Gendering Indigenous Self-Government

• Main Author: Kuokkanen, Rauna
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 2019
• Subjects: Canada; Greenland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190913281.003.0005

Chapter 4 examines the gender power dynamics of existing Indigenous self-government institutions, cultures, and discourses in Canada, Greenland, and Scandinavia. Employing feminist institutional analysis, the author investigates how Indigenous political institutions are gendered. Gendering refers to a multiplicity of interacting processes shaped by the distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine, which create and conceptualize social structures and privilege certain groups over others. Gendering occurs through the construction of various divisions along gender lines and through interpersonal interactions that enact gendered hierarchies. Institutions and organizations are also gendered through the construction of symbols, images, and ideologies that legitimize institutions generally conceived as gender-neutral. Using interview data, the chapter analyzes the gender regimes of Indigenous political institutions and women’s participation in the existing self-government institutions. Also considered are alternative forms of advancing Indigenous self-determination by examining Indigenous women’s grassroots leadership and the growing movement of reclaiming Indigenous women’s authority.