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Atlantis29.2, 2005 1

Introduction to "Indigenous Women: The State ofOur Nations"

Bonita Lawrenceand Kim Anderson

"Indigenous Women: The State ofOur Nations" originated with our desire, asco-editors, to continue a workingrelationship that began with the anthologyStrong Women Stories: Native Vision andCommunity Survival (2003). In Strong WomenStories, the contributors addressed the rangeof issues that Aboriginal women take on as

they work to ensure the survival of ourcommunities. A number of them examinedthe complex legal categories through whichCanada classifies Nativeness, and exploredhow being labelled as a "C-31 Indian," or as"non-status" or "Metis," affected their abilityto feel a sense of belonging within their ownand other Native communities. Otherwomen addressed issues of child-rearing,schooling, sexuality, community leadership,women and "traditionalism," aging, violence

against women and children and healing.Notably absent in these accounts, however,were articles that explicitly explored thepolitics of sovereignty. This absence bothintrigued and troubled us, and prompted usto ask the contributors to this journal towrite about Aboriginal women andnationhood.

As a starting point, we knew that"community issues" and "sovereignty issues"have often been separated within our

communities. "Sovereignty issues," asarticulated by the formal leadership (largelymale) have addressed land claims andconstitutional battles, in the courts andwithin government circles. "Communityissues," as articulated by the informal

leadership (largely female), haveencompassed a range of struggles, includingaddressing violence against women andchildren, alcoholism and other addictions,the health needs of children and elders, andeducation that is culture-based andcommunity controlled. Too often, theagendas of the formal leadership are

prioritized, while the informal leadership'sconcerns receive secondary attention. Thegender divisions that underpin whoseperspectives are prioritized are obvious;what is less clear are the ways in which thegender divisions forced on us by thecolonizer may have resulted in differentdefinitions, among men and women, of"sovereignty" and "nationhood."

WHERE ARE YOUR WOMEN?

The absence of Aboriginal women inpolitics is rooted in our history, as coined inthe "Where are your women?" questionposed by Cherokee Chief Attakullakullaupon meeting a colonial United States (US)delegation. As Marilou Awiakta reports,Chief Attakullakulla's party included women"as famous in war, as powerful in thecouncil," while the US party included onlymen (1993, 9). In terms of governance,

where were (are) their women - and whathas happened to our Indigenous femalepolitical authority, vision, voice anddirection?

We know that colonial governmentshistorically refused to negotiate with


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Indigenous women, accepting only malerepresentatives when discussing terms ofrelationship. They then activelydisempowered women by attacking the clansystems and other forms of female

representation, and by making it illegal forIndian women in Canada to take part in theband councils that replaced traditionalIndigenous governments. The legacy of theIndian Act, in the form of all-malerepresentation, has shaped the nation tonation discourse since then. This has set thestage for a political representation that is notshaped by women's ways of knowing theworld.

Native women have been far from

silent about community needs and priorities,but our voices are only beginning to beheard politically at the national andinternational levels. More Aboriginal womenare entering formal leadership positionsnationally and are increasingly addressinginternational forums on Indigenous issues,yet the reality of ongoing colonization tiesour hands. Our families and communitiesrequire constant attention because wecontinue to move from crisis to crisis. As

primary caregivers, these responsibilitiesweigh heavily on us.There have been other reasons for us

not taking active roles in formal politicalstructures. Some Aboriginal women havesought a broader vision than the bandcouncil system forced on our communitiesand so tightly controlled by Canada. Thesewomen may have maintained traditionalleadership as clan mothers, or have workedin other ways to re-awaken or strengthen

the traditional systems of government intheir nations. However, other Aboriginalwomen, particularly those who havestruggled against being formally expelledfrom their nations because of genderdiscrimination in the Indian Act, have borne

the brunt of actually having formal politicalstructures work against them.

