of the upfront. next. if america held up a mirror to itself, what would it see in the center race is the story of america what's working and

what's not? a lot of people were only talking about that. it wasn't at the top of the agenda. if america can't handle multiple challenges on multiple fronts, we need to go back to school. the bottom line on al jazeera, indigenous women in the united states are going missing and getting murdered at an alarming rate. 10 times the national average on some reservations, more than 4 and 5 native american women have experienced violence in their life time. that's 1.2 times the average for white women who already experienced disproportionately, high rates of violence compared to men. so what's behind this epidemic? of violence and why aren't we hearing about it constantly will take a closer look. but 1st, in canada, the uncovering of unmarked graves containing the remains of indigenous children leads to a moment of reckoning for the country. since may, more than 1300 bodies have been identified near former residential schools, these were government sponsored church runs centers aimed at eradicating indigenous culture. as a search continues for what is believed to be thousands more grades,

what impact is the story heavy and what's next and the struggle for justice will talk to former senator and chair of candidates truth and reconciliation committee is weeks headliner, murray sinclair, ah morrison. claire, thank you so much for joining me on up front, the uncovering of some 1300 raves, containing the remains of indigenous children at former residential schools. it's made headlines all around the world. how has this revelation impacted the struggle for historical justice among canada's indigenous people? well, thank you for having me a new show and i thank you for the question. i think it's an important issue for us to be thinking about and talking about one of the things that we talked about in the report that i was sharing. now was that the issue, children going missing into schools and dying at schools was one that was often played out for us. and we had asked for

a mandate to look into that more completely. sometimes 2 or 3 children to be buried in a gray. sometimes we heard stories from some of the survivors, residential schools, of children actually being killed deliberately. and one thing that we did point out was that because the government had forcibly remove the children from their families and from their communities, they had some obligation, a moral obligation of not a legal one to work with the families to return the bodies of the children. to the families and their communities in accordance with traditions and the practices of those particular communities. and they never did that. but we also pointed out that we had about 6500 names children who died in the schools that we could determine from the records of the schools. but we believe quite honestly, that there were many,

many more probably as much as 8 or 9 times that number. maybe maybe even more of a stunning number to think about. and even as you talk about the stories that you're hearing from people and indigenous people have been telling you stories for years of deplorable conditions, abuse, and disappearing classmate. it's really no surprise to the indigenous community that this is happening, but it seems like the broader canadian public was surprised by this polling suggests that. but why haven't taken so long for the broader public to catch up them to know what's going on. what it would appear to us that there was a deliberate effort by the government of canada, along with the churches that ran the schools to cover up the desk of the children. there was actually a study that was done by the medical director of the residential schools by the name of a member, the name of dr. peter brace back in the early part of the 20th century about

1910 or show. and he looked at the death rates of children in residential schools and scattering. and he estimated, based upon the studies that he had done and the evidence that he had reform, that between 25 and 49 percent of the children in those schools neither died at the schools or died shortly after leaving the schools. the poor living conditions support nutrition in the core lifestyle. the abuse that they experienced all contributed to the early tests. and when dr. brace asked to issue as report to the public, they prevented him from doing that. and they actually fired him. and he managed to issue his report on his own privately but and he called the national crime, this report. but the government refused to endorse to refuse

this parted. and in addition to that, it was never really picked up in the media so that the canadian society was also implemented and covering up their story. and in particular media, it seems to me as you point out, that the government has claimed ignorance to some extent around this stuff. and that's somewhat puzzling. former prime minister john, at the end in october of this year said that while serving as the minister of indian affairs and northern development in the $196070.00. he said that he quote, was not informed of any abuse at that time. many other government officials say they had no idea of what was going on. how could they have not known is that, is that even possible? no, they're not, they're not being true. so when i say that, because we know for the records again, because we had access to all the government records over accessible to the public

generally. that there were several reports over the years that were made to ministers that were made to government officials and departmental officials at a senior level. and that those records showed the death rates of children. and these are not indigenous people who are writing your hon. tommy douglas, for example, when he was later the n d p in the house of commons raised it as an issue. and he was told basically go back to scratch one and start talking about these things. so he was really criticize, reuben res. so there's the issue of claiming ignorance on pretending that it never happened. and then there's the idea. alternatively of saying, oh, that's the distant past. that's a relic of ancient canadian history. when in fact the last residential school closes in 1997. it's a fairly recent part of the canadian historical narrative. how do residential

