The Murders of Indigenous Women in Canada as Feminicides: Toward a Decolonial Intersectional Reconceptualization of Femicide

Moral, Paulina García‐Del

doi:10.1086/696692

Cited by 35 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The historical intersections of race, class, and gender mark Indigenous women’s experiences of violence (García-Del Moral 2018; Mack and Na’puti 2019). For generations, Indigenous women have been erroneously depicted as promiscuous and degenerates (Dean 2015; O’Reilly and Fleming 2016).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indigenous women’s experiences of violence are rarely understood as a consequence of centuries of oppression by settler colonialism. Their deaths are framed as the result of their vulnerability, risky behaviors, and inability to adjust to settler society (Razack 2015, 2020), while state institutions’ responsibility is ignored (García-Del Moral 2018). As Pamela Palmater (2016) has stated, violence against Indigenous women is so pervasive that police even perpetuate it.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Building the Settler Colonial Order: Police (In)Actions in Response to Violence Against Indigenous Women in “Canada”

Flores¹,

Alfaro

2023

Gender & Society

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In this article we focus on missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people in “Canada.” We theorize narratives that police employ to respond to this violence. Using a broad data sample of testimonies across “Canada,” this article contributes to understanding how police (in)actions make sense of, justify, and dismiss violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. We draw from 48 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Indigenous peoples in Toronto and other “Canadian” cities and 219 testimonies from the Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (NIMMIWG). The analysis finds that police repeatedly use similar frames (topics), styles (linguistic and behavioral strategies), and storylines (narratives) to respond to violence against Indigenous peoples. While framing Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people as deviants helps police make sense of and explain violence against them, the use of verbal and behavioral strategies (indifference, callousness, and lack of information) and storylines (“they were [insert pathologizing frame]” and “there’s nothing we can do”) allows police to dismiss and justify acts of violence. We argue that the frames, styles, and storylines employed by police perpetuate violence. Police (in)actions are fundamental to achieving settler colonialism’s ideological and material dimensions.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building the Settler Colonial Order: Police (In)Actions in Response to Violence Against Indigenous Women in “Canada”

Flores¹,

Alfaro

2023

Gender & Society

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“…Consequently, poor Honduran, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran women—those who comprise this anti-category—see no alternative but to seek protection elsewhere; many migrate in search of asylum in the United States. Native American women and girls in the United States and Canada are similarly neglected (García-Del Moral 2018); they are also killed and disappeared, but their murders fail to receive the state attention they require. In death as in life, poor women and girls often bear the brunt of states’ anti-categories that neglect, diminish, and abandon them—in Central America, the United States, and elsewhere.…”

Section: Three Aspects Of Categories and Classification Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

State Categories, Bureaucracies of Displacement, and Possibilities from the Margins

Menjívar

2023

Am Sociol Rev

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In this presidential address, I argue for the importance of state-created categories and classification systems that determine eligibility for tangible and intangible resources. Through classification systems based on rules and regulations that reflect powerful interests and ideologies, bureaucracies maintain entrenched inequality systems that include, exclude, and neglect. I propose adopting a critical perspective when using formalized categories in our work, which would acknowledge the constructed nature of those categories, their naturalization through everyday practices, and their misalignments with lived experiences. This lens can reveal the systemic structures that engender both enduring patterns of inequality and state classification systems, and reframe questions about the people the state sorts into the categories we use. I end with a brief discussion of the benefits that can accrue from expanding our theoretical repertoires by including knowledge produced in the Global South.

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“…Kinship as a framework moves beyond human relations, as studies of Indigenous approaches to nature reflect what Wilson and Inkster (2018) call a “politics of kinship” that views resources such as water as kin and as “a living entity, with agency or spirit” that sustains life (517). This broader approach to kinship is legible in several social movements in contemporary North America as well as Australia around the environment (Whyte, 2021) and, especially, in cases where disappearance and forced removal as forms of state violence against Native and Indigenous peoples have persisted since the colonial period (Deer, 2015; García‐Del Moral, 2018). Grandmothers Against Removal, an organization founded in 2014 in Australia to contest the removal of Indigenous children from their parents and grandparents, mobilizes kinship relations to reiterate how the state interrupts the ability of Indigenous families to parent and to socialize children into the cultural practices of their Nations (GMAR, 2021).…”

Section: Families and Politics: Exploring The Connectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a sociology of family movements: Lessons from the Global South

Zarrugh

2022

Sociology Compass

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Research on forced disappearances, which refer to state-orchestrated abductions and disappearances of men and women, has long emphasized the roles of families, specifically mothers, in contesting state violence. However, the family as the locus of social movements resisting inequality and state-related violence remains underexamined in the broader field of social movement study. In this article, I provide an overview of research in areas of the Global South, specifically Latin America and the Middle East, related to family-based activism around disappearance to highlight how turning our analytical lens towards the family enriches our understandings of gender, power, and resistance to systemic inequality. In the discussion, I outline a burgeoning literature around other forms of state violence, such as incarceration and immigrant deportation, that centers the family as a site to critique structural inequality. I conclude by identifying future directions for sociological inquiry into family-based movements that can enrich our understandings of social movements.

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The Murders of Indigenous Women in Canada as Feminicides: Toward a Decolonial Intersectional Reconceptualization of Femicide

Cited by 35 publications

References 24 publications

Building the Settler Colonial Order: Police (In)Actions in Response to Violence Against Indigenous Women in “Canada”

Building the Settler Colonial Order: Police (In)Actions in Response to Violence Against Indigenous Women in “Canada”

State Categories, Bureaucracies of Displacement, and Possibilities from the Margins

Toward a sociology of family movements: Lessons from the Global South

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