LibGuides: Indigenous Studies: Indigenous Women

Introduction

Indigenous women are often associated with or talked about in relation to trauma, violence, abuse, and discrimination. If you search Google using the keywords “Indigenous women” the top results are related to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. But this is not a complete vision of Indigenous women.

As Megan Tipler reminds us: we must learn about Indigenous brilliance as much as we learn about Indigenous suffering and trauma.

This guide provides resources that examine the representation of Indigenous women in media, how discrimination against Indigenous women was formalized in Canadian law as well as the ways in which these issues are being countered. It highlights the importance of Indigenous women in their families and communities and surfaces projects that seek to fight against harmful stereotypes.

IMPORTANT: the dominant structure for organizing information is from a western perspective, for this reason you may need to use outdated (sometimes offensive) terminology to find resources related to Indigenous peoples; please contact us if you'd like assistance navigating this.

Combine keywords related to the concept of Indigenous identity with keywords related to your area of interest.

For example:

Indigenous	Aboriginal	"First Nations"
Inuit	Métis	"Indians of North America"
Indian	Native	Name of Nation or Community (e.g. Secwépemc)

AND

Woman or Women	Rematriate	"Women authors"
Matriarch	"Women's studies"	Specific Subject Area (e.g. health, literature, biography)
Auntie/Aunty/Aunties

Search Tips:

Use quotation marks to search for a phrase (e.g. "First Nations").
Use an asterisk to search for words with the same stem (e.g. Wom* retrieves woman, women).
Terminology changes over time. You many need to search for alternative spellings of a word, for example: Sto:lo, Stó:lô, Staulo, Stahlo or you may need to search for alternate words, for example: Kwakiutl/Kwakwaka'wakw or Nootka/Nuu-chah-nulth

Subject headings are a tool designed to help researchers find similar materials. These are only some examples of the many subject headings that Okanagan College Library uses. Spend a few minutes exploring them when you find a book in the catalogue that supports your research.

Search by Subject Terms

Indian women--North America--Literary collections
Canadian literature--Women authors--History and criticism
Indian grandmothers--Northwest
Native American women
Indians of North America--Biography; Autobiography--Women authors
Indian women--Canada--Fiction
Women storytellers

Below is an example of where to find subject areas that are part of an item's record. You can click on them to find other materials with the same subject heading.

Indigenous Women and the Indian Act

Women and the Indian Act
[Canadian Encyclopedia]
What is Bill C-31 and Bill C-3?
[Assembly of First Nations] Fact Sheet
143 Years of Sex-Based Discrimination Through the Indian Act Finally Comes to an End After Decades of Advocacy
[UBCIC News Release, 2019]
Why We Must End Colonialism: Tinkering with the Indian Act is Not Enough.
The article presents a reprint of Patricia Monture's article on the Indian and Northern Affairs of Canada's initiative to reform the Indian Act (IA) in 2001, which was published in the summer 2002 issue of the magazine. Topics mentioned include the First Nations governance, the areas of focus of the consultation process for the initiative including accountability and elections, and the consequences of the disenfranchising qualities of the IA for Aboriginal women.
Mary Two-Axe Early: I am Indian Again
[NFB streaming video, 34 min] This film shares the powerful story of Mary Two-Axe Earley, who fought for more than two decades to challenge sex discrimination against First Nations women embedded in Canada’s Indian Act and became a key figure in Canada’s women’s rights movement.