It is becoming increasingly well-known that a critical act of politicalresistance on the part of Native women has

been against the Indian Act clause thatexpelled Indian women who had marriednon-Indians from their communities, whileallowing Indian men to bestow Indian statuson their white wives. Indian womenstruggled long and hard against thislegislation which disenfranchised them fromthe life of their nations while in many placesenabling white women to replace them. Theorganization "Indian Rights for IndianWomen," initiated by the late Mary Two-Axe

Early, was probably one of the earliestexamples of Native women's resistance tothis gendered form of colonialism. However,in the early 1970s, when aspects of overtracial inequality within the Indian Act wereoverturned in the Drybonescase, two Nativewomen, Jeannette Corbiere Lavell and IreneBedard, attempted to have the overt genderinquality within the Act overturned bychallenging the loss of their Indian status inthe courts. Ultimately, however, the

Supreme Court judgment inLavell and Bedardmaintained the gender discrimination whichhad been so central to Native women'scolonial disempowerment. Subsequently,when the women of Tobique First Nation inNew Brunswick began to challenge themanner in which housing on reserve wasassigned only to men, leaving their familieshomeless when marriages broke down, theirstruggle gradually evolved into the largerissue of loss of Indian status. This ultimately

led Sandra Lovelace to the United Nations(UN), where she argued that Section12(1)(b) of the Indian Act, through whichIndian women lost their status, was inviolation of Article 27 of the InternationalCovenant on Civil and Political Rights, which


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protects the rights of minority groups toenjoy their culture, practise their traditions,and use their language in community withothers from their group. In 1981, the UNruled against Canada, and found that

Lovelace had been denied her cultural rightsunder Article 27, thereby forcing Canada tochange the Indian Act in 1985 (Lawrence2004).

What has been less well documentedthan the above interventions, however, arethe ways in which gendered struggles againstcolonialism have all too frequently beenreduced to "women's issues" by the formalmale leadership, and then presented as awholesale threat to sovereignty. The now

notorious incident when the National IndianBrotherhood (predecessor of the Assemblyof First Nations), when faced with the Lavelland Bedard case, actually lined up, withCanada, to be intervenors against Lavell andBedard (Jamieson 1978), is only oneexample. There are others. When the Lavelland Bedard decision clearly foreclosed anypossibility of legal redress within Canada,Mary Two-Axe Early and sixty other womenfrom Kahnewake attempted to take Canada's

gender discrimination into the internationalarena by attending the InternationalWomen's Year conference in Mexico City in1975. They returned to find that their bandcouncil had served them eviction notices(Jamieson 1979). Meanwhile, the struggle ofthe Tobique women for housing and againstloss of status, which they waged at one pointby occupying their band office, resulted notonly in threats of arrest by the leadership butalso continuous physical violence against

them and their families. This happened tosuch an extent that the American IndianMovement actually offered to come into thecommunity to protect them (Silman 1987).

Against this background, it is perhapsnot surprising that the Native Women's

Association of Canada did not feel sufficiently"represented" by the Assembly of FirstNations, and therefore struggled, fruitlessly,to get a seat for status Indian women at thetable during the 1982 talks around

repatriating the constitution. It is also notsurprising that the Mtis National Council ofWomen has been forced into the courts intheir attempts to bring about nationalrepresentation of Mtis women's voices.These struggles all highlight the extent towhich the formal male political leadershiphas, in general, refused to addresscolonialism when women, rather than men,are targeted, and why a section of Nativewomen activists have lost faith in these

organizations to represent them.Indeed, it is only since 1985, whenchanges in the Indian Act began to threatenthe children of Indian men as well as Indianwomen with loss of status, that the formalmale leadership has begun to see loss ofstatus as the sovereignty issue that it hasalways been.1 The implications of thiscontinuous disregard for sovereigntyviolations when only women are affected arestaggering. Over the past one hundred and

twenty-five years, approximately 25,000women and their descendants were expelled,by colonial legislation, from their homes andcommunities. The most conservativeestimates suggest that these women hadbetween half a million and one milliondescendents, within two generations of firstlosing status. With the exception of the127,000 who were reinstated in 1985, almostall of these individuals were permanently lostto their nations; the numbers approach two

million if the third generation is taken intoaccount (Lawrence 2004). Indeed, by thetime the Indian Act was changed in 1985,there were only 350,000 Status Indians stilllisted on the Department of Indian AffairsIndian Register (Holmes 1987).


