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Article
Self-Determination, Subordination, and Semantics: Rhetorical and Real-World Conflicts over the Human Rights of Indigenous Women
UBC Law Review (2014)
  • Sam Grey, University of Victoria
Abstract

Indigenous women have long been engaged in unambiguous advocacy for a human rights-based approach to gender injustice in their communities and nations. Indigenous nations, for their part, have repeatedly and passionately posited collective human rights as necessary for the protection of cultural distinction. These projects should be reconcilable – but this reconciliation requires the political will to critically engage with historical and contemporary colonialism, and to address the internalization of patriarchy and sexism in Indigenous societies today. With such a will in place, it becomes possible to operationalize a single Indigenous ‘self-determination’ project grounded in human rights, one that sees women’s concerns and cultural flourishing as coequal priorities. While this is precisely the project that Indigenous women are pursuing through their advocacy, it appears to be the antithesis of the project pursued by Band Council governments and national Indigenous political organizations in Canada – official, ostensibly representative entities whose rhetoric belies their practice. In the absence of rhetorical consistency vis-à-vis women and self-determination, and in light of their rejection of the obligations such consistency would entail, the political posture of Indigenous nations toward women’s rights disturbingly mirrors that of Settler states toward Indigenous rights.

Keywords
  • Indigenous Peoples' rights,
  • gender,
  • Indigenous women,
  • Indigenous feminisms,
  • decolonization,
  • Indigenous self-determination
Publication Date
2014
Citation Information
Sam Grey. "Self-Determination, Subordination, and Semantics: Rhetorical and Real-World Conflicts over the Human Rights of Indigenous Women" UBC Law Review Vol. 47 Iss. 2 (2014)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/samgrey/2/