Jane Messer

MOTHERING AND RESISTANCE

In 1971, Ojibway First Nation woman Jeanette Corbiere Lavell initiated court action in the Canadian Supreme Court. Her aim was to eliminate the rule under the Indian Act of 1876 that took from a women her status as an Indian upon marriage to a non-Indian man. Corbiere Lavell and her daughter, activist and academic D. Memee Lavell-Harvard, have edited this interdisciplinary collection of 17 essays on Aboriginality and mothering which examine conceptions and practices of Aboriginal mothering, the role of the state in the performance of mothering, and literary representations of motherhood. They outline the complexities of the designation ‘Indian’ in their introduction, beginning with the difficulty of articulating the breadth of Aboriginal experience in the oppressor’s language. The very term ‘Indian’ is a misnomer. Aboriginal women’s fight to be recognised under the Indian Act and the fact that certain other Indigenous Canadians, including the Métis and Inuit are excluded under the Act, and are thus not ‘Indian’, add to this dilemma. Yet many Indigenous Canadians routinely use and recognise themselves as ‘Indian’, or as ‘Native’, or in North America as ‘Native American’. Some second-generation Canadians, however, also use the term ‘native’ (7). Taking these histories and debates into account, the editors use the term ‘Aboriginal’ as inclusive within the context of the volume, arguing that ideally it will indicate a shared ‘commonality of difference’ and not homogeneity (2). The contributors themselves employ a variety of nomenclatures including Aboriginal, First Nation, Indigenous, as well as ancestral tribal names such as Métis, to describe themselves. A small number of contributors are non-Aboriginal Canadians, while three contributions are by Australian writers and examine Australian Aboriginal motherhood, giving the collection an international, comparative frame, connecting across experiences of British colonialism. As discussed in Lavell and Lavell-Harvard’s contribution, ‘Aboriginal Women vs. Canada’, in 1973 Jeanette Corbiere Lavell lost her case. It was not until 1985 that the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Equality was enacted in the new Canadian Constitution and women gained equal status with men under the Indian Act. Thousands of Indian women and their children and grandchildren*who had also lost their status as a consequence of the marriage to a ‘non-status’ man*applied to be recognised as Indian. Renée Elizabeth Mzinegiizhigo-Kwe Bédard’s memoir-essay on Anishinaabe-kwe ideology of mothering demonstrates how Aboriginal womens’ role as bearers of the next and future