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There are other ways in whichwomen's concerns have been dismissed byisolating and privatizing them as "individualconcerns." A number of Native writers,including Emma LaRocque, addressing gender

bias in community justice inititives (1997),and Madeleine Dion Stout, writing aboutviolence against women (1994), havecommented on the ways in which the rightsof men in our communities are continuouslyframed as "collective rights," while women'sefforts to protect themselves arecontinuously framed as demands for"individual rights." These so-called"individual" rights are then juxtaposed to"collective rights" as obstacles to

sovereignty.Gender divisions, then, run like a faultline through many Native communities inCanada, fragmenting decolonization efforts ina number of ways and marginalizing women'svoices within communities. Because genderdiscrimination has been a central meansthrough which the colonization of Nativecommunities has taken place, particularly inCanada, addressing the marginalization anddevaluation of women's voices becomes

central to decolonization.Viewed this way, the political choicesfacing our communities are not, as they arefrequently articulated, between "sovereignty"(men's concerns) and "community healing"(women's concerns). They are aboutdifferent ways of understanding sovereignty.In the shutting out of women's voices fromsovereignty struggles, it is impossible forNative women not to fear that "sovereignty,"as the formal male leadership expresses it,

may ultimately involve gendered andracialized formulations of nationhood. Andyet, so pervasive has been the devaluation ofwomen's voices by the Indian Act, that manyof us take for granted that Native men'sframeworks of sovereignty issues are the

only ways to speak of sovereignty andnationhood at all.

WHERE ARE THE INDIANS?

Colonization has silenced us in otherarenas as well. Within academia, Aboriginalwomen's voices have been largely absentwithin the growing body of postcolonialscholarship on nationalism. The stunningextent of marginalization of both Aboriginalmen and women within Canadianuniversities, in particular, has a central roleto play in this. In most universities acrossCanada, you can count the number of Nativeacademics, male or female, on the fingers of

one hand. With such under-representation,those few Aboriginal women who are in theacademy have found that their highestpriorities involve finding ways to "bring theircommunities with them." They are busyworking to utilize academic frameworks toaddress community needs, rather thanaddressing issues of nationalism on a moreabstract level.

Perhaps more to the point, the realityis that for Aboriginal people, there is nothing

postcolonial about our situation! We findourselves battling non-stop efforts to eraseour existence as peoples within Canada. OurIndigenous nations remain dismembered,their very existence miscast as the band-levelgovernments erroneously called "FirstNations" which are the only levels ofgovernment that Canada recognizes. Ouridentities are fragmented from the attack onour cultures and communities, and by legaldefinitions of "Indianness" that divide us and

encourage us to struggle amongst ourselvesfor greater access to the state financialsupport that keeps many of our communitiesalive.

In these ongoing attempts toobliterate our presence from Canada, Native


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women in academia are struggling to clarifywho we were before the Indian Act redefinedour identities, usually through working withelders on cultural recovery. We are alsotrying to understand who we might become,

through the visions of our youth and ourartists. This process involves defining andwriting about the realities we face in ourown ways. In the end, postcolonialscholarship on hybridity and the positioningof women within nationalist movements mayhave some value in addressing some of theissues Native women are currently involvedin. But we need to address these issues in away that makes sense to our realities which,at present, has little to do with any level of

postcolonial discourse.

