Violence Against Indigenous Women: Literature, Activism, Resistance

By Allison Hargreaves

CW: racism, physical abuse, sexual abuse, colonialism 

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 anti-violence initiatives have failed? This book centres 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.

Analyzing the socially interventionist work of Indigenous women poets, playwrights, filmmakers, and fiction-writers, Violence Against Indigenous Women is organized as a series of case studies that pair literary interventions with recent sites of activism and policy-critique. Indigenous women's literature is a critical site of knowledge-making and critique, and this book puts literature in dialogue with anti-violence debate to illuminate new pathways toward action.