Indigenous Rights & Environmental Justice

Justice for Girls (JFG) has been fighting for the rights of Indigenous girls since 1999. We approach our work through an environmental justice lens.

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Leading the Work: Zoe Craig-Sparrow

​JFG’s work on Indigenous Rights and Environmental Justice is led by Zoe Craig-Sparrow (MA), a member of the Musqueam Indian Band, who has been involved with Justice for Girls since she was 12 years old.

Zoe is passionate about girls’ and women’s rights and the environment, particularly how those relate to Indigenous communities and travelled to the United Nations with JFG to present a submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2012.

Protecting Indigenous Teen Girls from Systemic Harm and Rights Violations

Over the past 25 years, our advocacy has focused on the epidemic of violence, poverty, state apprehension, and over-criminalization of Indigenous teen girls. We have advocated domestically and internationally, initiating and playing a key role in the Human Rights Watch investigation of police abuses and failures to protect Indigenous girls in BC, and making submissions to the UN and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights inquiries into murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls in Canada. More recently, we have advocated for Indigenous land defenders against forced eviction, police violence and other human rights violations associated with fossil fuel development.

Justice for Girls has fought for environmental protection of girls human rights for over a decade, illuminating the specific and disproportionate harms of climate change and environmental destruction on the rights of teen girls. Justice for Girls has taken two delegations, including teen girls, to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to call for Canada’s action on climate change.

Annabel Webb and Zoe Craig Sparrow are working with JFG to document the specific and disproportionate human rights impacts of fossil fuel development on teen girls in BC.

Key Actions

Elevating international attention
Defending Indigenous land rights
Advancing environmental justice for girls
Amplifying youth voices globally
Strengthening research and policy

Related reports and submissions

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Climate emergency

The climate crisis is an existential threat to children and future generations.1  In general, children face the worst consequences of the climate crises due to their physical, social and economic vulnerabilities and because they will live long enough to endure the worst impacts. Due to climate lag and the threat of runaway climate change, today’s climate policy decisions will seal the fate of generations to come.

Climate change, ecological degradation, and loss of biodiversity disproportionately harms girls, especially Indigenous girls whose traditional territories are often the frontlines of environmental destruction.2 A broad spectrum of human rights are threatened. Domestically and around the world, girls’ human rights depend on a safe, healthy and sustainable environment.3

Ecocide-Genocide

Canada is a colonial country with a record of both historical and ongoing genocide against its Indigenous peoples. Colonization, which includes environmental destruction of Indigenous territories, has resulted in a broad spectrum of human rights violations, including violence, suppression of Indigenous culture and identity, and social and economic inequalities that persist today.4 Indigenous girls disproportionately live in poverty and are subjected to genocidal assault, rape and murder.5 Indigenous girls are also disproportionately exposed to degraded ecosystems and are gravely harmed by deforestation, contamination of drinking water, depletion of fish stocks, and environmental destruction due to resource extraction.6 The harms of genocide,  colonial violence, and systemic racism are amplified by the climate crisis.7 Read about Indigenous Girls’ Rights. 

Climate change, ecological degradation, and loss of biodiversity disproportionately harms girls, especially Indigenous girls whose traditional territories are often the frontlines of environmental destruction.8 A broad spectrum of human rights are threatened.9 Domestically and around the world, girls’ human rights depend on a safe, healthy and sustainable environment.10

Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

– UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Article 3

Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired. 

– UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Article 26 (1)

In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities or persons of Indigenous origin exist, a child belonging to such a minority or who is Indigenous shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practise his or her own religion, or to use his or her own language.

– UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 30.

Indigenous Girls’ Rights

Systemic Inequality and Vulnerability Rooted in Colonization

Indigenous girls experience grave social and economic marginalization in Canada.11 Indigenous girls in Canada face extreme and epidemic levels of violence, as well as poverty and other deeply rooted and pervasive social inequality as a result of colonization.12 This marginalization places Indigenous girls in situations of extreme vulnerability and has denied them adequate protection of the law and of society as a whole.13

Indigenous girls are disproportionately criminalized by the Canadian justice system. Racist stereotypes about the assumed criminality of racialized and Indigenous girls influence the courts’ response to poverty related offences.14 Over years of advocacy, Justice for Girls has observed that the courts tend to respond to Indigenous girls as though it is inevitable that they will become criminal and drug/alcohol addicted, and that their lives may only be salvaged through the harsh treatment of the criminal law.15