ENGAGING IN THE DIALOGUE

Trying to understand what Indigenousfemale visions of nationhood and the futureare out there, we sent out a call for papersinternationally. The instantaneous nature ofhow email has become our "bush telegraph"was immediately apparent: within days ofissuing the call for papers, inquiries poured in

from Indigenous women in Australia, NewZealand, Latin America and the UnitedStates. We even received inquiries from Samiwomen in Norway. Ultimately, however, asthe reality of press deadlines approached,geographic distance re-asserted itself. Few ofthe international contributions could bemade ready for publication in time. Thevicissitudes of translating from otherlanguages, contextualizing sovereigntystruggles in international settings, and the

multiple pressures on women's time took itstoll.In the end, we are happy to present a

fine collection of articles out of Canada andthe United States. This means that at leastone border - the one separating those

colonized by Anglo-American states - ismore fluid, but many more borders remain.There is an ongoing need for an internationaldiscourse on nation-building created byIndigenous women. The international

gatherings of Indigenous women which arehappening throughout the Americas are onemanifestation of this. We hope that thisedition of Atlantis can stimulate others totake up and enlarge on this dialogue.

THE CONTRIBUTIONS

From the start, we found that therewas a tension within the submissionsbetween those women who were

accustomed to writing about women's rolesin community issues, without regarding thisas nation-building, and the women who wereaccustomed to writing about nation-building,but in ways that left out any references towomen. It was clear that the contributorswere struggling with how to write aboutsovereignty or nation-building in women'sterms, and with how to see communityactivism as part of sovereignty struggles ornation-building.

We have loosely grouped the finalselection of essays into four categories. Thefirst group of articles focuses on the so-called "social issues" that have long been thepurview of women and which highlight theimportance of healing to decolonization.Secondly, there are articles that directlyaddress the politics of sovereignty / self-determination or Indigenous governance,frequently in ways which demand arethinking, not only of the relationships

between individuals and communities butbetween Native communities and Canada.Thirdly, there are writings that addresstraditional knowledge, and its centrality toways of maintaining our nationhood. Andfinally, the writers take on issues of


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representation, not only how we arerepresented in the colonizer's eyes, butmore importantly, how we see ourselvesrepresented in relation to each other.Together with creative writing and poetry,

this collection represents a first attempt forus as co-editors to have Aboriginal womenspeak to each other in writing, specificallyabout the state of our nations.

As many of us have learned from ourmothers, sovereignty must begin with theindividual and it is impossible to be sovereignpeoples when the very safety and well-beingof women and children are at risk. Wetherefore begin this issue with two articlesthat link the politics of the individual to the

politics of sovereignty. In "Decolonising theBody: Restoring Sacred Vitality," Alannah EarlYoung and Denise Nadeau bring us right intothe female body with an article about theirwork with women from Vancouver'sdowntown eastside. They demonstrate howregeneration and healing from violence canbegin from this bodily location. Inrediscovering the "sacred vitality" of ourbodies, we have the potential to rebuildhome and nation in the most powerful and

elemental way.We often hear the phrases "ourchildren are out future" and "our childrenare the heart of our nations." The state ofour nations thus depends on how we rectifythe injustices to our children of the past andhow we ensure the well-being of the childrenof present and future. We had a desire tohear from those who are most implicated inthis processes. We were fortunate to havereceived a beautiful article entitled "The

Ultimate Betrayal: Claiming and Re-ClaimingCultural Identity" from Tamara Kulusic, whooutlines the history and current situation ofAboriginal child welfare in Canada, startingand concluding with her own story as anadoptee.

