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Interpreting the Feminine in the Criminal Trial: Can the Insights of Rape Myth Scholarship Help Mothers Accused of Killing Their Children?
Get PDFIn cases where mothers were wrongfully convicted of killing their children, both forensic and non-forensic evidence was admitted. Although the expert opinions and evidence were subsequently robustly scrutinised, the same is not true for informal evidence of maternal behaviour. The paper proposes that if we consider an analogous area of criminal justice which has seen interpretations of the feminine strongly challenged, such as in rape trials, then we might learn from rape myth scholarship how better to analyse child death cases. The article explores the difficult issues in rape myth scholarship in identifying what a rape myth is, how widely it is held, and how complex layers of functionality and connections constitute belief systems. By focussing on behavioural normativity and the deployment of fixed beliefs the article proposes a device based on the insights of rape myth scholarship with which to interrogate the behaviour evidence admitted in child death cases. Using the concept of modern mothering myths may prevent the possibility of background evidence being used as a vehicle for smuggling in prejudicial material of little probative value
Laughing in the Dark: Weird Survivance in the Works of Bunky Echo-Hawk and Daniel McCoy Jr.
Get PDF“Laughing in the Dark” is a bold leap in the research on the Vizenorian paradigm of survivance. Considering the surreal, strange, outraging and simply weird elements in the artwork of Bunky Echo-Hawk and Daniel McCoy Jr. this article introduces weird survivance to encourage readers to remember that survivance is not exclusively produced by positive and pleasing images. On the contrary, it can also be effected through dark humor – a kind of dark laughter that is spurred by confrontation with the weirdness of our reality, that comes from a place of sadness, frustration or even disgust, and that spurs renewal and resistance. Rather than an attack on the word survivance that holds such a prominent position in Indigenous literary studies, “Laughing in the Dark” begs for nuance, and for the continued playful exploration of critical categories in the spirit of transmotion
Indian Made: Museum Valuation of American Indian Identity through Aesthetics
No full textEthnographic museums create a taste for American Indian art through the acquisition of art with a narrow type, scope, and preference for particular Native artists. The taste created by museums is than communicated to their publics through the valuation of contemporary art and presenting the art through “rhetorics of value” (Kratz 22). I argue these “rhetorics of value” are creating rigid standards for what constitutes American Indian art worthy for museum display that excludes traditional art forms and contemporary motifs deemed important by tribal nations and individual American Indian artists. This article traces the process of creating contemporary American Indian art taste that valuates not only the art itself, but also the artist’s Native identity when considering good Indian art. I also track how this taste is imparted to museum publics and finally how these processes are exclusionary through a discussion of a museum passing on a truly unique piece of contemporary American Indian art in favor for a standard piece of beadwork. It concludes by exploring how tribal museums are employing tribal sovereign authority and citizenship standards to determine what art to acquire. Though reliant on citizenship standards, the art the Oneida Nation Museum (ONM) is acquiring is more inclusive than its ethnographic museum counterparts in terms of medium, motif, and message. And it is to tribal museums like the ONM, that ethnographic museums should be looking to for inspiration of what art to acquire to broaden the taste for American Indian art
Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health (Devon A. Mihesuah and Elizabeth Hoover, eds)
No full textThis book review examines Devon A. Mihesuah's and Elizabeth Hoover's Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health. Mihesuah's and Hoover's book highlights movements in the US that combat the health decline colonial food practices have brought upon Indigenous communities. Similarly, the authors recognize the harmful ways that the food industry, as a part of the neoliberal economic system, is wasteful and harming the environment--both at a local and global level. This text sheds light on important issues and ways that Indigenous communities are challenging the food industry by aiming to restore Indigenous food practices and food sovereignty. 
New Institutions, New Gender Rules? A Feminist Institutionalist Lens on Women and Power-Sharing
Get PDFThis article examines the apparent tension between power-sharing as the dominant approach to conflict settlement and the inclusion of women and provisions for gender equality as promoted through the Women, Peace and Security agenda. We argue that applying a feminist institutionalist (FI) lens - which attends to the interactions between political and social institutions, and the interplay between formal and informal rules, norms and practices - provides a means of explaining the so-called ‘gendered paradox of power-sharing’, including the gap between the promise of formal frameworks and outcomes for women in practice. We draw upon extant feminist research on three post-conflict power-sharing cases: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, and Burundi. Using the concepts of: nested newness, formal and informal institutions, the gendered logic of appropriateness, and gendered actors, we illuminate why it has been so difficult for the gender progressive institutional innovations to be instantiated. In so doing, we answer the call of Byrne and McCulloch (2012) for more systematic analysis and theorising around the gendered paradox of power-sharing, and we also provide a basis for identifying what institutional mechanisms might be needed to embed the inclusion of women and the integration of the WPS norms in power-sharing frameworks in the future
"Common Fires": A Tribute
Get PDFThis is a review of Richard Wagamese's 1994 novel Keeper'n Me and a detailed appreciation of Anishnaabe values as presented in the novel
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