“Theorizing Our Place”: Indigenous Women’s Scholarship from 1985-2020 and the Emerging Dialogue with Anti-racist Feminisms

Abstract

In this article, I review contemporary Indigenous women’s scholarship, describing transformations from 1985 to the present, first to characterize this scholarship on its own terms and second to situate this literature with respect to recent, nascent dialogues with anti-racist feminisms. What is the focus and range of Indigenous women’s scholarship, from 1985 until today? What does this work seek to do, that is, what are the intertwined political and scholarly aims of this scholarship? I suggest that Indigenous women’s scholarly writing is concerned with resilience, or survival, resistance or challenges to colonial power and relationships, and resurgence, or a turning-inward to renew Indigenous knowledges and practices. In the discussion, I briefly consider how the increasingly rich and diverse field of Indigenous women’s theorizing and praxis informs an emerging dialogue with anti-racist feminist scholars within the academy and in the broader context of colonial Canada.