schools continue at this moment to shape the present and shape how the indigenous experience plays out? in the last residential schools closed in the ninety's and in the eighty's. some of them have been taken over by indigenous communities, so many of those schools are close at the end were much better run and there was more significant openness which so there were very bad marriage from the people who were there and some of them have now been destroyed by the communities themselves, but the, the impact of the schools is widely known as i talked about. and i report and then generally what we said was that, so children who were taken away from their families forcibly were separated from their families, separated from their communities and their traditions, their elders, their support, the people within the community. but they were also separated from their culture,

from their language and they were abusing the schools if they continued to try to function in a way to maintain their language, maintain their culture. they were also taught and brainwashed into believing that they came from an adequate group of people that are people were in fact socially, mentally. and in terms of civilization inferior people to the way here, settlers who would come here after colonial period start. and then a history, of course, was only taught from connie perspective. so what we said was public schools picked up on that message and the kids in public schools, the same thing. and we have had a public school system in canada, is founded on white supremacy for generations. and that's why there's such a schism between the leadership in this country, usually non indigenous men. and one of the most troubling realities

for indigenous children is the foster care system. there are more than $40000.00 indigenous kids in that system. and for context, they make of 8 percent of the total population, more than half of the foster care system. do you see the crisis of child welfare as an extension of the residential school problem? we said was, in reality, the residential schools themselves were child welfare system and the child welfare system. we see today's just a newer version of the residential school system. the intent beings take children away from their families and to put them in to a situation where the system believes that they will become better citizen. so they become more civilized, be better taken care of than indigenous people can do. and even when the system has to acknowledge that they themselves have failed the children in their care, they still are authorized by the court to continue to take children in huge numbers

said done training session, good judges. and i said, where in the world would we ever have a justice system that continually gave children or to people who had failed the children that we had already given over to them before. and yet we're doing it without hesitation without question when it comes to child welfare, but we would never do it the private guardian. so we're trying to take children into their homes. the catholic church rant upwards of 70 percent of the residential schools. in september, the canadian conference of catholic bishops issued in official apology. but now there's pressure mounting for the pope himself to apologize. this month, the delegation of indigenous leaders will meet the pope at the batt again to press for an apology. it's certainly a symbolic gesture, but why is it so significant to get that apology? well, when we should the truth and reconciliation commission report was one of our calls

to action to call upon the pope tuition and apology. when you go through a situation as canada has gone through with regard to its treatment of indigenous people, there has to be a level of awareness. there has to be a torment and there has to be apology. and so what we said is, the catholic church is serious about showing it's time for what it's done in the past. it has your college eyes and it has to show what kind of action is going to take. and we haven't seen the apology. the apology from the have said have been made in the past. not beneficial made on behalf of the church. you served as the chair of candidates to the reconciliation committee. and in 2015, your team laid out 94 calls to action, which were designed to sort of help begin to repair some of the damage that had been done by the residential schools. prime minister trudeau promised to fulfill

all of them. so far, only 14 have been fulfilled. 20 have yet to start. what does that mean? why justice taking so long? well, i am said to the prime minister to other government officials. the problem is happening within government is that they don't have a plan. they don't think through what it is that they're committing to that what it is they're apologizing for what it is that they need to do. and that plan is missing because there was a feeling at the beginning of the truth reconciliation process on the part of government. and i think the public generally was that if we throw enough money at this wills goose settled them down, that will be able to get them to be quiet. and so there's a been a lack of planning that said circle mary sinclair, thank you so much for joining me on up front. thank you for having

a good conversation. thank you. oh, in 2017. 32 year old olivia alone, bear in indigenous mother a far from north dakota went missing her family search for her for months and pushed law enforcement to take the case more seriously. 9 months later, a volunteer community member found her body in a pickup truck submerged in a lake within a mile of her home. this is just one case out of thousands of native american women who go missing in her later found dead. in the united states, indigenous women and girls are disappearing and being murdered at alarming rates compared to other women and what's often called an epidemic of violence. joining us to discuss this are mary catherine nagle, a citizen of cherokee nation, and lawyer focused on tribal sovereignty and safety for native women and children. carry coffer member of the clinic, tribe of south east alaska, and national indigenous women's resource center, senior native affairs advisor. thank you both for joining me on up front. mary katherine, in recent years,

