Indigenous Feminisms in Canada

Abstract

This essay explores three case studies that show how Indigenous women enact the principles of Indigenous feminism by deploying the concept of active silence to bring attention to the social justice goals of Indigenous communities in Canada. It begins by defining Indigenous feminism and its broader objectives before turning to a discussion of the Sahtu Dene’s efforts to restore land polluted through uranium mining, Heiltsuk resistance to the Northern Gateway Pipeline Project, and Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Damien Short notes an important shift in how self-determination has been conceptualized and embraced by Indigenous peoples in the post-1994 era that followed from ratification of the United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Short distinguishes between Indigenous citizenship rights as these have been imposed by settler states and the Draft Declaration’s articulation of “rights to self-determination and land” which recognizes the “centrality of land to indigenous culture” (Short, 2005, p. 273). In this context, self-determination refers to “the right to political autonomy, the freedom to determine political status and to freely pursue economic, social and cultural development” (2005, p. 273).

2 Cindy Holder describes this shift in international legal fora in three ways: “culture is treated as an activity rather than a good (or object), culture is taken to be as basic a component of human dignity as are freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and freedom from torture, and cultural rights can be understood only against the background of a basic right to self-determination” (Holder, 2008, p. 7).

3 Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox notes that the mine represented a “symbol of frontier progress” and was “celebrated in a 1938 painting” by A.Y. Jackson, a member of the Group of Seven (Irlbacher-Fox, 2009, p. 95). Irlbacher-Fox argues that the Délînê communities’ “rationale for negotiating self-government” was “unique” in that community elders were motivated by issues concerning the impacts of “uranium mining”, inadequate health services, and tensions between the government and community due to the state agencies’ “cultural non-understanding” and “decision-making” (2009, p. 93).

4 The Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair, Commission Chair, stated at McGill University on 13 March 2014 that the work of the TRC was to engage in transitional justice.

5 For an analysis of how gender dynamics inform the ways in which Indigenous women writers address residential school practices in the pre-truth and reconciliation period, see Couture-Grondin & Suzack, 2013.

6 I presented a version of this paper at the Meeting Places/Lieux de rencontre: An International Canadian Studies Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Sackville, New Brunswick, in September 2013, and at a workshop on Human Rights Rituals, funded by ARC Laureate Fellowship 100100176, held at the Australian National University in June 2014. I am greatly indebted to the intellectual generosity of Hilary Charlesworth, Ben Authers, and Emma Larking for astute comments that helped me to clarify my arguments. For insightful feedback and suggestions that greatly enhanced my arguments, I am indebted to the editors of this special issue, Astrid Andersen, Ina Knobblock, and Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen.

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Cheryl Suzack

Cheryl Suzack, is an associate professor, cross-appointed to the departments of English and Aboriginal Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada, and a member of the Batchewana First Nation. She is the author of Indigenous Women’s Writing and the Cultural Study of Law (forthcoming with the University of Toronto Press) and an editor with Shari M. Huhndorf, Jeanne Perreault, and Jean Barman of the award-winning collection Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture (University of British Columbia Press, 2010).