Call For Papers

INDIGENOUS WOMEN AND FEMINISM: CULTURE, ACTIVISM, POLITICS

August 25-28, 2005
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Keynote Speakers:

• Minnie Grey, Chief Negotiator for Nunavik Self-Government, Makivik Corporation
• Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Australian Studies Centre, University of Queensland
• Rebecca Tsosie, College of Law, Arizona State University

Developments in feminist theory and practice since the late 1980s and 1990s have enabled scholars to recognize how nationality, race, class, sexuality, and ethnicity inform axes of gender differentiation among women as a social class. Despite these interventions, indigenous women and feminist issues remain undertheorized within contemporary feminist critical theory. Although presumed to fall within normative definitions of women of colour and postcolonial feminism, indigenous feminism remains an important site of gender struggle that also engages the crucial issues of cultural identity, nationalism, and decolonization. At the same time, the growing legal recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples to cultural and political autonomy has made increasingly important questions of indigenous women and their work on behalf of civil rights and sovereignty. With such intersections in mind, we invite paper and round table proposals for an international, interdisciplinary conference focused on indigenous feminism and its defining goals and features. Topics may include but are not limited to the following:

• indigenous feminism as critical practice
• indigenous feminism and literary/performance art
• historical constructions of indigenous feminist work
• strategic alliances within indigenous feminism
• non-native women and indigenous feminism
• critical intersections between indigenous feminism and women of color feminism
• uses of indigenous feminism in the dominant culture
• indigenous feminism and the "post-feminist" state
• gender politics and indigenous feminism
• indigenous collectives and feminist alliances
• interdisciplinarity and indigenous feminism

Papers will be no more than twenty minutes in length. Submissions for round table and panel presentations should include an abstract for each paper. Please send 250-word proposals and brief biographical description by electronic submission to csuzack@ualberta.ca. Deadline for submissions is October 15, 2004.