thousands of native american women have been reported missing law enforcement is often slow to react, and families are often left waiting month for answers. and they're often dismissed and told that going missing isn't a crime. what's at the root of this crisis? you know, such an important question and i think we have to understand that this crisis is both cultural and legal in nature. i say cultural because violence against native women is the practice that began with the colonial conquest of the united states. i mean, all you have to do is read christopher columbus, his journals to understand that this is a man who literally bragged about raping and murdering indigenous women when he got lost and washed up on the shoreline over here. so you've got that. you've got the history of the u. s. military using rape and homicide against native women as a military tactic to conquer tribal nations. we don't talk about that history is on a mystery as to why there's a high rate of violence against our native women today. at the same time, we have a legal framework that allows that violence to continue in $978.00. the united

states supreme court in all of font versus squamish indian tribe eliminated tribal criminal jurisdiction over non indians who come on to tribal lands and commit crimes. so today, non indians can walk on to a reservation or on to indian lands and murder, a native women with no consequences. and they do, the supreme court has taken that jurisdiction away well, and i want to unpack the legal part of that in just a sec. i'm still trying to wrap my mind around this idea that when a crime is committed or when someone is just reported missing, carry that the response is indifference or, you know, it's not a crime to go missing to get dismissed. i mean, why is that? i think in part native women are really under represented in data. and so we know that the statistics of missing or murdered indigenous women are extremely high. but we know that the doc that's actually, they're actually likely a lot higher. and so all of these historical factors, in addition to these jurisdictional by barriers and the failure of federal,

the federal government to adequately fund justice and victims over systems in indian country, has led to predators. knowing that they can target needed women without repercussions. and no one's really gonna care because the mainstream media doesn't really cover it very well. often captain, i mean, you, one of the people who said that we have a culture that promotes and celebrates violence against native women. the data seems to bear that out. native american women are 2 and a half more likely to be raped compared to all other races. and in some reservations, murder rates of native american women are up to 10 times higher than the national average for all races. can you speak to this dynamic? yeah, in terms of culture, up until this last summer, native women's bodies were still used to sell butter and other commercial products that is starting to change, you know, land o'lakes. this changed their label. but many americans still think that it's completely appropriate to dress up as polk a hottie for halloween, pocahontas was a child victim of rape kid not being in homicide. he was an indigenous girl,

a little girl who lost her life to violence, to sexual violence. and she's not a halloween costume, but so long as are real women who are murdered and raped are just treated as halloween costumes. it creates a culture that just honestly accepts this violence so that when a native woman is raped or goes missing or is murdered, i think because we have been dehumanized and over sexualized it's, it's harder for americans at large to, to have that kind of emotional response of we need to find her, her life matters when, when a native woman goes missing carry this pop culture piece is interesting to me. how much of it is the kind of indifference to the lives in the well being of native women and how much of it is an ignorance of history? i think it's a combination of all of it. i think it's a lack of understanding about our history. i think most of the time in history class natives make up like the 1st chapter,

despite the fact that we've been here for all of american history and centuries, thousands of years prior to that. and then i think there is also willful ignorance . i think it feels these issues often feel very far away to other need other non need of people who don't live on or near tribal lands. and so they can sort of ignore all of these issues that need of women face and they never really have to deal with it or think about it. and frankly, they don't want to carry. let me ask you another question because we started to talk about this idea of non native perpetrators of violence. 96 percent of the time violence against indigenous women is from a non native perpetrator. tribal courts, or tribal police, for the most part, don't have the ability to prosecute crimes on reservations from non native perpetrators or even arrest them without back up from non native law enforcement. it's hard for many people myself included to understand how this is legal. yeah, i think it's, it's hard for native to figure out how it's legal,

as well as married. catherine said after the supreme court's decision, in oliphant, in 970 tribal justice systems could no longer hold accountable criminally abusive non natives who are continuing to harm their need of partners. resulting in situations where a non need of defendants piled up repeated in multiple prior contacts with tribal police. so essentially, tribal police and courts were unable to do very much to stop non need of perpetrators. and then federal and state courts also just failed to protect need of victims. and that's where we are today and issues we're facing today and, and how all of this mass has been created very care for that. that's, that's part of it. that the crisis here, right? i mean, on the one hand, you don't have jurisdiction in this area, then you have the state and the federal police in bodies that can intervene. but don't absolutely. in most cases on tribal lands, if a native woman is murdered, the federal government does have jurisdiction. so we're looking at the federal government and saying, why aren't you doing your job?

