Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)

Camitta Zimet, Kristin

124 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
Bertell, Rosalie. Kriegswaffe Planet Erde. 2nd ed. Birstein: 
J. K. Fischer, 2013a. Print.
Bertell, Rosalie. Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War. 
London: The Women’s Press, 2000. Print.
Bertell, Rosalie. “Slowly Wrecking Our Planet.” Asking, We 
Walk: The South as New Political Imaginary. Book Four. 
Ed. Corinne Kumar. Bangalore: Streelekha Publications, 
2013b. 31-40. Print.
Bremner, Moyra. “Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War: 
A Review.” Asking, We Walk: The South as New Political 
Imaginary. Book Four. Ed. Corinne Kumar. Bangalore: 
Streelekha Publications, 2013. 41-46. Print.
Chossudovsky, Michel. “The Ultimate Weapon of Mass 
Destruction: ‘Owning the Weather’ for Military Use.” 
Global Research, 27 September 2004. Web.
Die Welt. “Neuer Strahlenrekordwert in Fukushima 
gemessen.” 4 September 2013. Print.
Gruss, Mike. “U.S. Navy Launches 4th muos Telecom 
Satellite.” Spacenews, 2 September 2015. Web.
McDonald, Gordon. “How to Wreck the Environment.” 
Unless Peace Comes: A Scientific Forecast of New Weapons. 
Ed. Nigel Calder. London: Pelican, 1968. Print.
Gruss, Mike. “U.S. Navy Launches 4th muos Telecom 
Satellite.” Spacenews, 2 September 2015. Web.
Murphy, Michael. Why in the World Are they Spraying? 
Film, 2012. YouTube. Web.
Phillips, Jeff. In the 5th Information Letter, Planetary 
Movement for Mother Earth, 2012. Web.
Ponte, Lowell. The Cooling. Has the Next Ice Age Already 
Begun? Can We Survive It? London: Prentice Hall, 
1976. Print.
Projektgruppe “Zivilisationspolitik” (Hrsg.). Kann es eine 
‘neue Erde’ geben? Zur ‘Kritischen Patriarchatstheorie’ und 
der Praxis einer postpatriarchalen Zivilisation. Frankfurt/
New York: Peter Lang Verlag, 2011. Print.
Skyguards. International Platform Against Climate 
Modification, Geoengineering, haarp….Web.
United Nations. Convention on the Prohibition of Military 
or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification 
Techniques. Geneva, 18 May 1977. Web.
Tesla, Nikola. “My Inventions V – The Magnifying 
Transmitter.” Electrical Experimenter (June 1919): 
pp.112-113, 148, 173, 176-178. Print.
U.S. Air Force. “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning 
the Weather in 2025.” A Research Paper by Col Tamzy 
J. House, Lt Col James B. Near, Jr., ltc William B. 
Shields (usa), Maj Ronald J. Celentano, Maj David 
M. Husband, Maj Ann E. Mercer and Maj James E. 
Pug, 1996. Web.
Werlhof, Claudia von. The Failure of Modern Civilization 
and the Struggle for a “Deep” Alternative. Frankfurt/New 
York: Peter Lang, 2011. Print.
Werlhof, Claudia von. Der unerkannte Kern der Krise. Die 
Moderne als Er-Schöpfung der Welt. Uhlstädt-Kirchhasel: 
Arun Verlag, 2012. Print.
Werlhof, Claudia von. “Destruction Through ‘Creation’: 
The ‘Critical Theory of Patriarchy’ and the Collapse of 
Modern Civilization.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 24.4 
(2013): 68-85. Print.
KRISTIN CAMITTA ZIMET
IN RETURN
What can I give you, who heap in my lap
the whole of earth? Cloud-gallop,
mountain flanks frost-struck,
leaf-lit ravines, and rivers blustering.
What can I say to you, who startle out
the covey of my senses, that were hid
thick-bedded in a sodden sleep of leaves?
Fern witchery, pluming a broken rock,
the musings multitudinous of wrens,
the cornered needle of the brushy spruce
mine at a leap. Hand-warmed, the heartleaf
and the spicebush pierce me through;
wineberries, persimmon rouse my tongue.
What can I do for you, who lay this world
wounded into my arms, your only child
scarred, stripped, and feverish with human
grub and greed? but cradle her entire,
weed and thorn, hugging her fiercer
than I may hold you, tending the ground
where your heart’s seed is borne.
Kristin Camitta Zimet is the author of Take in My 
Arms the Dark, a collection of poetry, and the editor 
of The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review. Her poetry is in 
journals including Lullwater Review, Poet Lore, and 
Salamander, and she co-founded a poetry performance 
troupe. She works as a nature guide, photographer, and 
Reiki healer.


