Violence Against Indigenous Women

Literature, Activism, Resistance

De: Allison Hargreaves

Narrado por: Ryanne Chisholm

Violence against Indigenous women in Canada is an ongoing crisis, with roots deep in the nation’s colonial history. Despite numerous policies and programs developed to address the issue, Indigenous women continue to be targeted for violence at disproportionate rates. What insights can literature contribute where dominant antiviolence initiatives have failed? Centering the voices of contemporary Indigenous women writers, this book argues for the important role that literature and storytelling can play in response to gendered colonial violence.

Indigenous communities have been organizing against violence since newcomers first arrived, but the cases of missing and murdered women have only recently garnered broad public attention. Violence Against Indigenous Women joins the conversation by analyzing the socially interventionist work of Indigenous women poets, playwrights, filmmakers, and fiction writers. Organized as a series of case studies that pair literary interventions with recent sites of activism and policy critique, the book puts literature in dialogue with antiviolence debate to illuminate new pathways toward action.

With the advent of provincial and national inquiries into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, a larger public conversation is now underway. Indigenous women’s literature is a critical site of knowledge-making and critique. Violence Against Indigenous Women provides a foundation for approaching this literature in the context of Indigenous feminist scholarship and activism and the ongoing intellectual history of Indigenous women’s resistance.

©2017 Wilfrid Laurier University Press (P)2021 Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Reseñas de la Crítica

“This book makes an important—indeed, urgent—contribution to knowledge about violence against Indigenous women that ought to become required reading for politicians, activists, policy-makers, scholars, writers, and artists engaged in responding to this ongoing crisis.” (Amber Dean, McMaster University, author of Remembering Vancouver’s Disappeared Women: Settler Colonialism and the Difficulty of Inheritance)

"Hargreaves...examines how stories of individual tragedies have been memorialized in venues such as human rights reports, poems, films, and plays. She convincingly explains that statistics and research projects produced with the best intentions may serve to reinforce the very colonial power dynamics that prevent the emergence of transformative solutions in the struggle to end violence against Indigenous women.... For those in the field of comparative narrative criticism, it’s a work sure to inspire much discussion, debate, and reflection." (Publishers Weekly)

"[Violence Against Indigenous Women] broadens how one sees and values Indigenous women, and it furthers personal consideration and propels actions as allies to avoid leaving the issue in the hands of institutions and governments. The lessons here will be most profound for non-Indigenous peoples. Summing Up: Highly recommended." (G. Bruyere, CHOICE, March 1, 2018)