In a "special Native Women's edition"of a feminist journal, some individuals mightfind it ironic that, although the guest editorshave struggled to assert the importance ofNative women's voices, neither of us have

held strong positions about feminism.Ultimately, we have found the arguments byAboriginal women which either attack orsupport feminism to be less useful than theimportance of Native women finding theirown strengths from within their ownheritage. Furthermore, like postcolonialtheory, feminism in general may have bothpositive and negative aspects for Nativewomen to work through, accept or discard.It is therefore not surprising that as

Aboriginal women begin to explicitly addressthe politics of nation-building, they are notafraid to mine feminist sources for theirpotential insights. Both Val Napoleon, with"Aboriginal Self Determination: Individual Selfand Collective Selves," and Natasha Powers,with "Beyond Cultural Differences:Interpreting a Treaty Between the Mi'kmaqand British at Belcher's Farm, 1761," analyseaspects of sovereignty, and have applied theideas of feminist legal scholar Jennifer

Nedelsky on the relationship betweenindividual and collective self-determination tothe diverse circumstances of their respectivenations.

Val Napoleon has contributed acomplex analysis of the circumstances facingher home community, the Saulteau FirstNation, in Northern British Columbia.Napoleon locates the particularities of thiscommunity's experience (cultural isolationand location in another nation's territory)

within the larger framework of BritishColumbia colonial policies that deliberatelyestablished tiny and fragmented reserves, andset up band and reserve structures whichwould cut across the traditional legal ordersand political structures of the Indigenous


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nations of the region. Addressing the flaws innotions of self-determination based onwestern liberal concepts of autonomy,Napoleon examines Nedelsky's notion ofpersonal autonomy that is social and

relational, and finds potential for buildingstructures which promote collectivecohesion and enable the Saulteau FirstNation to conceptualize new forms ofgovernance.

Natasha Powers, on the other hand,articulates new ways of understanding treatyrelationships. She does this in a contextwhere contemporary Mi'kmaq resistance toongoing colonization is based on popularunderstandings of the rights affirmed in the

terms of the treaty of peace and friendshipbetween the Mi'kmaq and the British.Powers takes guidance from stories aboutGlooscap and uses Nedelsky's concept ofautonomy as inter-dependence andrelationship to suggest that the Mi'kmaq, innegotiating the peace treaty, werefundamentally concerned not with definingexact terms of co-existence, but withestablishing relationships of mutual respect.

Reinterpretation of the roles of

Indigenous women in their nations (as wellas in Canadian society) is central to the nexttwo articles. Kahente Horn-Miller, in"Otiyaner: The 'Women's Path' ThroughColonialism," focuses squarely on Indigenouswomen's tellings of their own history,highlighting both the effects of colonizationon Haudenosaunee women, and their longresistance. Horn-Miller links the reawakeningof knowledge of women's power explicitly tocultural and political regeneration of

sovereignty, noting that cultural identity iscentral to Haudenosaunee empowerment.For many of us who are attempting

to write about women in our owncommunities, how we know what we knowis important. In "After the Fur Trade: First

Nations Women in Canadian History, 1850-1950," Janice Forsyth provides a thoughtfuloverview of many of the basic conceptsabout Native women and colonization thathave been articulated by Canadian historians

in the past two decades. As historiography,her article asks crucial questions about thecommon-sense assumptions that we may berelying on in formulating our views of thepast. Perhaps not surprisingly, she alsoprovides stunning evidence of the centralityof gender in the suppression of plains Indiancommunities during this era, and theemergence of the Canadian nation.However, echoing the concerns of DevonMihesuah (2003), Forsyth also suggests that

feminist historians focusing on Nativewomen need to begin to work withAboriginal women within the context oftheir communities.

A central concern for First Nationswomen within their communities is themanner in which the Indian Act does notinclude provisions for the division of reserve-based real property when marriages breakdown. "Divorce and Real Property onAmerican Indian Reservations: Lessons for

First Nations and Canada," by JosephThomas Flies Away, Carrie Garrow andMiriam Jorgensen, provides valuable insightswhich Native women in Canada need toseriously consider. This paper, based onextensive research among four differenttribal regimes, demonstrates clearly whatworks best for American Indian women. Theauthors also grapple with perceived conflictsbetween gender rights and sovereigntyrights, suggesting that the directions which

bands take in addressing such "women'sissues" as matrimonial property rights haveeverything to do with sovereignty and thesurvival of our nations.

