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This study is an institutional ethnography which employs a critical race feminist theoretical framework in order to explicate the social relations that coordinate the experiences of racialized female student activists at McGill University. Interviews with students, administrators, faculty and staff, along with observations about texts, institutional language and experiences around equity at McGill make up the data for conducting this anti-racist feminist analysis. In the first part of this study, knowledge produced through the experiences of racialized female student activists – who make up the entry point of this study – exposes a disjuncture between McGill's self-portrayal as equitable and diverse and how it is experienced by some racialized women. The next part of this study explores some challenges to doing anti-racist activist work at McGill and the lack of – yet need for – an institutional memory that encourages present and future organizing to document, refer to, and build on past initiatives (successful and otherwise) around race, racism and equity. / Cette étude est une ethnographie institutionnelle qui emploie une cadre théorique féministe-critique afin d'expliquer les relations sociales qui coordonnent les expériences des étudiantes-organisatrice racialisées à l'Université McGill. Les entrevues avec les étudiantes, administrateurs, professeurs et employés, avec des observations sur les textes, la langue institutionelle et des expériences autour de l'équité à l'Université McGill constituent les données pour effectuer cette analyse anti-raciste féministe. Dans la première partie de cette étude, les connaissances produites par les expériences des étudiantes-organisatrice racialisées – qui constituent le point d'entrée de cette étude – expose une disjonction entre la façon dont l'Université se portrait comme équitable et diversifiée et comment elle est vécue par certains étudiantes racialisées. La prochaine partie de cette étude examine certains des défis au travail d'organisation anti-raciste à l'Université McGill et le manque (et le besoin) d'une mémoire institutionnelle qui encourage l'organisation actuelle et future de documenter, de consulter, et de s'appuyer sur les initiatives passées (réussie et autrement) autour de la race, le racisme et l'équité.

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Debates between feminists and trans people are often narrowly framed in terms of inclusion and authenticity, or by questions about the extent to which trans identities challenge or reinforce normative conceptions of sex and gender. The terms of these engagements promote essentialist understandings of identity, difference, and community, and neglect to register the heterogeneity and differential locations of both women and trans people. This thesis examines several contemporary sites of contestation between and among feminist and trans scholars with specific attention to the unspoken assumptions and practices of erasure that shape and constrain these critical ‘border wars’, making certain kinds of subjects and conversations central, while rendering others peripheral, out of the question, or even impossible. Applying an intersectional trans/feminist analysis to the conceptual structure and discursive contours they assume, I investigate how such struggles, and our positions within them, might be deconstructed and reconceptualized in ways that disrupt dominant Self/Other relations and, in turn, make new political understandings and alliances possible.

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This research explores how concepts of women’s independence are constituted, through neo-liberal and feminist discourses, by members of a feminist organization for women leaving abuse. Analysis of eight interviews and eight focus groups with organizational members, collected over a four year period, surface contesting discourses about individualism, choice, economic independence, collectivity and structural analyses. These discourses interact to produce complex conceptualizations of women’s independence, and produced new subjectivities for women within the organization. In the data, neo-liberal and feminist influences produced an integration of self-responsibility and collectivity, creating new ways of understanding women’s agency. Knowledge of these changing notions of gendered independence in organizations allows feminists to be strategic and reflexive about feminist political work within changing social and political terrain.

Gender has developed as an important ‘public and political’ category throughout the Twentieth Century in BC and Canada as the basis of feminist demands on society and governments. In 2007, gender has become ‘privatized’ and increasingly erased from government institutions. The de-politicization of gender in Canada is an example of a shifting social consciousness and political discourse that avoids a critical perspective on the social context and places an increasing emphasis on the individual. A new critical discourse must grapple with these challenges, emerge at some distance from government and coincide with a political activism that has resonance in women’s lives.

This study explores the health and well-being of eight racialized and Indigenous women between the ages of 21 and 28, who live in Victoria, BC. Participants use Photovoice, a participatory research strategy, to examine and discuss their intersecting everyday realities in the contexts of health, well-being and identity. Through this project, I aim to provide an in-depth understanding of social exclusion, as a social determinant of health, and investigate the micro-social processes that occur at the intersections of race, class and gender, among many other social relations. I draw upon transnational feminist, anti-racist and postcolonial theories to shed light on the complexity of our shifting and emergent identities. The stories that participants share indicate that historical processes of colonization, daily forms of racism, migration, nationalism, citizenship and cultural essentialization are key contributors to their processes of identity formation and subsequently, their experiences of health and wellness.

This interdisciplinary research paper explores story and metaphor of "trans/formative identities" as a basis for challenging normative racial and gender categories. Autoethnography is used as a method for weaving the author's own experience as a mixed-race Indigenous person with academic research and theory. The discussion is contextualized by an analysis of institutionalized colonial relationships framing Indigenous knowledge in academia and the role of Indian status in defining Indigenous identity. Six mixed-race and transgender or genderqueer people in Victoria and Vancouver. British Columbia are interviewed and the themes from their shared experiences are used as the basis for further understanding trans/formative identities. These themes are: irony; contradiction and impossibility; stories of home and family; naming and language; embodied negotiations, contextual selves, and; artistic visions.

This thesis explores regenerating Anishinaabekwe (women’s) empowerment. The teaching of the ogichitaakwe (an Anishinaabekwe who is committed to helping the Anishinaabe people) was investigated to gain knowledge of how this aspect of the Anishinaabekwe ideology can be used to challenge the effects of colonialism in community. The goal of the thesis is to frame solutions to the effects of colonialism from the foundation of empowerment via the Anishinaabekwe ideology. The thesis examines how the Anishinaabekwe ideology in collaboration with radical indigenous feminism is useful in challenging colonialism. To this end, the utilization of self-consciousness-raising groups or Wiisokotaatiwin (gathering together for a purpose) provides the opportunity to address personal decolonization and regeneration. The author will show that by committing to the Anishinaabekwe ideology, the effects of colonialism will be addressed from a place of empowerment and ultimately regenerate the Anishinaabe Nation.