In Return

Kazemi, Sona

Pyschiatry and the Business of Madness: An Ethical and Epistemological Accounting

Critiquer la déconstruction du paradigme de la dominance et de la nécrophilie de l’Occident est un a priori de l’affirmation de la vie. Cette étude écoféministe expose sept cas de nécrophilie qui ont dénaturé le pouvoir sur les femmes, sur la nature et colonisé les autres. Cela dit, cette analyse suggère des implications pour un nouveau paradigme égocentrique dès la naissance

Friesen Wolfstone, Irene

Deconstructing Necrophilia: An Ecofeminist Contribution to Growth

Cet article identifie le rôle joué par les femmes dans le développement durable au 21e siècle et ses implications dans notre société

Kaushik, Laavanya

VOLUME 31, NUMBERS 1,2 103
Women and Sustainable Development
laavanya kaushik
Cet article identifie le rôle joué par les 
femmes dans le développement durable 
au 21e siècle et ses implications dans 
notre société.
There are various stakeholders such 
as the government, private sector 
research institutions, and the devel-
opment community, which fail to 
recognize women’s role in and con-
tribution to sustainable production 
and consumption, often because 
of their informal role. However the 
influence of women, even in an in-
formal capacity, is far too important 
to be ignored. 
Sustainable development in layman 
terms means a judicial and efficient 
use of resources available to meet 
present day needs and wants, keeping 
in mind the needs and wants of future 
generations. As defined by the United 
Nations sustainable development is 
based on three basic principles:
•Sustainable use of resources; 
•Equitable distribution of re-
sources at the inter-generational 
level; 
•Equitable distribution of re-
sources at the intra generational 
level. 
Inter-generational distribution 
refers to distribution of resources 
between young and elder generations 
in a family which is subsequently 
reflected broadly in society. The 
common interpretation of the term 
intra-generational equity is often 
only understood as equity among 
various economic sections of society. 
However intra-generational equity 
also denotes gender equity. Moreover, 
Soledad Aguilar argues, sustainable 
development is not possible without 
gender equity. In fact, it is a prerequi-
site for any action aimed at improving 
people’s quality of life. 
In order to understand the impor-
tance of gender equity, it is necessary 
to identify the role and contribution 
of women in sustenance and devel-
opment. 
In Rio, women were considered a 
“major group” whose involvement 
in the United Nations Earth Sum-
mit held in 1992 was a necessary 
pre-requisite for achieving sustainable 
development. Ever since gender issues 
have been given high priority in the 
international political debate on 
sustainable development. Chapter 
24 of Agenda 21 talks specifically 
about a global plan of action for 
women towards sustainable and 
equitable development. This agenda 
promotes the formulation of policies 
and actions by local governments in 
association with non-governmental 
organizations.
The International Women’s Uni-
versity in Hanover, the first gen-
der-specific university of its kind in 
Europe, in an announcement in 2000, 
stated that: “looking at women’s work 
we can see the variety of social engage-
ments, which are necessary for the 
survival of a society: domestic work, 
subsistence work, care work, work in 
the formal and informal sections of 
labour markets.”
Women have been victims of the 
problem of disguised employment, 
since time immemorial. Disguised 
employment is the phenomenon 
wherein people do not have full-
time paid employment, but are not 
counted in the official unemployment 
statistics. This disguised employment 
is most commonly seen in the form 
of domestic work. Conventional 
gender roles have usually designated 
women as in-charge of household 
work and budgeting. It is the women 
of the family who decides the kind 
of groceries that are to be purchased, 
the recycle and waste disposal prac-
tices adopted by a household. These 
forms of informal policy adopted by 
women at a minuscule level provide 
the building blocks for an ecologically 
sound consumption pattern. For in-
stance, if women adopt the practice 
of cooking with seasonal vegetable, it 
increases the consumption of seasonal 
vegetables, which are a more ecologi-
cally sound alternative as opposed to 
104 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
using unseasonal vegetables that are 
grown as cash crops. The producers 
are driven by the simple law of sup-
ply and demand to focus more on 
production of seasonal vegetables. 
This, in turn, reduces the use of cold 
storage, chemical fertilizers, artificial 
means of cultivation, and the use of 
preservatives to a large extent. 
It is evident that a small decision 
made by a woman at a domestic level 
play can essential role in adopting a 
sustainable and ecologically sound 