The next series of articles deal withtraditional knowledge. The management of


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traditional knowledge is undoubtedly asovereignty issue. We are at a critical time ofdefining how to create borders around ourintellectual property, our knowledge,philosophies, worldviews, and ways of being.

How do we prevent a neocolonial mining ofthese resources? How do we regain ourfoothold in this territory for ourselves andfor the future generations?

One of the key factors in Indigenousepistemology and knowledge is language.Our elders are continually reminding us ofthe need to relearn our languages because tospeak one's Indigenous language is tounderstand the distinct worldview of one'speople. Jeane Breinig has contributed a

wonderful article about her mother"Wahlgidouk," a woman of eighty-four whohas worked diligently to regain and pass onthe Haida language to the people that havebeen scattered from their originalcommunities. Breinig contexualizes thelanguage and culture recovery within thehistory of her people, giving a solidunderstanding of how language and historicalmemory are a central part of sovereigntystruggles.

In another exploration of traditionalknowledge, Deborah McGregor raises somecritical questions about neo-colonialpractices related to "TEK," the appropriationof traditional ecological knowledge by theresource sector. She speaks from herperspective as a scholar and an Indigenouswoman who wishes to maintain an ongoingliving relationship to the land. The articlemaps out the contradictions that she faces interms of her work relative to TEK.

To be sovereign peoples, we need tohave the right to self-representation, andthere are two articles in this collection thataddress this need. Emerance Baker's "LovingIndianness" provides an inspiring inquiry intohow we can rewrite ourselves as

protagonists within our own Indigenousstory. She demonstrates how we live theseexperiences, as the article is also a telling ofBaker's personal story. If we love ourselvesback into being as Aboriginal women, surely

we can reclaim much of the territory thathas been lost.It has long been acknowledged that

our artists are in many respects our greatestleaders today. In "Re-constructing theColonizer: Self-Representation by FirstNations Artists," Shandra Spears takes a lookat how we tell our stories in a setting that isstill colonized. Spears examines howcolonizer images of "the Indian" establishCanadians in a position of dominance relative

to Aboriginal people, and the strategies thatAboriginal artists employ to subvert thoseimages and create other ones, images thatchallenge us to re-imagine ourselves asunique and special and whole, and thatempower us and heal us.

In our Community Voices section, wehave two contributors who addressviscerally the turmoil of their nation'ssovereignty struggles. Heather Majaury andLynn Gehl are two Algonquin activists who

describe the multiple ways in which theOttawa Valley land claim is acceleratingcolonial divisions within Algonquincommunities that were created by twocenturies of denial of their sovereignty.

The poetry and fiction in thiscollection remind us how important it is toinclude our artists in defining our nations.We enter the journal by way of JaimeKoebel's picture on the front cover; a tellingabout woman as the essence of creation.

Jaime's picture of her own pregnant bellyencapsulates how truth telling and theenvisioning of our nations begins with self.Fyre Jean Graveline's story, "Wonder LearnsWomen's Ways" shows us how women,located as we are in our bodies and cycles,


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have much to contemplate in terms of ourplace and how we manage that place in ournations. Laura Schwager's work is based inthe Iroquois creation story. She calls upon usto remember that, since the time when Sky

Woman fell to earth, Aboriginal women haveexercised a resistance and resilience that arekey to our survival.

Resilience is a common theme in theliterature that appears in this volume. "WarCurio," by Molly McGlennen, is about LostBird, an infant survivor from the WoundedKnee massacre of 1890. In this poem,McGlennen brings up themes ofrepresentation, sovereignty of the body andthe person, and reclamation. In "I Will Sing

(For my people)," Caitlin Kight demonstrateshow our ancestors can continue to supportand drive us through time. RebekaTabobondung's "Mukwa and Her Sisters StillWalking" shows both the resistance and theresilience of Indigenous womeninternationally - about how we are "stillwalking" in spite of some of the abuses thatwe have endured.

