Aboriginal women and everyday racism in Alberta: From lived experiences of racism to strategies for personal healing and collective resistance

Ronnie Leah

doi:10.1007/bf02585440

Personalising the History Wars

International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies ◽

10.5204/ijcis.v1i1.21 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 44

Author(s):

Maggie Walter ◽

Louise Daniels

Keyword(s):

Small Group ◽

Lived Experiences ◽

Personal Perspective ◽

Colonial History ◽

Aboriginal Communities ◽

Personal Story ◽

Aboriginal Women ◽

Aboriginal History ◽

Official Records

Warriors in the history wars’ do battle over the accuracy and portrayal of Aboriginal history in Tasmania, but for the descendants of the traditional people this contested field is also the site of our families’ stories. This paper juxtaposes, via the woven narrative of Woretemoeteryenner, a personal perspective against the history wars sterile dissection of official records. Woretemoeteryenner’s story serves as a personalising frame for Tasmanian colonial history. Born before the beginning of European colonisation, by the end of her life fewer than 50 traditional Tasmanians remained. Her story also shines a light on the lived experiences of that small group of Aboriginal women who form the link between the traditional people and present Tasmanian Aboriginal communities. Most critically, Woretemoeteryenner’s life is a personal story of a life lived through these now disputed and debated times.

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Kicking and Screaming

International Review of Qualitative Research ◽

10.1525/irqr.2010.2.4.429 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 2 (4) ◽

pp. 429-432 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Felice Yuen

Keyword(s):

Lived Experiences ◽

Hierarchical Structures ◽

Incarcerated Women ◽

Transformational Process ◽

Aboriginal Women ◽

Women In Prison ◽

Critical Theorist ◽

Creative Analytic Practice

In this paper, poetry, as a form of creative analytic practice, is used to articulate my transformation from a constructivist to a critical theorist during my research with Aboriginal women in prison. I was first kicking and screaming against the very thought of working so closely with women in prison, and eventually I was kicking and screaming with incarcerated women and for incarcerated women. Creative analytic practice embraces the complexity of lived experiences and allows for transformational process of self-creation. In my poem, I illustrate my intense, emotional, and life-changing journey as I re-discovered a world based on hierarchical structures of power.

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‘Going Underground’: A Tube Worker’s Experience of Struggles over the Frontier of Control

Work Employment and Society ◽

10.1177/0950017018758215 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (1) ◽

pp. 174-183 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Emma S Hughes ◽

Tony Dobbins ◽

Stephen Murphy

Keyword(s):

Lived Experiences ◽

New Technology ◽

Media Representation ◽

Customer Engagement ◽

Employment Relations ◽

Managerial Control ◽

Mainstream Media ◽

Collective Resistance ◽

Worker Autonomy ◽

Over Time

Mainstream media representation of London Underground (LU) workers typically foregrounds their alleged militancy, greed and negligence towards the travelling public. This knee-jerk tendency obscures the voices, expressions and experiences of workers themselves. This article enriches public sociology by giving Stephen, a Tube driver and former LU station worker, a platform to share his vivid story. Stephen’s voice reveals deep sociological insights into the realities of workplace struggles over the shifting ‘frontier of control’ at LU, and graphically captures uneven and fluid patterns of individual/collective resistance to restructuring and ‘modernization’. His lived experiences of managerial control and worker autonomy, interfacing with different degrees of alienation, new technology and customer engagement, have changed over time as ‘passengers’ become ‘customers’ and ‘give and take’ employment relations dwindle.

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Reification of Collective Victimhood: Dalit Narratives, Social Repositioning and Transformation

Psychology and Developing Societies ◽

10.1177/0971333618825056 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 31 (1) ◽

pp. 106-138

Author(s):

Aparna Vyas ◽

Minati Panda

Keyword(s):

Collective Identity ◽

Lived Experiences ◽

Highly Active ◽

Symbolic Resources ◽

Collective Resistance ◽

Everyday Experiences ◽

Collective Victimhood ◽

Radical Shift

Contrary to the passivity embedded in the term ‘victim’, collective victimhood experienced by the Dalits is highly active and agentic. Dalits negotiate the meaning of collective victimhood in various creative expressions where they project their lived experiences of ‘being’ and reify them at the collective level thus generating a radical shift in the very meaning of their state of being the victims by communicating a sense of resistance. This transition in the meaning of ‘being’ is facilitated by the process of ‘becoming’, which is explained here as social repositioning of the identity that involves recognising, deconstructing and reinterpreting the sense of imposed victimhood. Recognition of anguish and its projection in the form of collective resistance reconstructs Dalits’ victimhood and transforms their everyday experiences of being suppressed and oppressed into a form of political assertion. This article presents negotiations of meaning of Dalit (collective) victimhood, its reification through the varied creative expressions and the role of symbolic resources in birthing stability to the basic construct. It also discusses how the reified victimhood of Dalits acts as a ‘vehicle of emancipation’ for their harried members and as a tool to generate a collective identity that’s agentic, forceful and transformative.

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L I MITATIONS TO INCLUS IVE UNIONS FROM THE P E RS PE CTIVES OF WHITE AND ABORIGINAL WOMEN FO REST WOR K ER S IN T H E NO RT HERN PR AIRIES

Just Labour ◽

10.25071/1705-1436.88 ◽

1969 ◽

Author(s):

Suzanne E Mills

Keyword(s):

Lived Experiences ◽

Aboriginal Women

Severalauthors haveargued thatbroadening the traditional understandingsofunion solidarityisnecessary for unionrenewal.Concerns specific to workersfrommarginalizedgroupshavebeen showntochallengetraditionalunderstandingsof unioncollectivity.This paperdraws oninterviews withwhite andAboriginal women forestprocessingworkers to argue thatinterrogating marginalizedworkers’ negativerepresentations of theirunions canprovideinsights thatwillhelpto broaden traditionalunderstandings of union solidarity. I use thematic analysisfollowed by critical discourseanalysistoexaminewomen workers’negativetalkabout unions.I present examples ofhow women’s negative representations oftheir unionscanbe understood asdifferentforms of collectivism whenexaminedin thecontext of their lived experiences of workandunionism. Some white andAboriginalwomen’s representations oftheir unionswove individualistic anti-union statements together with their previous experiences ofwork highlighting the inequality betweenunionized and non-unionized workersin thecommunity.The talk ofother Aboriginal womencritiqued theunion for not representingthem whiledemonstrating a sense ofcollectivitywithother Aboriginal workers.Byexploring linkages between women’s negativerepresentations ofunionsand their workexperiences,unions can better understand the negative union sentimentof marginalizedworkersanduse this t

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