The continued targeting of indigenous children and women constitutes a significant obstacle to the development of indigenous people in Canada and around the world. In this essay, I will critically interpret government-led development initiatives in Canada using a comparative analysis of New Zealand. I will discuss development interventions throughout Canadian history with a focus on Indigenous women and children, with specific reference to Indigenous women's motherhood. I will first examine the progression of Canadian state development interventions throughout history. Next, I will observe how these systems of oppression have manifested throughout history by examining violence against Indigenous women and the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in foster care in Canada. I will situate the struggles of gender and ethnic groups outside of dominant discourses in the international context drawing on state-led development initiatives in New Zealand, examining Mana Wahine (Women's Power) to deconstruct the effect of colonialism on Māori women's motherhood. Next, I suggest that to achieve indigenous development goals, we must decolonize development initiatives. I argue that this is achievable by centering indigenous development initiatives on indigenous knowledge and perspectives. Next, I will analyze the legitimacy of current development policy through a postcolonial lens. Next, I will suggest the need for a grassroots and participatory development approach to government-led development initiatives in order to achieve the best possible outcome in equality for gender and ethnic bodies in the colonial states of Canada and of New Zealand. To achieve this, I argue that the fundamental principles of development policy must be...... middle of paper ......p in New Zealand's Māori communities – particularly in diplomatic and of conflict reconciliation. However, the aim here is not to paint a portrait of an indigenous society with harmonious and egalitarian social structures. Rather, it is about illustrating the impact of colonialism on gender relations throughout the history of colonial states. Indeed, a colonial settler society, which can only exist through the dissolution of indigenous peoples and the establishment of a new social body on the expropriated territory (Wolfe 2006), must have at its base an obsession with indigenous reproduction . For this reason, a colonial society is inherently eliminatory in that the dominant culture must “destroy in order to replace” (Wolfe 2006: 390). The mere existence, let alone reproduction, of the indigenous population is counterproductive to the colonial project (Landertinger: 2011).