Events

This lecture meets Indigenous girls situated at the intersection of gender-based violence and targeted attacks on Indigenous children, two eliminatory strategies that subtend Canadian settler colonialism. Indigenous girlhood is foregrounded with the recognition that the Canadian state has access to Indigenous girls in a way it does not once these girls become adults. Participants are called to bear witness to harmful social policies and practices targeting Indigenous girls and how this violence is subsequently narrated in legal and literary accounts. This lecture draws together a unique assemblage of legal and literary texts, including inquests and inquiries, official studies and reports, legislation, and Indigenous prose and poetry. These seemingly disparate texts are more than mere vehicles for knowledge transmission. These texts invariably shape knowledges. This lecture insists that in order to address settler colonialism, we must foreground Indigenous girlhood and critically examine how we talk about Indigenous girlhood and state violence.