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Abstract

This study examines the way that Native women incorporate the history of colonization into the way that they think about, and organize against, family violence in Vancouver's urban Aboriginal community. Using Melucci's (1989) model of collective action, this thesis focuses on the social process behind Native women's organized resistance to domestic violence. This thesis studied family violence intervention programs among Vancouver's Aboriginal organizations in order to understand the underlying process of negotiation between collective identity, solidarity, and environment. The study was divided into two levels: the organizational and individual. The thesis studied the narratives, or discourse of both organizations and individuals who delivered family violence intervention projects to the urban Native community. On the organizational level, data consisted of promotional texts that were produced by the organizations (posters,leaflets, brochures). The texts were then subjected to a content analysis, to identify the frequency of rhetorical devices, and then a rhetorical analysis, to see how these concepts were used. On the individual level, data was collected by means of loosely-structured interviews that asked questions about why participants were involved in family violence intervention. Nine interviews were collected from individuals who worked the organizations sampled. A rhetorical analysis of the interviews was also conducted, and compared with organizational discourse. The study found that the anti-violence movement among Vancouver's urban Native women was articulated primarily through the rhetoric of healing through cultural identity and spirituality. Both on the organizational and the individual levels, violence against Aboriginal women was explained as a result of the colonial process. The low status of Native women was linked to the oppression of First Nations people. "Healing" from the destructive cycle of family violence involved recovering "traditional" ethnic and gender identities, which in turn involved raising the status of women in Aboriginal communities.