Over the past decade, the "problem" of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Fetal
Alcohol Effects among Aboriginal peoples has received increasing attention from the
Canadian nation-state. However, few feminist, anti-racist, anti-ableist, and anti-colonial
scholars have offered a critique of FAS/E "prevention" policies aimed at Aboriginal
women. In this dissertation, I present my analysis of the "official knowledge" and "public
pedagogies" articulated in one such policy, The First Nations and Inuit Fetal Alcohol
Syndrome/ Fetal Alcohol Effects Initiative (herein "the Initiative"). This analysis unravels
the complex and contradictory tensions in contemporary state policy formation. My
findings show how the Initiative paradoxically supports the development of inclusive,
grassroots approaches to FAS/E prevention in Aboriginal communities while at the same
time eclipsing the voices and concerns of Aboriginal women.
Though neglected in the official policy texts and talk of the Initiative, young
Aboriginal mothers' agency and insights are central in the dialectic of ideology,
discourse, and lived experience that this study documents. To facilitate this shift, I
engage a productive methodological synthesis of textual analysis, institutional
ethnography, and participatory research, by grounding my analysis of the texts in indepth
group interviews with six Aboriginal mothers whose lives include substance use
and FAS/E.
This study offers significant implications for the development of future policy,
research, and "culturally appropriate" pedagogy for and about FAS/E "prevention". My
findings do not support the outright rejection of medical models of disability, as has been
favoured by many critical theorists and activists on the grounds that such models are
universally oppressive and disenfranchising. Rather, the women's insights into their own
lived experiences emphasize the simultaneously enabling and disabling consequences of
medicalization. Accordingly, my findings underscore the urgent need to reconsider the
roles of "race", gender, class, nation and dis/ability in contemporary theories and
practices of substantive citizenship and nation-building in and outside of education. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/16938 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Salmon, Amy |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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