Systemic racism is a significant factor in the policing and incarceration of Indigenous young women.16

In 2012, after over a decade of responding to police abuses of Indigenous girls and failures to respond to violence, Justice for Girls called on Human Rights Watch to investigate. Justice for Girls partnered with Human Rights Watch in all phases of their investigation, which resulted in the February 2013 report Those Who Take Us Away: Abusive Policing and Failures in Protection of Indigenous Women and Girls in Northern British Columbia, Canada. Since the release of the report, Justice for Girls has continued to advocate for independent, gender-specific investigations of police sexual violence against girls and women. 

Justice for Girls Recommends

01

Canada must provide supports, resources, and core funding to Indigenous women’s organizations for the development of advocacy, support, housing and education services for Indigenous teenage girls.

02

The Canadian government must specifically uphold the inherent rights of Indigenous girls and make every effort to remedy the consequences of colonization. In so doing, the Canadian government must engage Indigenous grassroots organizations and engage the leadership of Indigenous women and girls. 

03

Canada must urgently respond to the genocide of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) and, drawing on the leadership of Indigenous girls, develop a Transitional Justice National Action Plan to implement the MMIWG Inquiry’s Calls for Justice and end the genocide. 

04

Canada must immediately de-incarcerate Indigenous teenage girls.

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  1. UNICEF. (2021, December 27). The climate crisis is a child rights crisis. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/stories/climate-crisis-child-rights-crisis ↩︎
  2. International Indigenous Women’s Forum (FIMI). (2019). Indigenous Women and Climate Change: Protecting Rights, Securing the Future. https://www.forumfimi.org
    United Nations. (2021). The 17 Goals. United Nations. https://sdgs.un.org/goals ↩︎
  3. United Nations Human Rights Council. (2018). Report on Human Rights and the Environment. United Nations. https://undocs.org/A/HRC/37/59 ↩︎
  4. United Nations. (2007). United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf ↩︎
  5. National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). (2019). Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/ ↩︎
  6. Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. (2017). Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Assessment. Government of Canada. https://www.ceaa.gc.ca ↩︎
  7. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (2022). Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/ ↩︎
  8. Ecologic Institute. (2023, October 2). Indigenous women face the triple threat of climate change, biodiversity loss and gender inequality. https://www.ecologic.org/post/indigenous-women-the-triple-threat-of-climate-change-biodiversity-loss-and-gender-inequality ↩︎
  9. UN Women. (2023, September 25). Women on the frontlines: Climate change, gender‑based violence, and reproductive rights. Women’s Earth Alliance. https://womensearthalliance.org/in-the-news/wea-engenderhealth-gbvsrhrandclimate ↩︎
  10. Inter-American Court of Human Rights. (2023). Advisory Opinion on the environment and human rights. Quoted in: Borenstein, S. (2024, July 3). Top human rights court affirms right to healthy environment. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/be6ffb960ed9a55ccb72130c2790557c ↩︎
  11. Statistics Canada. (2022, June 20). Indigenous women and girls: Socioeconomic conditions. Retrieved from Statistics Canada: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2022001/article/00005-eng.htm ↩︎
  12. Statistics Canada. (2023, July 26). Court outcomes in homicides of Indigenous women and girls in Canada, 2009 to 2021. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2023001/article/00006-eng.htm ↩︎
  13. National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. (2019). Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report. Government of Canada. https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/ ↩︎
  14. Native Women’s Association of Canada. (2009). Youth focus part 2: Criminalization of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis girls. Retrieved from https://www.nwac.ca/assets-knowledge-centre/Youth-Focus-Part-2.pdf ↩︎
  15. Justice for Girls. (2005, September). Violence against Aboriginal Girls: Justice System’s Response. Retrieved from https://www.justiceforgirls.org/uploads/2/4/5/0/24509463/violence_against_aboriginal_girls_-_final_brief_-_sept_2005.pdf ↩︎
  16. Government of Canada, Department of Justice. (2023, January 20). Overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the Canadian criminal justice system: Causes and responses [Research & Statistics Division]. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/oip-cjs/p4.html ↩︎
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