consumption and production pat-
tern—that is, insofar as she has the 
power to make such decisions and 
to allocate time, resources, and the 
labour to adopt such practices at the 
micro level. 
In the so-called developing coun-
tries, the formal work done by women 
is largely in the agriculture sector. 
Women are primarily responsible 
for cultivating food crops, vegetables, 
managing small animals and running 
small-scale commercial agriculture 
enterprises. Women account for an 
average of 43 percent of agriculture 
jobs among developing countries, 
and for nearly 50 percent in some 
countries in Africa and Asia. Women 
represent only 12 percent of fishery 
labour but over 65 percent of the 
400 million livestock keepers (United 
Nations).
Many cultures revere older wom-
en who possess a seemingly infinite 
amount of knowledge of management 
of natural resources, such as, for ex-
ample, how to preserve seeds for best 
yields, or patterns of crop rotation 
for preserving nutrients of the soil. 
Though exaggerated by folklore, this 
mythical perception is firmly rooted 
in reality: Indigenous women have 
spent centuries gathering, sharing and 
preserving knowledge in the realms of 
botany, agricultural livestock, health 
and nutrition, and other environmen-
tal knowledge. Many women have 
also taken economic advantage of 
their knowledge when market realities 
have allowed. 
Moreover women worldwide, 
specifically in developing countries, 
spend more than 200 million hours 
per day collecting water and have 
developed considerable knowledge 
about water resources, including their 
location, quality and storage methods. 
Just like any other job gives the highest 
value to experience, the policy makers 
of sustainable development have a 
treasure to gain from these women. 
The biggest challenge faced by women 
around the work with respect to this is 
that women own less than 20 percent 
of the natural resources even today. 
Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt 
Thomsen, which linked subsistence 
work to sustainable production. 
Some would argue that subsistence 
work only contributes to the gross 
domestic production in decimal per-
centages. However, in recent times, 
subsistence work has also played a 
vital role in replenishing the envi-
ronment and reforming practices. 
Many such subsistence projects have 
been successful around the world. 
Rwandan farmers have brought to 
market organic “women’s coffee.” In 
Kenya and Zimbabwe, women are 
protecting and planting indigenous 
and medieval trees, establishing 
bee populations in arid areas, and 
learning how to maintain them 
while processing trees and honey 
for sale. Women in Benin have ad-
opted environmentally sustainable 
methods of oyster harvesting and are 
also reforesting a lagoon to ensure it 
can continue to provide livelihood. 
Women have proven themselves to 
be a force to be recognized when it 
comes to bringing about reform and 
change. Women have time and again 
challenged existing power relations 
and, discriminatory laws, policies, 
and institutions to demand for ex-
ample the right to land ownership 
and they are continuously striving 
to improve their status in society. 
In Rio, women were considered a 
“major group” whose involvement in 
the United Nations Earth Summit of 
1992 was a necessary pre-requisite 
for achieving sustainable devel-
opment. Ever since, gender issues 
have been given high priority in 
the international political debate on 
sustainable development. Chapter 
24 of Agenda 21 talks specifically 
about a global plan of action for 
women towards sustainable and 
equitable development. This agenda 
promotes the formulation of policies 
and actions by local governments in 
association with non-governmental 
organizations. 
There has been a long-standing 
relationship between women and 
nature that can be explained as the 
personification of nature as a mother, 
since both create and nurture life. It 
This poses a problem as a majority of 
decision-making power lies with the 
men (and often wealthy or foreign 
men who do not share the same con-
nection to the environment), while 
women are reduced to being nurses 
to an increasingly ill or degraded 
environment. 
Peasant and Indigenous women 
are undoubtedly the major contribu-
tors to subsistence economies (Kuo-
kkanen 220). Subsistence economies 
have successfully existed for centuries 
in all parts of the world. This has only 
been possible because the methods 
of production, however small scale 
they may be have been, are sustain-
able. The importance of subsistence 
economies was first recognized in the 
subsistence approach advocated by 
“The land we hold 
in trust is our wealth. 
It is the only wealth 
we could possibly 
pass on to our 
children. Good old 
Mother Earth with 
all her bounty and 
rich culture we have 
adopted from her 
treasures is our 
wealth. Without our 
homelands, we 
become true paupers.”


