Violence Against Indigenous Women

As the Canadian government begins an inquiry into the country’s shockingly high rates of missing and murdered Indigenous women, this academic analysis of how the crisis has been addressed in literature, the arts, political forums, and the media poses provocative questions about racism, misogyny, and complacency. Hargreaves, a professor of Indigenous literature at the University of British Columbia, examines how stories of individual tragedies have been memorialized in venues such as human rights reports, poems, films, and plays. She convincingly explains that statistics and research projects produced with the best intentions may serve to reinforce the very colonial power dynamics that prevent the emergence of transformative solutions in the struggle to end violence against Indigenous women. In thoroughly canvassing Indigenous activism history, anti-racism theory, and feminist analysis, Hargreaves concludes that Indigenous women artists and writers offer a vital truth-telling platform that subverts and resists a system that tends to narrowly define who is worthy of being mourned. Born as a doctoral thesis, the title relies heavily on academic jargon and repetition that will likely limit its appeal to a general audience. But for those in the field of comparative narrative criticism, it’s a work sure to inspire much discussion, debate, and reflection. (Sept.)