Featured Books

#NotYourPrincess
#NotYourPrincess presents an eclectic collection of poems, essays, interviews, and art that combine to express the experience of being a Native woman. Stories of abuse, humiliation, and stereotyping are countered by the voices of passionate women making themselves heard and demanding change.
Disinherited Generations: Our Struggle to Reclaim Treaty Rights for First Nations Women and Their Descendants
This oral autobiography of two remarkable Cree women tells their life stories against a backdrop of government discrimination, First Nations activism, and the resurgence of First Nations communities.
Finding a Way to the Heart
Finding a Way to the Heart examines race, gender, identity, and colonization from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century, and illustrates Van Kirk's extensive influence on a generation of feminist scholarship.
Firekeepers of the Twenty-First Century
Beginning with Elsie Knott, the first female chief in Canada, Cora Voyageur presents the lives of sixty-four of the ninety women chiefs who have assumed the traditionally male role of elected First Nations leadership.
In My Own Moccasins
An unflinching memoir of addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the wounds of sexual assault from a resilient, emerging Indigenous voice. "It's the best kind of memoir: clear-eyed, generous, and glorious....Bear witness to the emergence of one of the most powerful voices of her generation." --Eden Robinson
In the Belly of a Laughing God
How can humour and irony in writing both create and destroy boundaries? This book examines eight contemporary Native women poets in Canada and the United States - and how they employ humour and irony to address the intricacies of race, gender, and nationality.
Inuit Women
Inuit Women is the definitive study of the Inuit during a time of rapid change. Based on fourteen years of research and fieldwork, this analysis focuses on the challenges facing Inuit women as they enter the twenty-first century. This book stands alone in its attention to Inuit women's issues and lives and should be read by everyone interested in gender relations, development, modernization, globalization, and Inuit culture.
Living on the Land: Indigenous Women's Understanding of Place
Living on the Land examines how patriarchy, gender, and colonialism have shaped the experiences of Indigenous women as both knowers and producers of knowledge. From a variety of methodological perspectives, contributors to the volume explore the nature and scope of Indigenous women's knowledge, its rooted-ness in relationships both human and spiritual, and its inseparability from land and landscape.
Xwelíqwiya : the life story of a Stó:lõ matriarch
Xwelíqwiya is the life story of Rena Point Bolton, a Stó:lō matriarch, artist, and craftswoman. Recognizing the urgent need to forge a sense of cultural continuity among the younger members of her community, Point Bolton visited many communities and worked with federal, provincial, and First Nations politicians to help break the intercultural silence by reviving knowledge of and interest in Aboriginal art.

Featured Women

Autumn Peltier is an Ojibwe water protector. "What I've been told through ceremonies is Mother Earth has been surviving for millions of years without us and it has taken us less than a century to destroy her. And Mother Earth doesn't need us but we need her." [The National, 2018, linked below]

CBC's The National: The teen fighting to protect Canada's water - meet Autumn Peltier (2018)
Maclean's The Power List: 50 Canadians who are forging paths, leading the debate and shaping how we think and live (2022)

Siila Watt-Cloutier is an Inuit environmental and human rights advocate. “My focus now is to continue to humanize climate change. It’s understanding pieces from a human scale and our history and the consequences of our actions that will help us see that trauma, both human and the planet’s, are one in the same… we are one family.” [Women of Influence, 2022, linked below]

Christi Belcourt is a Métis visual artist and activist. She organized a collaborative and commemorative project, Walking With Our Sisters, which displays beaded vamps which represent missing and murdered Indigenous women. "The whole thing is ceremony. And that's what's required in order to properly acknowledge and honour the women's lives." [Muskrat Magazine, 2014]

Medicines to Help Us (2007)
Walking with our Sisters

Featured Articles & Reports

Aboriginal Women and Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge: Input and Insight on Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge
[Native Women's Association of Canada] Aboriginal women represent and maintain cultures rich in knowledge, history, skills, and environmental stewardship. In many communities, Aboriginal women are entrusted with knowledge to care for the environment and their families and communities, but their responsibilities for the knowledge are often neglected or forgotten. This lack of recognition must be examined and then reconsidered and transformed accordingly.
Red Ribbon Skirts and Cultural Resurgence: Kimihko simpan iskwewisakaya ekwa sihcikewin waniskapicikewin
A small group of Indigenous girls and their allies came together to make ribbon skirts to reclaim teachings, resist gender-based and colonial violence, and re-imagine our collective futures. Based on the personal reflections of the organizers and the girls involved gathered through individual semi-structured interviews and directed journal writing, we share lessons about the process and outcomes.
Resisting Invisibility: Indigenous Women's Self-Representation in Imagined Futurisms
[Thesis] This project explores Indigenous Futurisms written by Indigenous women from North America in the early 21st century. The stories were analyzed as resistance literature to the historical violence resulting in the literal and literary invisibility of Indigenous women. The intent is for readers, specifically Indigenous women readers, to see these stories as mirrors that reflect empathy, connection, and empowerment.
Perspectives on restoring health shared by Cree women, Alberta, Canada
The purpose of this study was to explore nehiyaw iskwêwak (Cree women's) perceptions and beliefs about how to restore balance to health.