Women and Sustainable Development

Karkauer, Renate

VOLUME 31,  NUMBERS 1,2 149
alongside each chapter. Many of 
the literary and poetic pieces col-
lected in this text express expe-
riences living in/with conflict—
situations that complicatedly 
cross social, political, economic, 
nationalistic, linguistic, and reli-
gious lines. This contextual count-
er-point is an important additional 
layer of background information 
for readers who may not be famil-
iar with the contexts, landscapes, 
and histories being described. Un-
derstanding contexts as “socially 
constructed frame[s] of reference”, 
the editors state that “a true grasp 
of context recognizes the interplay 
between the particular and the 
universal, and the limitations of 
viewing human existence through 
black and white dichotomies.” 
Whether through the lens of the 
narrator, the various characters, 
or the authors/writers themselves, 
the reader encounters people and 
events that show the affective side 
of living; that situations and re-
lations reverberate through the 
body; and that life ebbs and flows 
across dis/ease. And, importantly, 
that daily living with others does 
not always fit neatly into categories 
that are used to understand or an-
alyze things. 
As each of the ten chapters in the 
anthology demonstrates, daily life 
plays out the tension between the 
particularities of lived experiences 
and relationships, and the universal 
ideas and mores professed at a wider 
level. Family, neighbours, friends, 
home, and land get caught-up in 
the whirlpool that can be identity, 
nation, state, worker, and commod-
ity. To say that contexts are ‘compli-
cated’ does not always do justice to 
the weight and force of a situation; 
especially when the particularity of 
lives are affected by the violence/s 
of nationalist struggles, colonial-
ism/s and imperialism/s, forced 
migrations, the natural/ecological 
exploitation of resources, and prop-
erty and ownership rights that are 
built on mass systemic poverty. The 
reader experiences how the tune of 
the tale shifts when ‘modernization’ 
and ‘progress’ are questions, rather 
than immutable facts. This anthol-
ogy demonstrates the power of art 
and literary mediums to express the 
personal and intimate in ways that 
reveal “the paradoxes and ambigu-
ities of life and history.” 
As the above quote from Goossen 
and Hazra’s introduction suggests, 
part of being able to imagine how 
others live and think entails being 
able to compassionately relate-with 
the everyday realities and experi-
ences that others have. This kind 
of imagining engages ‘separations’ 
and ‘distances’ of all different kinds; 
not only of those marked by the 
physical parameters of geography 
or through the passage of time, but 
as importantly the kinds of separa-
tions that happen in the everyday 
act of living and sharing place with 
others. In many ways, this imagin-
ing begins in self-reflection and by 
asking questions that can reveal our 
own hidden assumptions and ex-
pectations. By creating a common 
space through each literary piece, 
the kind of imaginative work pre-
sented in this anthology draws read-
ers into relation with the events, 
lives, and contexts being described. 
A relation that ultimately requires 
readers to extend the movement 
begun between particularities and 
universals on the page, to their own 
lived contexts. 
Kathryn Travis is a Ph.D. candidate in 
Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies 
at York University. Drawing from her 
field research in France, her research 
examines how place and identity are 
constructed through various textual, 
visual, and auditory mediums that 
happen in street timespaces. 
AFTER DROWNING
Valerie Mills-Milde
Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2015
reviewed by renate 
krakauer 
In her debut novel, After Drowning, 
Valerie Mills-Milde, has mined 
new territory in a Canadian setting 
we know little about with a cast of 
characters that will stay with the 
reader long after finishing the book. 
We learn about the formerly thriving 
fishing industry on Lake Erie, now 
virtually wiped out by zebra mussels, 
and the impact on the lake and its sur-
rounding villages through the story 
of one family. Pen and her daughter, 
Maddie, have returned to Port to stay 
with her mother and stepfather while 
Pen sorts out the problems with her 
marriage. While sunning and playing 
on the beach with her daughter, she 
witness the drowning of a develop-
mentally challenged young man who 
is on an outing with a group from 
his residential treatment centre. This 
drowning triggers memories, which 
set Pen on a course of self-examina-
tion and ultimately, of release from 
the constraints and insecurity she has 
felt all her life.
Pen can trace a marked shift in 
her life from the day that her adored 
father drowned on his fishing boat 
when she was ten. Was it an accident 
or a suicide? Shortly after that, her 
older brother, Keaton, also disap-
peared from her life after a boat he 
was working on was set on fire. With 
an alcoholic mother who has taken 
into her home the man with whom 
she had been having an affair before 
her husband’s death, Pen couldn’t 
wait to escape and escape she did.
Now she is back and has to con-
front her self-imposed separation 
from her kind, loving husband Jeff. 
The death of her father has left a 


English

After Drowning

Weston, Joanna M.