As Indigenous people, we know thatthere is no separation between past and

present. "modernity" by grace red earring,shows how past, present and future interfacewith one another, and how we struggle tomake sense and reclaim our Indigenousselves in the toxic environment of thepresent. "Premonition," by Jennifer Foerster,highlights the bleak nightmare of Americathat the colonizer has created. In this poem,we are haunted by past and present imagesof genocide, the murders of Native womenand the destruction of so many of our

children. Meanwhile, "Medicine," by JodyBarnes, speaks to the healing power ofdreaming, and how the strength of ourcollective pasts can strengthen us in thefractured reality of the present.

In the end, nationhood is all aboutfinding home. Jennifer Fox Bennett gives us apoetic description of what home means toher, by taking us on a journey to herhomeland of Wikwemikong First Nation.

Home is also the Sassafras tree of CaitlinKight's poem "Sassafras," and as personifiedin the father in Pamela Dudoward's poem,"When." In "Living Language," by MollyMcGlennen, home is also the simple practiceof picking blueberries, affirming, in traditionalactivities and reclamation of language, thereality of our survival.

We are so happy to have engagedwith all the fine material that is presentedhere. We offer this issue ofAtlantis with the

hope that it contributes to the dialogue ofhow Indigenous woman are definingthemselves, their homes, their communitiesand their nations. We offer heartfelt thanksto all of the contributors, including thosewomen who wrote book reviews. We alsowish to thank the league of Indigenousfemale academics, some fifty in all, who peerreviewed the many submissions that wereceived for this edition. We feel rich,indeed, to have been part of a working

environment of all these brilliant Indigenouswomen. This experience leaves us with greathope for the future of our nations.

Endnotes1. As Chatsworthy and Smith (1992) note, ifout-marriage patterns remain stable,declining numbers of status Indians willbecome a serious issue within fifty years(two generations); it is expected that within

a century, some First Nations will cease toexist as none of their members will haveIndian status.


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Atlantis29.2, 2005 10

References

Anderson, Kim and Bonita Lawrence, eds.Strong Women Stories: Native Vision andCommunity Survival. Toronto: Sumach Press,

2003.

Awiakta, Marilou. Selu: Seeking theCornmother's Wisdom. Golden, CO: FulcrumPublishing, 1993.

Chatsworthy, Stewart and Anthony H. Smith,"Population Implications of the 1985Amendments to the Indian Act, Final Report,"prepared for the Assembly of First Nations,December, 1992.

Dion Stout, Madeleine. "FundamentalChanges Needed to End Violence,"Windspeaker (November 20, 1994): 7.

Holmes, Joan. "Bill C-31-Equality orDisparity? The Effects of the New Indian Acton Native Women. Background Paper,"Canadian Advisory Council on the Status ofWomen, 1987.

Jamieson, Kathleen. "Multiple Jeopardy: theEvolution of a Native Women's Movement,"Atlantis4. 2 (1979): 157-76.

_____. Indian Women and the Law in Canada:Citizens Minus. Ottawa: Canadian AdvisoryCouncil on the Status of Women and IndianRights for Indian Women, 1978.

LaRocque, Emma. "Re-Examining CulturallyAppropriate Models in Criminal Justice

Applications," Aboriginal and Treaty Rights inCanada: Essays in Law, Equity, and Respect forDifference, Michael Asch, ed. Vancouver:UBC Press, 1997, pp. 75-96.

Lawrence, Bonita. "Real" Indians and Others:Mixed-Blood Urban Native Peoples andIndigenous Nationhood. Vancouver: UBCPress, 2004.

Mihesuah, Devon. Indigenous AmericanWomen: Decolonization, Empowerment,Activism. Lincoln and London: University ofNebraska Press, 2003.

Silman, Janet, and Tobique Women's Group.Enough is Enough: Aboriginal Women SpeakOut. Toronto: the Women's Press, 1987.

indigenous women_the state of our nation

Documents