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Many times over the last 19 years, we have each picked up the first Aboriginal women's volume of Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme. It has been a cherished edition in our bookcases. Canadian Woman Studies has been actively encouraging the writing of Aboriginal women since it first published a piece by the Mohawk Woman of Caughnawaga in the second volume of the journal, long before it was vogue to search out Indigenous work. Much time has passed and many things have changed. Many more Aboriginal women are now writing as evidenced by the submissions we received for this volume. This encourages us and brings hope.
One of the most apparent themes in this collection is the importance of living our Indigenous traditions. This message comes through whether the article is about the arts or law. This is a topic that was not as visible in the first Aboriginal women's collection. Another clear theme is that our writing is not separate from our doing. We are activists and this volume is indeed a celebration of Indigenous women activists.
These connections are perhaps at the root of our difficulty in organizing the sections for this volume. It can be challenging to categorize Indigenous work. From a holistic perspective, each of these articles could fit into any one of the four sections, and each of these sections is linked to the other. "Storytelling," for example, is activism, and each one of these articles engages storytelling as a process of sharing our knowledge and making change. Indigenous knowledges are grounded in how we live out the principle of "all my relations." Governance involves the application of Indigenous knowledges; the arts give expression to how we live our relations, and so on. This being said, we hope that readers will appreciate the categories we have chosen, in that they offer new ways to think about activism, stories, knowledge and relations.
Finally, we would like to thank all of the women at Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme who since Volume 2, No. 2, have fostered and supported the written words of Indigenous women. In particular, we would like to acknowledge and thank Luciana Ricciutelli.
Plusieurs fois au cours des dernières années chacune de nous a parcouru avec...