VOLUME 31, NUMBERS 1,2 93
for Food Sovereignty.” Feminist 
Economics 13.1 (2007): 87-93. 
Print. 
Patil, Vrushali “Transnational Fe-
minism in Sociology: Articu-
lations, Agendas, Debates.” Socio-
logy Compass 5.7 (2011): 540-550. 
Print. 
Perry, Keisha-Khan. Black Women 
Against the Land Grab: The Fight for 
Racial Justice in Brazil. Minneapolis: 
University of Minnesota Press, 
2013. Print. 
Razack, Sherene. “‘Your Place or 
Mine’? Transnational Feminist 
Col l abora t ion .”Ant i -Rac i s t 
Feminism: Critical Race and Gen-
der Studies. Eds. A. Calliste and 
G. Sefa Dei. Halifax: Fernwood, 
2000. 39-54. 
Roces, Mina. “Asian Feminism: 
Women’s Movements from the 
Asian Perspective.” Women’s Move-
ments in Asia: Feminism and 
Transnational Activism. Eds. Mina 
Roces and Louise Edwards. New 
York: Routledge, 2010. Print. 
Rosset, Peter. “Agrarian Reform and 
Food Sovereignty: An Alternative 
Model for the Rural World.” 
Rural Social Movements in Latin 
America: Organizing for Sustainable 
Livelihoods. Eds. Carmen Deere, 
Carmen and Frederick Royce. 
Gainesville: University Press of 
Florida, 2009.
Sachs, Carolyn. Gendered Fields: 
Rural Women, Agriculture and 
Environment. Boulder, Colorado: 
Westview Press, 1996. Print. 
Sachs, Carolyn and Margaret Alston. 
“Global Shifts, Sedimentations, 
and Imaginaries: An Introduction 
to the Special Issues on Women and 
Agriculture.” Signs 35.2 (2010): 
277-287. Print.  
Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: Women 
Ecology and Development. London: 
Zed Books, 1989. Print. 
Schroeder, Kathleen. “Feminist 
Examination of Community Kit-
chen in Peru and Bolivia.” Taking 
Food Public: Redefining Foodways 
in a Changing World. Eds. Psyche 
Williams and Carole Counihan. 
New York: Routledge, 2010. 510-
601. Print. 
Turner, Terisa, Leigh S. Brownhill, and 
Wahu Kaara. “Gender Relations 
and Sustainable Agriculture: Rural 
Women’s Resistance to Structural 
Adjustment in Kenya.” Canadian 
Woman Studies/les cahiers de la 
femme 17.2 (1997): 8887-8941.
Print. 
Vargas, Virginia. “Feminism, 
Globalization and the Global 
Justice and Solidarity Movement.” 
Cultural Studies 17.6 (2003): 905-
20. Print. 
JOANNA M. 
WESTON
That Birthday Night
I was born in a backwoods
hospital on a day between
Thursday and Friday
a nothing time
that I caught in my teeth
held to the hard parts
of being female
against a tide of violence
and a rising smell of guns
in the air until I wiped
it clean with the dust
of desert sand
and made fireworks
from bed sheets to hang
banner high on signal hills
while my mother curled
her body into the question
of my existence
Joanna M. Weston has a middle-
reader, Frame and The McGuire, 
published by Tradewind Books. 
Inanna Publications published her 
poetry collection, A Bedroom of 
Searchlights.
INANNA PUBLICATIONS
celebrating 38 years of 
feminist publishing
Committed to conserving a space for diverse feminist 
voices and to publishing book, particularly by fresh, new 
Canadian voices, that are intellectually rigorous, speak to 
women’s hearts, and tell truths about the lives of a broad 
diversity of women.
because #FemLitCan change the world
www.inanna.ca
Smart books for people who want to read and 
think about real women’s lives.


