The knowledge of over-representation is more damaging than the impact on individuals serving those sentences. The experiences of individuals in the correctional system when those experiences follow the patterns of colonialism familiar to Aboriginal people¹⁴ demonstrate that the collective is equally impacted. This is a further reason it is essential to acknowledge colonialism. As the second chapter of Creating Choices records:

Not only can we not separate the Aboriginal and the woman, it is important to understand we also share a common Aboriginal history. That common history is the history of racism, oppression, genocide, and ethnocide. It is one further way in which we are distinct. This shared history impacts on Aboriginal federally sentenced women in two ways. First, as the racism of prisons or the criminal justice system has largely been ignored or vanished, the situation of Aboriginal women as participants in Canadian society cannot be understood by prison administrators or correctional bureaucrats. It is these individuals who have historically controlled the administration of criminal justice. This has left Aboriginal federally sentenced women in an impossible situation. The people who hold the key to their release, they cannot trust. This lack of trust is not the sole responsibility or failure of individuals (prisoners or correctional employees) but a systemic failure to address racism (18).

Therefore, the fact of over-representation impacts on more than the women incarcerated, but on Aboriginal people generally. This is often unaccounted in the discussions about discrimination in the criminal justice system.

In this way, prison does impact on Aboriginal peoples generally in a much more profound way that principles such as deterrence take account. This example demonstrates how important it is to account for the colonial impact and the way historical events reproduce present day devastations on Aboriginal peoples. Colonialism has created the climate of distrust where Aboriginal people see this is not a system of justice, which equally represents them. This is the first layer surrounding the individualized discrimination Aboriginal women face while incarcerated. Rather than disturbing historic colonial outcomes,¹⁵ the opportunity to challenge outcomes of earlier colonial imposition is lost in favour of perpetuating the colonial relationship. Although some may experience this as a harsh conclusion, it is not. In 1991, The Commissioners of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba wrote: