Indigenous Girlhood: Narratives of Colonial Care in Law and Literature

Indigenous Girlhood: Narratives of Colonial Care in Law and Literature by Megan Scribe A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Social Justice Education University of Toronto © Copyright by Megan Scribe 2020 Indigenous Girlhood: Narratives of Colonial Care in Law and Literature Megan Scribe Doctor of Philosophy Department of Social Justice Education University of Toronto 2020 Abstract As Canada assumes legal responsibility over an unprecedented number of Indigenous girls entering carceral facilities, educational boarding arrangements, and foster care, it is important to examine how the state is implicated in harming these girls. While these institutions ostensibly exist to provide Indigenous girls with care, they actually place Indigenous girls at greater risk of violence, disappearance, and death. Rather than focus on children or women more broadly, this dissertation considers how Indigenous girls' unique social location and legal minor status subjects these girls to greater state surveillance and management. What’s more, this analysis establishes connections between state violence against Indigenous girls and Canada’s settler colonial regime. This dissertation is organized into two parts. In part one, I examine the production of colonial narratives about violence against Indigenous girls through the Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Phoenix Sinclair (2013) and the Inquest into the Deaths of Seven First Nations Youth (2016). In part two, I shift my attention toward Indigenous feminist literature on Indigenous girlhood. Through a close reading of Tracey Lindberg’s Birdie (2015) and The Break (2016) by Katherena Vermette, this study considers the theoretical and methodological possibilities of Indigenous feminist storytelling. Through an extensive examination of legal processes and Indigenous feminist literature, this dissertation offers innovative theoretical and methodological tools for addressing settler colonialism and other structures of oppression targeting Indigenous girls, as well as paths forward. ii Acknowledgments I would like to express my profound gratitude to the late Phoenix Sinclair, Robyn Harper, and their surviving family members. I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Eve Tuck, for her remarkable mentorship and supervision. Since our first meeting, Dr. Tuck has taught me much about community, ethics, and generosity. I am grateful for Dr. Sherene Razack whose early supervision helped shape the original questions informing this research project. I am thankful for the invaluable insights and contributions of each committee member. I would like to thank my second reader, Dr. Jeffrey Ansloos, for his critical feedback and encouragement. I am thankful for Dr. Karyn Recollet, my third reader, for continually reminding me to explore desire and futurity. I would like to extend a big thank you to my internal/external and external committee members, Dr. Michelle Daigle and Dr. Sarah Deer, for their close reading of my dissertation and thoughtful questions at the defence. This dissertation has benefitted from the generous financial support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and my community, Norway House Cree Nation. Thank you to my peers who have become my friends, family, collaborators, colleagues, and community over the last six years. I owe many thanks to my friend, Sarah Pinder, whose meticulous edits strengthened this project. I would also like to thank my first writing instructor and friend, Brenda Blondeau, who has been a part of this journey from the start. I am appreciative of the friends I made during my first year of the program: Stephanie Latty, Fiona Cheuk, Cristina Jaimungal, and Tania Ruiz-Chapman. I am grateful for the friends I met through Dr. Razack’s supervisory group: Raneem Azzam, Suzanne Narain, Shaista Patel, Sam Spady, Sarah Snyder, and Laura Landertinger. As well, I am filled with gratitude for those friends I met in Dr. Tuck’s Co-Mentorship Circle: Sandi Wemigwase, Marie Laing, Rebecca Beaulne- Stuebing, Sefanit Habtom, Jade Nixon, and Fernanda Yanchapaxi. I must acknowledge Julie Blair and Lindsay DuPré for their tireless work supporting myself and other Indigenous students at the Indigenous Education Network. And, of course, I am grateful for Dr. Alex Wilson’s friendship and mentorship. I am grateful for my partner, May, whose love and care makes this work possible. Last, but certainly not least, I want to acknowledge my family. This project was inspired by my sister, Danielle Scribe, who I am so grateful to know and love. I am grateful for sister, Robin Scribe, my first friend, sister, and witness. I am grateful for my baby sister, Tristan Mowatt, who teaches me the value of reflection. I am