you know, you took the jurisdiction away from us. so do something step in, you know, we have, we have native women like olivia alone, there is a great example because her brother for 9 months begged the f. b. i to search for her sister begged. i mean, you know, he wasn't, he was on national tv, he was sending letters, he was making phone calls and they did nothing. and they had jurisdiction. mary catherine, you said placing paternalistic restrictions on tribal courts and the name of due process is nothing more than a disguise for prejudice. what do you mean by that, sir? cuz i think, you know, you're right. a lot of folks will throw out this idea of, well, non indian defendants. their due process rights are not protected in travel court. the problem with this straw man argument is that the folks who say that actually can't point to a single piece of evidence, shred of evidence, where non indians rights have been violated. and that's the irony of these arguments. i'm not saying tribal courts are perfect if you look at state and federal courts, they're not perfect. and that's why i think it's based on prejudice. because,

you know, i, for instance, in all a font, when the supreme court in 1978 took away tribal criminal jurisdiction over non indians. one of the things that chief rehnquist at the time said is, you know, we just, there's just no way to think that a non indians going to get a fair shake in travel court. what wait a 2nd get? because that non indian is not a citizen of that tribe that not an indian can't vote in that tribes elections. well, i'm not a citizen of the state of kansas, but if i walk into kansas and start murdering people, i don't get to have a constitutional right to avoid a criminal prosecution because of due process. i'm sorry, that's not how i cable for kids. i don't get support for kansas governor or pick who's on their supreme court. and one thing really quick about due process. there are due process protections in the violence against women act. you know, right to counsel, right? to notice right to file a habeas and federal court, basically all the protections you would have in state court or federal court and still the conversation there are still people out there saying, well,

we just don't think that due process rights are protected and travel court even though it's, it's in the law and no one can point to a shred of evidence that it hasn't been provided. and so i really do think we're talking about prejudice. let's say it was topic of the violence against women act, the renewal passed in the house of representatives in 2019 carry, but it's languishing in the senate if passed. it would expand tribal jurisdiction to include other offences like sexual assault, stalking, trafficking, and child abuse. oh, what kind of difference would that make again on the ground, on a day to day level? yeah, i mean, it would make a huge difference. what we've heard from tribal leaders, judges and advocates since 2013, since certain tribes started exercising special jurisdiction under about 2013 is di, although it's been really successful in protecting tribal communities, for perpetrators who commit dating my violence or domestic violence. the narrowness of jurisdiction under vala, turret, $32013.00 is a continual source of frustration. and that's because it creates those loopholes

for offenders. it leaves victims unprotected and it limits how effectively tribes can prosecute domestic violence. offenders for crimes that co occur with domestic violence. so enhancing, you know, these permissions and expanding on tribal jurisdiction will help to better protect tribal communities surrounding communities. and ultimately, hopefully we would see a decline in the rates that the use of native women. we know that there is a long history of instances, no racism against indigenous people in this country. but the question that i want to get an answer from for you to is sort of how we go about reversing that history . as a practical matter, what can we do and how do you specifically go about doing that work? upstart with you may gather, is the huge question. you know, and i think that there's invisibility, right? most people, if they know of a native woman, they know of a hollowing costume, and that's it. we're starting to change that. you know, we've got our 1st native woman, a member of the cabinet,

the secretary of interior deb holland, right? we've got native women in congress. we have a lot of work to do in the curriculum. in the united states. you know, most law schools don't teach all a font. right. so most law students who go to law schools don't study the supreme court decision. that is the reason why our native women faced the highest rates of domestic violence, sexual thought, and homicide in the united states of america has talked a lot about the kind of educational piece in the bit of the cultural piece crew. what else can be done to undo this violence, this legacy of violence against indigenous people? well, 1st we need to adequately find and provide resources to tribes. tribes are consistently set up to fail by this chronic under funding. so we need to ensure that tribe not only have the authority, which is what we talked about a little bit with vala. but also the resource is to hold offenders accountable, to provide culturally centered services to their community. to prove data collections that we really know the extent of the problem and can help identify

more victims across jurisdictional lines. and so the sooner we give native people and that's especially native victims and families of victims, a seat at the table in decision making, an ensure that they're part of these larger conversations the sooner we can come up with solutions that are actually tailored specifically to the needs of native nations, harry, america and thank you both so much for joining me in this conversation. really appreciate it. everybody that is our show up for we'll be back next week with december on and just either cattle hose, the feeder arab cup, a momentous event for the region, and a glimpse of what's in store for the 2022. welcome. people in power investigates the use and abuse of power across the globe. a world exclusive interview with joint

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