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ABSTRACT
In this article I will centre the historic and ongoing resistance of Indigenous girls to violence through colonial policies and practices. I challenge conventional intersectionality scholarship by foregrounding anti-colonialism and Indigenous sovereignty/nationhood. Using examples from my own work, I illustrate the manifestation of colonial power and persistent resistance in the lives of Indigenous girls. Through these stories, I will discuss the everyday practices of witnessing and resisting the discourses of risk. Red intersectionality will be offered as one way forward in relation to my ongoing work on violence.
KEYWORDS
colonialism, girls' groups, resistance, trauma, wellness
My body has melted.
Ice cracking from
oppression,
revealing bone and
sinew.
My language is screaming
inside my flesh,
buried under your schools,
Your words,
Your wounds,
Left
Me
Here.
Emerging.
I drape myself in orange.
I tattoo freedom on my body.
I pierce remembering on my face.
You will never enter me again.
I have marked my territory this time.
You are not welcome.
Oppression melted,
Reveals
stone,
sinew,
bone.
Souls syrup on my tongue
I know
my map
my
body
Do you?
I wrote this poem in my journal shortly after I left the small town in which I grew up and moved to Vancouver. This poem speaks to the legacy of colonization, the absence of consent, and the violations of Indigenous girls' lands and bodies, but also names and evokes the power of resistance and survivance in the face of abuse, violence, and the absence of consent. My work with Indigenous girls is rooted in my more than 20 years of front-line work as an activist, auntie, sister, violence counselor, community-based researcher, and group facilitator, and finally my own journey of identity as an Indigenous woman and mother.
This is a give-away paper.
I offer it as a prayer, as a give-away poem.
There is no Ceremony for Completing an Academic Paper.
Post-colonial, anti-colonial, decolonizing,
All words that swim around inside my head
While poems offer islands of refuge
from this academic space I now traverse
Inspired by the poetry of Chrystos
I ask; "How can I make an offering for this paper"?
It forms in strange corners and spaces of my mind
As I move between the library taking books out on theory,
...