grateful for my brother, Charles Mowatt Jr., who reminds me to play. I am grateful for my mom, Erica Mowatt, who taught me to be an Indigenous feminist. I want to acknowledge Charles Mowatt Sr., my step-father, who has chosen to love and care for me every day for the last seventeen years. I am grateful for my late father, Paul Bertasson, who made Toronto feel like home during my first year of university. I am grateful for my kookom and moosom for showing me a gentle kind of love and education. iii Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgments iii Table of Contents iv Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Situating Indigenous Girlhood 2 Arriving to this Research Project 7 Methodology: An Indigenous Feminist Approach to Narratives 9 Methods 13 Chapter Overview 18 Chapter 2 Queering Indigenous Feminist Theory 28 #QueerIndigenousEthics 30 Straight Bedfellows: Cis-Heteropatriarchy and Settler Colonialism 32 Two-Spirit: An Identity and Analytic 39 Queer Kinship and Intimate Ties 45 Sovereign Futures? 51 Chapter 3 A Baby is Born, A File is Open 58 The Archive 61 Part 1: The Official Story 64 Disappearing Through Documentation 66 Now You See Her: The Inquiry 73 Part 2: Narrating the “Bad Girl” 77 Pathologizing Indigenous Girlhood 82 Cleanliness and Morality 86 Chapter 4 Away from Home: Legal Narratives on Colonial Schooling 91 If I Set Out To Write This Chapter: Producing a Narrative 94 Colonial Schooling: New Approaches, Old Ideas 97 The Mobility Paradox: Go Here, Don’t Go There 104 Towards the Horizon of Death 112 Colonialism and Codified Narratives 120 iv Chapter 5 By All Accounts: Narrating Sexual Assault 122 (Re)Mapping Indigenous Girls’ Geographies 124 Colonial Geographies: Coming-of-Age in State Custody 132 The Production of Police Narratives 137 Witnessing: The Stories We Tell Ourselves 145 A Whole Story: Narrating Indigenous Girl’s Desire 150 Chapter 6 Paths to Pimatisiwin: Critical Indigenous Legal Consciousness 154 Towards an Indigenous Legal Consciousness 158 Wahkohtowin: Principles and Practices 158 Cree Poetics 161 Extended Kinship: Dispelling Narratives of Indigenous Dysfunction 167 Sites of Violence 170 Sexual Violence in the Home 171 Colonial Schooling 174 Foster Homes 178 Pimatisiwin: A Model for Justice and Healing 181 Pathologizing Discourses Uphold Colonial Structures 182 Toward Pimatisiwin 185 Chapter 7 Conclusion 189 Findings and Contributions 192 Omissions and Gaps 196 Future Research 198 My Sisters 200 References 202 Appendix – List of Online Sources 218 v Chapter 1 Introduction Throughout the past two decades, there has been an increase in media attention, legal inquests and inquiries, and official studies focused on the unprecedented rates at which Indigenous girls experience severe to life-threatening forms of violence, disappearance, and death. Although the matter of violence against Indigenous girls has only recently gained international recognition, this is not a new phenomenon. Indigenous girls, families, and communities have long advocated against gender-based violence enacted by white settlers and the Canadian state. This dissertation emerges from and builds upon the foundation established by preceding activists, advocates, and academics committed to addressing violence against Indigenous girls. Media outlets, academic studies, and official reports will often gesture toward statistics and the rates at which Indigenous girls experience violence to demonstrate urgency or importance. However, rather than simply quantifying the matter, this project heeds Robert Nichols’ (2014) caution against relying on logics of over-representation to demonstrate significance, as if some threshold of acceptable rates of violence exists. Instead, I attend to the colonial nature of gendered violence by examining the formation of colonial subjects and interconnected structures of oppression that facilitate violence against Indigenous girls within this white settler society. In taking such an approach, this project moves beyond determining individual culpability toward understanding the ways in which Canada’s ongoing attempts to dispossess Indigenous peoples of land and life advances settler colonial objectives. In narrowing the focus to the experiences of Indigenous girls in state custody, this study insists that this violence is integral to the creation and consolidation of Canada as a white settler state. 1 Situating Indigenous Girlhood Violence against Indigenous girls occurs in a context where Indigenous peoples are subject to processes of dispossession, assimilation, and genocide structured by ongoing settler colonialism. Notwithstanding the state’s insistence that colonialism is a thing of the past, colonialism continues to structure and sustain Canada as a white settler nation

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