That Birthday Night

Kemp, Penn

VOLUME 31, NUMBERS 1,2 125
i
Age is the phase for integration as we enter
the violet sphere, embracing shadows in
whatever form they appear, welcoming all.
We wear our lives on our faces, to be read.
We have stood in bright glittering sunshine
long enough. We have given to the world
what the wor(l)d required. Now we inquire
what we ourselves need to feel complete.
We enter understanding, standing under all
we have done, all we are. We rest in the full
spectrum of fulfillment, scanning the span of
a moment’s totality. Time out of time expands
to include our whole life, with its possibilities
realized or still potential, yet to be enacted,
extended to the rest remaining us, doubling
to manifest or stay outstanding as life allows.
Now is when to remember just who we entered
this world to become. To gather, to recollect, to
recall, to weave into a basket of plenty and pass
our basket of us as bequest on, nest for the next.
None of our history is lost. It lives in the present
as presence. We are the legacy we leave and
that which we’ve received, stretching back over
generations. We hold in our palms the prints
of past, present and unknown epochs to come.
What brings us to wisdom, this transmission
of all we are? Our grandchildren might hear
what our offspring may not yet have learned.
For our wisdom to ripen, we need shelter, a
place that respects us so we may continue
to live the love that is antidote to fear, free
of want. Where we can reflect upon, reflect
back gleams of insight gleaned from living
well, unhampered. May we listen to our body.
Despite the indignities our flesh is heir to, we
attend to aches in organs hitherto unknown.
ii
Now we understand why old women walk as
they do, not from choice, but because knees
don’t bend and ankles tend to give way. We
see our mothers in the mirror and marvel at
the flight of time, knowing that inside we feel
thirty or forty max. on good days. We know
the limits our younger selves blithely ignored
growing up, growing over the lump in our heart.
As we enter elderhood, may we burn up rather
than rust away till we are entirely retread, ready
for whatever awaits. Retired, may we try again
treating ourselves as well we need be treated.
May our inner weather be sun-dappled no matter
what. May we recognize in the mirror the other
that we were, as we are. May we elders be seen
as lineage-holders, holding that mirror for the 
next
generation down the line and on. May we be
heard. May our histories be recalled. May we all
remember the right role of elders: to listen, to be 
heard, to be held in respect. To hold on. To let go. 
To be held.
Poet, performer and playwright Penn Kemp is the League 
of Canadian Poets Life Member and their Spoken Word 
Artist of 2015. Her latest works are Barbaric Cultural 
Practice, a collection of poetry from Quattro Books, and 
two anthologies edited for the Feminist Caucus Archives 
of the League of Poets: Performing Women and Women 
and Multimedia.
PENN KEMP
The Crone’s Double Vision


The Crone's Double Vision

Joseph, Clara A. B.

64 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
Manitoba Status of Women. Ho-
nouring Our Gifts: Celebrating the 
Contributions of Aboriginal Women 
in Manitoba. 2011. Web. 
McCall, S. “My Story Is a Gift: The 
Royal Commission on Aboriginal 
Peoples and the Politics of 
Reconciliation.” Chapter 4. First 
Person Plural: Aboriginal Storytelling 
and the Ethics of Collaborative 
Authorship. Vancouver: University 
of British Columbia Press, 2011. 
109-136. Print.
McLeod, N. Cree Narrative Memory: 
From Treaties to Contemporary 
Times. Saskatoon: Purich Pub-
lishing, 2007. Print.
Menard, A. “The Halfbreed Blues.” 
The Velvet Devil. Velvet & Hawk 
Productions. 2000. cd.
Michell, H. “Nehithawak of Reindeer 
Lake,  Canada: Worldview, 
Epistemology and Relationships 
with the Natural World.” Australian 
Journal of Indigenous Education 34 
(2005): 33-43. Print. 
Mihko kihêw iskwêw—Red Eagle 
Woman. “Medicine Wheel 
Teachings.” Elder presentation 
for (Northern Teacher Education 
Program–nortep). La Ronge, 
Saskatchewan, 15 March 2010. 
Naytowhow, J. in Faith, E. Seeking. 
“‘Mamatowisowin’ to Create an 
Engaging Social Policy Class for 
Aboriginal Students.” First Peoples 
Child & Family Review 3.4 (2007): 
24. Print.
Nickels, B. “Review of Cree 
Narrative Memory: From Treaties 
to Contemporary Times.” Great 
Plains Quarterly (Spring 2009): 
153-155. Print. 
O’Rilly-Scanlon, C. Crowe, and 
A. Weenie. “Pathways to Un-
derstanding: Wahkohtowin as a 
Research Methodology. McGill 
Journal of Education 39.2 (2004): 
29-44. Print.
Sandlos, J. “Not Wanted in the 
Boundary: The Expulsion of the 
Keeseekoowenin Ojibway Band 
from Riding Mountain National 
Park.” The Canadian Historical 
Review  89.2 (June 2008): 189-
221. Print. 
Saul, J. R. A Fair Country: Telling 
Truths about Canada. Toronto: 
Viking Canada. 2008. Print.
Senehi, J. “Constructive Storytelling: 
A Peace Process.” Peace and Conflict 
Studies 9.2 (2002): 41-63. Print.
Sinclair, M. Education: Cause and 
Solution. The Manitoba Teacher. 
December  2014: 6-10. Web. 
Truth and Reconciliation Commisison 
of Canada (trc). Honouring the 
Truth, Reconciling for the Future. 
Summary of the Final Report 
of the Truth and Reconciliation 
Commission of Canada, 2015. 
Web.
Venne, S. “Understanding Treaty 
6: An Indigenous Perspective.” 
Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in 
Canada. Ed. M. Asch. Vancouver: 
University of British Columbia 
Press. 2002. 173-207. Print.
Westra, L. “Environmental Racism 
and the First Nations of Canada: 
Terrorism at Oka.” Journal of Social 
Philosophy 30.1 (1999): 103-124. 
Print.
Westra, Laura. Environmental Justice 
and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: 
International and Domestic Legal 
Perspectives. London: Earthscan. 
2008. Print.
Wilson, A. “Idle No More: A 
Revolutionary Love Song.” The 
Winter We Danced: Voices from the 
Past, Present and Future of the Idle 
No More Movement. Eds. Kino-
nda-niimi Collective. Winnipeg, 
Manitoba: arp Books, 2014. Print.
CLARA A. B. JOSEPH
Hardboiled Egg
I’ve never tasted
boiled egg so good
as from your hands
that still morning at ten
when I was just about to leave
and two suitcases stood
large and locked
for the taxi
the knapsack still on my back
holding a face-towel
the poisoned bible
a wallet and a toothbrush
a tube of paste
a tongue-cleaner
you had it ready
unshelled and warm
at the tip of a thumb and two 
fingers
as if you’d ordered the hen
to lay so well ahead
for you to just pluck
the warmth from the hay
the yoke especially made
for me so smooth
oh so round
even the smell oh
so perfect
it is a pity
just to bite and break
such wholesomeness
and you in that posture
of letting go
Clara A. B. Joseph is Associate 
Professor of English at the University 
of Calgary. Her poems have appeared 
in journals such as the Toronto Review, 
Mother Earth International, Canadian 
Woman Studies and the Journal of 
Postcolonial Writing. Her first book 
of poetry, The Face of the Other, is 
forthcoming with ip Publishing, 
Brisbane, Australia.