Media Representation

Indigenous Women in Media
[UBC Wiki]
Breaking Media Stereotypes with Indigenous Storytelling
[United Nations: Academic Impact]
Inuit Girls Make Media: Resisting Stereotypes through Participatory Action Research
[Thesis] The author analyzes how media representations of Indigenous women and girls perpetuate stereotypes, and how alternative media productions might counter them.
The ‘Aila Test’ evaluates representation of Indigenous women in media
[High Country News, 2020]
Media representation of Native women: invisibility, stereotypes, whitewashing
[Women's Media Centre, 2018]

Projects

Resilience: The National Billboard Exhibition Project
Resilience rebukes the historical erasure of Indigenous women's bodies and the exclusion of their art. In inner cities and on highways, sites from which too many women have disappeared, the presence of Indigenous women is made highly visible, individualized (beyond statistics), celebrated. This project is a physicalized reminder of buried histories and diverse contemporary perspectives.
She is Indigenous
A campaign to raise awareness about the strengths and diversity of First Nations, Inuit and Métis women in Ontario and the rest of Canada.

Featured Videos

#Beyond94 - From residential school to one of Manitoba's first Indigenous nurses
CBC Streaming Video (7 min, 20 sec): Ann Callahan began residential school in the 1930s at age four. Despite facing challenges she pursued higher education, becoming one of the first Indigenous nurses in Manitoba.
Ada Blackjack Rising
[YouTube, 6 min 30 sec] In the pre-dawn twilight of an Alaskan shore, a young Native woman reflects on the story of Ada Blackjack, the sole survivor of a disastrous 1921 Arctic expedition, and the loneliness she must have felt waiting for a rescue through the months-long polar night.
Keepers of the Fire
NFB Streaming Video (55 min): For half of a millennium, First Nations women have been at the forefront of Indigenous peoples' resistance to cultural assimilation. Today, they are still fighting for the survival of their cultures and their peoples--in the rain forest and the city, in the courts and the legislatures, in the Longhouse and the media. Keepers of the Fire profiles Canada's Indigenous 'warrior women' who are protecting and defending their land, their culture and their people in the time-honoured tradition of their foremothers.
Mother of Many Children
NFB Streaming Video (58 min): An album of Indigenous womanhood, portraying a proud matriarchal society that for centuries has been pressured to adopt different standards and customs. All of the women featured share a belief in the importance of tradition as a source of strength in the face of change.
Six Miles Deep
[NFB streaming video, 43 min] This short documentary offers a portrait of a group of women who led their community, the largest reserve in Canada, Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, in an historic blockade to protect their land.
The Story of the Coast Salish Knitters
NFB Streaming Video (52 min): Combining rare archival footage with the voices of three generations of woolworkers, The Story of the Coast Salish Knitters tells the tale of unsung heroines--resourceful women who knit to put food on the table and keep their families alive.

Featured Podcasts

Auntie Up!
Auntie Up! is a celebration of Indigenous women talking about the important stuff. Aunties can be counted on to speak their truth without the sugar-coating. They will tell you straight up what you need to know and they aren’t afraid to mince words.
Indigenae
Indigenae is a community-guided podcast that is dedicated to Indigenous wxmen’s health and wellbeing.
masinahikan iskwêwak - Book Women Podcast
A podcast where three Métis aunties figure out how to publish, edit, and write Indigenous stories.
Matriarch Movement
Host Shayla Oulette Stonechild shares stories of Indigenous women, from Canada to Turtle Island and beyond. Through interviews where issues facing Indigenous women are brought to light, and with portraits that challenge the mainstream narrative around Indigenous identity, Matriarch Movement offers up a new category of Indigenous role models, to inspire the next seven generations.

Groups & Associations

Aboriginal Women's Action Network
BC Native Women's Association
Institute for the Advancement of Aboriginal Women
A non-profit organization that recognizes the role, value, and achievement of Aboriginal women in society and raises awareness about the challenges and obstacles they face.
National Indigenous Young Women’s Council
Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC)
National Indigenous Organization representing the political voice of Indigenous women, girls and gender diverse people in Canada, inclusive of First Nations on and off reserve, status and non-status, disenfranchised, Métis and Inuit.
Pacific Association of First Nations Women
Pauktuutit: Inuit Women of Canada
The national representative organization of Inuit women in Canada.
Support Network for Indigenous Women & Women of Colour
Canadian non-profit organization committed to the empowerment of women with food, art, and education. We address barriers that limit access to healthcare and full reproductive choice.
Women and Gender Equality Canada: Indigenous Women's Circle
Women of the Métis Nation/Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak
The national voice of Métis women in Canada.