By way of a series of narrative oral histories, focus group and interviews with Aboriginal Elders, this thesis examines the everyday resistance of Aboriginal women to dehumanization by government agencies. The dehumanization of these Aboriginal women occurs when they are denied their basis human rights guaranteed in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Dehumanization is manifest as the denial of basic subsistence needs, poor treatment in the form of abuse, harassment and discrimination, and the denial of self-determination. Dehumanization is met with resistance in an attempt to restore humanity. Everyday forms of resistance are small acts of daily personal resistance which do not usually challenge the prevailing social order. They are based upon a complex subaltern ideology expressed in private transcripts which are usually hidden from the dominant group. Aboriginal women use the private transcripts as the ideological basis for at least three forms of everyday resistance: direct, indirect and hidden. With direct resistance the private transcript emerges, with indirect resistance a third-party mediates the emergence of partial private transcript and with hidden resistance the private transcript remains hidden. Aboriginal woman also base their resistance on a reciprocal relationship of empowerment between themselves and their communities which becomes more powerful as they age. The increase in the quality of the reciprocal communityindividual empowerment leads to evolution in the quality of everyday resistance strategies, from relatively inefficient emotion-based reactions to more efficient and well-developed strategies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-09192008-233003 |
| Date | 22 September 2008 |
| Creators | Hogan, Michelle |
| Contributors | Wilson, Alexandria, Wheeler, Winona, St. Denis, Verna, Macdougall, Brenda |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-09192008-233003/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds