Warrior Women: Indigenous Women's Anti-violence Engagement with the Canadian State

Abstract

This study examines indigenous women's involvement in state-sponsored anti-violence responses since the 1980s. It focuses on three fields of political engagement: (1) the Canadian state politics of family violence; (2) the Native Women's Association of Canada's(NWAC) "Sisters in Spirit" (SIS) initiative and the politics of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls; and (3) the politics of prostitution and the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. Overall, I argue that despite navigating a complex and colonizing political terrain largely out of their control, indigenous women have been "warrior women," advancing strong anti-colonial anti-violence responses that support the end goal of ending violence against indigenous women and girls in Canada. I also explore how indigenous women have sometimes employed political discourses and strategies that while appearing to offer a valid pathway of resistance, replicate dominant discourses and strategies and, thus, serve to undermine these efforts by securing the colonial Canadian state's authority over indigenous peoples and territories and, therefore, the persistence of violence against indigenous women and girls in Canada. To reinforce both of these claims, this study addresses reception: that is, I argue that the Canadian state's responses to violence against indigenous women and girls have been driven by self-interest and state political agendas which, because of the adversarial nature of colonial domination, rarely coincide with the interests or needs of indigenous women and their communities. Furthermore, I show that the state's response to indigenous women's anti-violence resistance can be favorable when it can be reconciled with its self-interest and political agendas, but quickly moves to appropriation and suppression if these anti-violence politics threaten Canadian state dominance.