Can feminism reach beyond colonialism?
Making Space for Indigenous Feminism, 3rd edition
by Gina Starblanket (ed.)
Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2024
$40 / 9781773635507
Reviewed by Wendy Burton
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Making Space for Indigenous Feminism is a collection of essays that originated at a conference organized by the University of Victoria and Yellowhead Institute in 2022.
The conference was the gathering of an interdisciplinary community engaged in dialogue to consider how Indigenous feminism has grown as an area of study and practice since the first edition, produced with the guiding hand of Joyce Green, University of Regina (2007). Many essays include reflection upon Joyce Green’s scholarly legacy and her contribution to Indigenous feminism.
The intention of the 3rd edition is to discuss new and extended methods and theories and to contemplate the future of Indigenous feminism. Some authors of the 1st and 2nd editions were asked to update their essays, and new chapters are from emerging voices across disciplines. The volume recognizes the intellectual genealogy of Indigenous feminism and documents approaches and analyses honed in the intervening years. All authors were prompted to give close attention to, and reflect on, how they engage with gender and sexual identities, making space for exclusions of the past. The editors set out to present a range of intellectual and creative approaches, including dialogues, non-academic essays, untraditional formats, and a diversity of styles and viewpoints. The resulting edition leans heavily toward the classic academic paper, and while there is frequent invocation of story-telling as an Indigenous way of knowing, there are few examples of such epistemology. Many authors invoke ‘I’ but there is not much ‘I-ness.’
Editor Gina Starblanket and Green, in their introduction, tell the reader the signal distinction between non-Indigenous feminisms and Indigenous feminism is “our simultaneous pre-occupation with land, with histories of land theft and oppression, with the consequent cultural and material losses, and with the denial by the Canadian state (or other states) and by some First Nations bands (and other Indigenous communities) of our identities.” Indigenous feminism is described as generative, responsive, and liberatory.
The collection is multi-vocal, and for one versed in the field, the voices are known and often speak to each other. Citations are abundant, bibliographies alight with references for further exploration.
Colonialism and heteropatriarchy, concepts not specifically labelled in previous volumes, are the unifying opponents. Indigenous feminism’s central project is to theorize liberation from colonialism and heteropatriarchy, in one’s thoughts, analyses, allies, and actions. Liberation from colonialism, ie the oppressions of colonialism that Indigenous men and women share, makes Indigenous feminism distinct from liberal feminism and explicitly calls out the unexamined white privilege of the Canadian feminist movement of the past 100 years.
This is probably the place to situate myself as the reviewer of this book. I am a white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, (mostly) able-bodied, aging, Jewish feminist scholar of working class settler family origins. I have been engaged in the struggles of feminisms since the late 1960s in Canada, beginning with the struggle for reproductive rights – read abortion rights and gendered violence. I have been an ally in Indigenous activism and education since the mid 1970s. This book is not intended for me.
As Joyce Green advises “the spoken and unspoken is the assertion that Indigenous women wanted nothing to do with white feminist ideas,” and her essay offers a refusal of this claim. Joyce Green’s story of her career path, the essay that opens the book, is a lesson in a lifetime of effort: “we organize, strategize, theorize, and fight for Indigenous women’s rights, as Indigenous women in a settler state squatted on Indigenous territories. And we fight to be our authentic selves.”
This volume’s essays treads very lightly on the continuing conflict over whether feminism is another example of colonialism, and therefore Indigenous feminism is a colonizing practice. Many essays counter that claim, although I imagine the kitchen table conversations continue to be vigorous. Emma LaRocque, for example, in her narrative “Why am I a Feminist?”, acknowledges Indigenous feminism is a contested category for Indigenous feminists (and settler non-liberal Canadian feminists). Many Indigenous women do not identify with the label feminist, and write, therefore, from a defensive position. Many essays are explicit about resistance from Indigenous Non-feminists, men and women.
The book is divided into four sections. The section on the history and current state of the gendered construction of the “treaty Indian” is most useful to answer the question ‘how did we get to here.’ This section provides the facts of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls and 2SPLGBTQQIA+, Indigenous children in care – the 60s Scoop and the Millennial Scoop – advocate for the gendering of the Indigenous child, the Indigenous victim, the Indigenous recipient of social aid from governments, and incarcerated Indigenous women and trans folk.
The critique on the ethics of care and the essay on Indigenous women and madness could have been written by a non-Indigenous settler scholar – and indeed have been. Perhaps the space this volume creates will one day be big enough to accommodate voices that are intentionally excluded. Simpson recounts “An Indigenous man will say something or write a book and be quite famous, and a queer Indigenous person or an Indigenous woman will have said the same thing and it’s ignored.” ’Twas ever thus. Our strengths could be our commonality and our ability to dialogue about common experiences across difference.
Most of the essays focus on Canadian social and political past, present, and future. One essay on the community of Juchitán in Mexico explains how “the concept of body-land may enable us to resituate discussions of gender violence against Indigenous women, Two-Spirit, and trans individuals.” Aikau’s essay “Mana Wahine and Mothering at the Lo’l: A Two-Spirit/Queer Analysis” is situated in Hawaiian field work. Belcourt’s essay on decolonizing queer desire does not advance the central arguments of the volume, although I cannot fault the editors for making space for this brilliant demonstration of poetic analysis.
While the essays in this volume are multi-vocal, the predominant voice is of the scholar. The language is complex and heavily cited. These authors are, for the most part, scholars speaking to each other in the expected and specialized language of the academy.
As Leanne B Simpson reminds me: “We never get it right because it is work that is beyond us.” There’s going to be mistakes; there have been mistakes. Are these mistakes deliberate? Calculated? White liberal (as I knew it bourgeoise) feminism excluded women of colour from their analysis. No question about that history in Canada and the US, at least. This collection of essays takes that history as a given and most essays proceed from that given. The space that is made by this collection and the preceding editions is for Indigenous feminists and their allies, identified as trans folk, BIPOC women, men who are allies.
Whether you are an insider to this struggle, an ally, or an outsider, this book is well worth the effort.
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Wendy Burton is Professor Emerita at University of the Fraser Valley, where she taught academic and work place writing, story-telling, diversity education, and Indigenous Adult Education. In 1997, she earned a doctorate for her feminist analysis of story-telling as knowledge claims. Throughout her work life, she wrote creative non-fiction, long and short form fiction, and poetry. Her debut novel Ivy’s Tree (Thistledown) was published in 2020. She writes fiction and creative non-fiction. Her most recent essay is “Meditations on the Headstand,” Folklife, Winter 2023. [Editor’s note: Wendy Burton recently reviewed books by Danny Ramadan, Jo-Ann Wallace, Chris Arnett, Susan Blacklin, and Tara Teng for The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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