Exploring The Consequences Of Indigenous Feminism

Barker, J. (2008). Gender, Sovereignty, Rights: Native Women's Activism against Social Inequality and Violence in Canada. American Quarterly, 60(2), 8. Retrieved fro m http://search.Proquest.com.Ez proxy.library.yorku.ca/docview/61688929?Acc ountid=15182.

What roles do Indigenous women play within the family? Do these roles change with further contact with Europeans? What strategies are used by these women to attempt to maintain their independence and power?

Throughout history, women have been the victims of oppression in society. In specific, Aboriginal women have suffered through racism, sexism, domestic violence, and over-representation. Through the implementation of the Indian Act, Aboriginal women have been forced to abandon their culture in order to assimilate into Canadian society. The effects of colonization has changed the way Aboriginal women are treated; emotionally and physically, and therefore are the source of oppression today.

Imagine a normal day. You wake up, you get ready, you probably see your mom, wife or sister. You say goodbye and head on your way. Once home, you sit down with them and talk about your day. When sad they comfort you, they love, support, care for you. Now imagine you wake up one day and they have disappeared without a trace. Gone. You are heartbroken. This is a sad reality for many Indigenous families, many women are vanishing without a trace. Between 1200-4000 Indigenous women have been missing or murdered in the last 30 years. These women are often targeted and treated as being worthless leading to little support from police and the public. After being immersed into this issue I learned lots, but I was left feeling sad,

Firstly, many indigenous women are found missing or murdered; this occurs because Aboriginals are not getting enough support from the Canadian government. Native people around Canada are seen as an independent group of people who do not get proper government funding because they are very much removed from society so everybody thinks that they have no problems which need support from the Canadian government. For example, when we look at Aboriginal people we see them as a group of people who live in the

The film Highway of Tears brought to light many issues faced by Indigenous persons however, its main focus was the missing and murdered women found along Highway 16 in Northern British Columbia. Majority of the women who are missing as well as those who were murdered are Indigenous women. This film displayed that although there are ways to prevent and possibly end the violence against Aboriginal women, no action was being taken by police or other government agents to do so. It was discussed how this as well as other wrongs done to Indigenous persons and communities, is a result of past and present colonialism.

In the article “Domestic violence against indigenous women is everybody’s problem” domestic violence is depicted as a serious social problem that involves “unspeakable acts of violence” that leaves victims experiencing fear and despair (Taylor 2014). More specifically, the social construction of domestic violence will be discussed with an emphasis on Aboriginal women and a typology of intimate partner violence. The social construction of domestic violence has serious implications for victims of domestic abuse because there is a failure to address the processes that perpetuate the violence. Instead, domestic violence is addressed through the illusion of social support. What is evident is that domestic violence is a social problem that requires comprehensive services, particularly for indigenous women, to address the complexity of the interaction between the individual’s social location and the causes that lead to the violence.

In the article Colonialism and First Nations Women in Canada by Winona Stevenson, the author explains the struggle First Nations women had keeping their culture alive. Upon arriving in America the Europeans suffocated the natives with their rationalisation of female subjugation. Reluctant to give up their traditions and honour the native-American women put up a fight, but their efforts would not be strong enough to triumph over the European missionaries. Stevenson chronologically explains their contact with the ‘colonial agencies'.

She argues that women face many institutional and societal barriers. In this regard, I will give examples of the institutional and structural barriers such as “The Indian Act” which have significantly affected Indigenous women in Canada in many ways including social, economic and political. While comparing feminists and Indigenous feminists, I think that Native women are different in several ways including social, cultural, historical, political and economic; therefore, Indigenous feminism is a way of practicing the values that they have been taught and inherited from their

Second Slide: The ways in which Indigenous Women tried to resist, but were ultimately victims of colonization, and how heteropatriarchy has affected them.

Inclusive Views within Indigenous Culture The Indigenous novel Green Grass Running Water, by Thomas King, displays strong independent women who express the inclusive views in Indigenous culture. For example, Alberta does not allow Colonial gender roles to construct her; Babo takes pride of being a single independent mother; First Woman is a leader and Norma is not afraid to speak her mind. However, the strongest example that shows the difference between Colonial and Indigenous views is Alberta refusing to adjust to patriarchal gender roles.

One of the most interesting things in this course is the concept of indigenous female incarceration. Court role in reducing incarceration rates for Indigenous female defendants, or whether courts have an impact on reducing incarceration rates. The interesting topographies in examining this concept is that, in order to understand indigenous female incarceration, it was argued that a new perspective of this has to be looked at for a colonial patriarchy way. An illustration of this is that indigenous populations of an established colonies were viewed as “low in the scale of social organisation, due to policies such as, protection/segregation, self-determination, assimilation and reconciliation.

The ideas of feminism tend to rein in tons of backlash from a large number of people who don 't understand what it is about, who don 't like the ideas of change, or who simply don 't agree with it. Feminism within an aboriginal community takes this one step further , especially when it comes to the women, because the women themselves, do not want any part of it. As proud women, strongly connected to their culture, they have multiple reasons to hold onto such doubt and rejection, of feminism, including their history with Anglos, the effects that history had through internal colonialism on their traditional values in their everyday lives, and the connections it has to gender and protocol in

With these contributions, the feminist perspective has allowed anthropology to question social and theoretical structures which had previously been validated through other systems such as naturalisation and inequality. Through these questions feminist anthropology has created a more open and subjective perspective of anthropology which explores the depth of gender and its role in society and individuals lives. Without the feminist perspective anthropology may be hugely limited in its understanding of society and would not be as useful as it is in enabling us to understand how the individual and society are

However, colonist women were not always allies to the native peoples. Postcolonial feminist literature often uncovers and describes their participation in the system of colonization. The writers of