TY - JOUR
AU - Dean,, Amber
AB - Allison Hargreaves' award-winning, timely book draws our attention to crucial examples of Indigenous women's literature, film, and activism as they inform—or could inform—feminist anti-violence initiatives. Arguing that Indigenous women's literature not only “reshapes the terms of anti-violence debate” but also “models Indigenous modes of research, remembrance, and reclamation” (1), each chapter of the book develops this argument through a generative, critical engagement with compelling and carefully selected examples. Published just as Canada was embarking on a national inquiry into the horrific rates of violence against Indigenous women, Hargreaves' book amplifies the urgency of this ongoing crisis. It makes an important contribution to knowledge about violence against Indigenous women and ought to become required reading for politicians, activists, policy-makers, scholars, writers, and artists concerned with ending this violence. Particularly valuable for how it models an ethical, responsible approach for white settler scholars who engage with Indigenous literature and activism, Hargreaves' thinking is informed and shaped by cutting-edge Indigenous scholarship, literature, film, and activism, and she aims to think and write with (rather than about) Indigenous texts. Violence Against Indigenous Women aims to trouble the very common scholarly and activist assumption that increased visibility (of violence) translates into greater compassion or empathy, which then somehow translates directly into real, meaningful change (3). This objective is carried through the rich analyses of activist and literary texts in each chapter. Indigenous women's literature, Hargreaves insists, implicates the ongoing-ness of colonialism itself as the primary reason why violence against Indigenous women continues (and is permitted to continue). The book is innovative in its method of analyzing activist/human rights/policy work alongside creative works; its “juxtaposition of literary texts with activist sites of resistance” also “underscores Indigenous women's vital contributions” to resisting and preventing violence, which compels readers to recognize that even though Indigenous women are disproportionately affected by violence, they are also at the forefront of building a movement of resistance and prevention (26). The introduction offers a thoughtful, clear articulation of the book's primary arguments and is a very helpful text for use in the classroom by anyone seeking to introduce students—particularly settler students—to the issue of violence against Indigenous women in the Canadian context. Hargreaves provides a very helpful narrative framing that explores how she came to this research project through her community organizing work in feminist anti-violence organizations and in solidarity work with an Indigenous/non-Indigenous coalition. Through a careful analysis of the very different approaches to storytelling evident in the public reports of the BC Missing Women Commission of Inquiry and in Christine Welsh's important documentary, Finding Dawn, the first chapter asserts that an engagement with Indigenous storytelling, knowledges, and methods is necessary for gathering a fuller picture of the root causes of violence against Indigenous women. The juxtaposition of the film with the Inquiry reports succeeds at driving home the vast and incommensurable differences between Indigenous and Euro-Western understandings of what constitutes knowledge and of what methods are best at conveying its importance or significance. Moving into a more critical take on the possible effects of telling stories about trauma and violence, the second chapter questions the common assumption that the use of such stories (in activist work in particular) will automatically give us direct access to authentic truths or lead to greater justice. This chapter effectively works to problematize the too-simplistic or too-uncritical use and circulation of stories of violence. In the third chapter, Hargreaves continues to explore the potential and the risks of telling stories of gendered colonial violence—and in particular their amenability to the limited liberal strategies of multicultural “inclusion”—through a case-study analysis of a political conflict at a mainstream feminist women's shelter juxtaposed with Dene (Chipewyan) activist-writer Morningstar Mercredi's published memoir. The final chapter interrogates how and why particular murdered or missing Indigenous women become “archetypal victims” (134), their narratives reiterated over and over again in both mainstream and activist accounts as well as in creative works. Hargreaves' critical engagement with the graphic novel rendering of Helen Betty Osborne's narrative is especially compelling for its insight that the narrative framing of the text requires Osborne's death for the reader/viewer to come into their/our empathy and humanity and for its reiteration of a teleology of liberal progress. The chapter also offers a nuanced reading of Yvette Nolan's commemorative play, Annie May's Movement, and contemplates how the play, too, cannot escape its own reliance on Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash's death for its narrative arc. The conclusion turns to Blackfoot/Sami filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers' brilliant revenge drama, A Red Girl's Reasoning, to draw out the film's imaginative provocations about the forms meaningful redress might take beyond state-sanctioned processes. Hargreaves' book demonstrates why literature—and Indigenous women's literature in particular—matters or should matter beyond its aesthetic value to literary critics and readers. Violence Against Indigenous Women makes a compelling case for why Indigenous women's literature and other creative work offers critical tools for preventing colonial gendered violence, a goal that continues to evade policy-makers, mainstream anti-violence organizations, and state-sponsored initiatives. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Violence Against Indigenous Women: Literature, Activism, Resistance
JF - Contemporary Women's Writing
DO - 10.1093/cww/vpz015
DA - 2019-11-27
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/violence-against-indigenous-women-literature-activism-resistance-NnnftUr7bg
SP - 1
VL - Advance Article
IS - 
DP - DeepDyve
ER -