Hardboiled Egg

Martonfi, Ilona

84 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME
Urueña, C., C. Cifuentes, D. 
Castañeda, et al. “Petiveria alliacea 
Extracts Uses Multiple Mechanisms 
to Inhibit Growth of Human and 
Mouse Tumoral Cells.” bmc 
Complement Alternative Medicine 
(Nov. 18, 2008): 8-60. Print.
Whittaker, J. A., M. Smikle, E. 
N. Barton, and Y. A. Bailey-
Shaw. “Immunological Evidence 
Supporting the Use of Extracts 
from Boehmeria Jamaicensis Urb 
for Treating the Common Cold 
and Sinus Infection.” West Indian 
Medical Journal 56 (2007): 487-
90. Print.
Williams, Lawrence, et al. “A 
Critical Review of the Therapeutic 
Potential of Dibenzyl Trisulphide 
Isolated from Petiveria alliacea 
L (Guinea hen weed, anamu).” 
West Indian Medical Journal 56.1 
(2007): 17-23. Print.
Wilson, M. R. A Highland Maya 
People and their Habitat; The 
Natural History, Demography, and 
Economy of the K’ekchi. Doctoral 
dissertation, University of Oregon, 
1972. Print.
World Health Organization (who). 
The Global Family Planning 
Revolution: 30 Years. Geneva: 
who, 2010.
World Health Organization (who). 
The Global Family Planning 
Revolution: 35 Years. Geneva: 
who, 2015.
World Health Organization (who). 
who Expanded Program Of 
Research, Development And Research 
Training In Human Reproduction. 
Task Force on Indigenous Plants 
for Fertility Regulation. Geneva: 
who, 1977.
ILONA MARTONFI
The girl by the sea
When you see me
swim in the Aegean sea
my name is Marisa.
Hard armpit lumps
burst and crust over
the size of brown-purple figs.
Undiagnosed lung sarcoidosis —
scar granulomas.
White sand Varkiza beach.
Here is a photo of us:
I am the girl in the blue sundress,
Plaka tavern, Old Athens, 1987 .
Yes, I get very tired.
Five-week family vacation.
My fiancé back home.
Standing in line with our bags,
Paris, Gare Montparnasse:
I don’t remember fainting.
Mama slapping my face, calling my name.
Seven-hour transatlantic flight.
Yes, I get very tired.
I cough and wheeze.
Melancholia. Anxiety disorder.
Here is a photo of us:
silver champagne glasses. 
a diamond ring.
I come to the marriage with my own house and linen.
Pearl necklace, black velvet dress.
The eldest daughter.
Two sisters, one brother.
You ask, do I remember 
love words —
Mother’s green plastic knitting needles.
Papa beating mama.
 My name is Marisa.
I am the girl with
the wooden easel, gessoed canvas.
Tubes of oil, boar bristle brushes.
Ilona Martonfi is the author of three poetry books, Blue Poppy (Coracle 
Press, 2009), Black Grass (Broken Rules Press, 2012), and The Snow 
Kimono (Inanna, 2015). Ilona has published in Vallum, Accenti, The 
Fiddlhead, and Serai. She is the founder/producer of The Yellow Door 
and Visual Arts Centre Readings, and the co-founder of Lovers and Oth-
ers. She is also the recipient of the qwf 2010 Community Award.


