Active Women

Indigenous Women's Social and Political Work in Kanata's West
Auxiliary Organizations examines how, from the 1930s to the 1980s, Indigenous women in Kanata’s West identified everyday challenges and responded with purposeful, multifaceted social and political action – uncovering the deep commitment and care driving their activism.

Active Women uncovers the widespread, collaborative, adaptive, and transformative activism of Indigenous women in Kanata’s West from the 1930s to the 1980s. It shows how Indigenous women responded to social injustices with political action rooted in community.

This book emphasizes how everyday acts – caregiving, organizing, legal activism, and advocacy – formed a powerful political movement reshaping Indigenous politics and challenging colonial and patriarchal systems. Historian and Indigenous politics scholar Sarah Nickel traces the emergence and maturation of the Indigenous women’s movement by taking a thematic and embedded case study approach to examine the threads of women’s struggles as they emerged and became enmeshed in local, regional, national, and transnational considerations. Nickel redefines Indigenous politics as gendered, fluid, and rooted in kinship and resistance, exploring women’s involvement in urban centres, grassroots initiatives, and political organizations. Framing Indigenous feminism as a flexible set of practices challenging colonialism, sexism, and gender inequality, the work draws on scholars like Joyce Green and Maile Arvin. The research follows decolonial practices, centring Indigenous women’s voices within colonial archives and promoting empathy in historical research.

By chronicling a vibrant era of Indigenous women’s politicization and organization, this book documents the revolutionary impact they had in their communities and beyond.

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