"Acts of Resistance": Reclaiming Native Womanhood in Canadian Aboriginal Theatre.

Abstract

This study investigates the representation of Aboriginal womanhood in Aboriginal women’s theatre in Canada. Using five core case studies to explore Indigenous women’s self-representation, I demonstrate how Native theatre engages in acts of resistance that promote the decolonization of Aboriginal womanhood. Drawing on concepts of Aboriginal storytelling, I attempt to weave the connections between the personal story and the collective history to demonstrate how these plays use theatrical presence to rebuke historical and contemporary absences of Native women. Each play does this by taking aim at political policies, stereotypes in popular culture, and sexual violence, which all sustain negative constructions of Native womanhood. Chapter one establishes the context(s) in which these plays exist and explores a history of legislation and policies that contributes to the negative representations of Aboriginal women. Chapters two and three demonstrate how Native women's theatre confronts stereotypes of Aboriginality and deconstructs them as a form of personal and collective healing. Chapter two explores how culture jamming and humour are used to disrupt the re-circulation of stereotypes in order to challenge the cultural currency stereotypes maintain in film, television, and other medias. In chapter three I explore the connection between the stereotypes and sexualized violence. I identify strategies used to represent violence, specifically around concepts of “presence” and “absence.” The function of violence in these plays is not one of (re)victimization, but one that evokes concepts of testimony, witnessing, and storytelling. It will also deal with the problematic perceived trajectory of healing and identity formation through violence in some of the plays. Chapter four looks to the relationship between identity and community and signals how a return to “home” and community can help rebuild positive Indigenous identities and becomes the final act of resistance. Chapter five examines the relationship between storytelling (in the theatre), history, and witnessing trauma. It proposes that Native storytelling, especially in the theatre, is an act of survivance that challenges historical absences. Finally, in chapter six, I look forward to the transnational applications of my research and gesture to Indigenous eco-theatre as one avenue that promotes the decolonization of Indigenous peoples globally.