The girl by the sea

Rourke, Ceo

VOLUME 31, NUMBERS 1,2 19
Spretnak, Charlene. “Earthbody and Personal Body as 
Sacred.” Ecofeminism and the Sacred. Ed. Carol Adams. 
New York: Continuum, 1995: 261-280.Print.
Starhawk. “Feminist, Earth-based Spirituality and 
Ecofeminism.” Healing the Wounds. Ed. Judith Plant. 
Toronto: Between the Lines, 1989. 174-185. Print.
Starhawk. The Earth Path. New York: Harper One, 2004.
“The Work That Reconnects.” Web.
Thich Nhat Hanh. “Wake Up to the Revolution.” Web. 
April 8, 2015.
Watts, June. “Earth Love” Sacred Circle Dance Workshop. 
Calgary, August, 2015.
Wells, Rosalie and Ronnie Joy Leah. Study Guide: Women’s 
and Gender Studies 333: “Goddess Mythology, Women’s 
Spirituality and Ecofeminism.” Athabasca University, 
Rev. 2010. Print.
Williams, Marjorie Johnson and Nadjiwon Johnson. 
“Minobimaatisiiwin – We Are to Care for Her.” Sweeping 
the Earth: Women Taking Action for a Healthy Planet. 
Ed. Miriam Wyman. Charlottetown: Gynergy Books, 
1999. 251-257.
CEO ROURKE
Plato on Vacation
I took the kids to Horne Lake
 and there he was
spelunking with tourists
 in a ‘Save-the-Planet’ t-shirt
intense eyes below a headlamp
 searching dark damp recesses
between stalagmites
 for some long lost idea
of Beauty
 connected to Earth
not the ephemeral form
 but the thing itself
buried in soil
 rooted and living
Naturalist/poet, Ceo Rourke is an award winning writer 
and a graduate of Vancouver Island University. Widely 
published in anthologies and literary journals, Ceo 
writes from a small island cabin, inspired by marine 
life, coastal storms, and the tenacity of trees.
KATERINA FRETWELL
Effluvium
Yet, when 19 countries agreed … to establish the 
Millennium Development Goal … sanitation was 
initially left out.
—Jermy Keehn, “The Toilet Papers,”
The Walrus Vol.11
Joshed I’d eulogize the many-foliate
toilets in my travels — blooming
dorm-like squats at Ephesus
pissoirs chez Paris, loo of Waterloo
urine streams at Badaling
two-seater on my honeymoon
but sanitation is a serious matter
2.5 billion, a quarter of us
lack safe dumping grounds
fertilizing field, forest, potable water
with fecal fungi. Diarrhoea culls
800 million children every year.
We rush to invent affordable
portable, waterless water closets
for World Toilet Day — finally
our effluent forms the agenda.
On tour, hurtling by shacks
flowering on a dump, I begged
Halt! Bus stopped for me, cresting
on a hilltop, I crapped in Crete.
Fecal transplants cured Crohn’s
in a wraith-like child — but the Lab
growing healthy microbes was forced
to shut down — microbes not sterile.
Katerina Vaughan Fretwell’s eighth poetry book, which 
includes her arrt, Dancing on a Pin, was published by 
Inanna Publications in 2015. Five of the poems placed as 
“runner-up” in subTerrain’s Outsider Poetry Contest, 
2015. Her seventh book, Class Acts, also published by 
Inanna in 2013, was included in Kerry Clare’s Most 
Important Books of 2013: Poetry on the online 49th Shelf. 
She lives in Seguin, Ontario.


Not a member yet