Elana Wilson

Bio: Elana Wilson is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: White (horse). The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 246 citations.

Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy

Abstract: The article explores two intertwined ideas: that the United States is a settler colonial nation-state and that settler colonialism has been and continues to be a gendered process. The article engages Native feminist theories to excavate the deep connections between settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy, highlighting five central challenges that Native feminist theories pose to gender and women’s studies. From problematizing settler colonialism and its intersections to questioning academic participation in Indigenous dispossession, responding to these challenges requires a significant departure from how gender and women’s studies is regularly understood and taught. Too often, the consideration of Indigenous peoples remains rooted in understanding colonialism as an historical point in time away from which our society has progressed. Centering settler colonialism within gender and women’s studies instead exposes the still-existing structure of settler colonialism and its powerful effects on Indigenous peoples and settlers. Taking as its audience practitioners of both “whitestream” and other feminisms and writing in conversation with a long history of Native feminist theorizing, the article offers critical suggestions for the meaningful engagement of Native feminisms. Overall, it aims to persuade readers that attending to the links between heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism is intellectually and politically imperative for all peoples living within settler colonial contexts.

`A Darker Shade of Pale?' Whiteness, the Middle Classes and Multi-Ethnic Inner City Schooling:

Abstract: Drawing on data from interviews with 63 London-based families, this article argues that there are difficult and uncomfortable issues around whiteness in multi-ethnic contexts. Even those parents, such as the ones in our sample, who actively choose ethnically diverse comprehensive schools appear to remain trapped in white privilege despite their political and moral sentiments. This is a complicated question of value; of having value, finding value in, getting value from, and adding value. Even those white middle classes committed to multi-ethnic schooling face the perils of middle-class acquisitiveness, extracting value from, as they find value in, their multi-ethnic `other'. In such processes of generating use and exchange value a majority of both the white working classes and the black working classes, those who are perceived not to share white middle-class values, are residualized and positioned as excessive. Symbolically, they come to represent the abject `other' of no value.

Everyday Decolonization: Living a Decolonizing Queer Politics

Abstract: This article is a joint exploration of what decolonization looks like in everyday interactions within our partnerships, families, and friendships on unceded Coast Salish territories. Stories from the authors--two cisgender queer women, one of whom is Indigenous and one of whom is a White settler--highlight intimate practices of allyship and decolonization that are often made invisible when activism is seen as only taking place in "public" spaces such as community coalitions. The tensions and possibilities within these intimate geographies of allyship comprise a decolonial queer praxis that is materialized in the spatial relations of our homes and families.

Systematic Gender Violence and the Rule of Law: Aboriginal Communities in Australia and Post-War Liberia

Abstract: The gender-agenda is borderless. Arguably, legal justice for Indigenous girls and women survivors of violence is unfair, inequitable, and sometimes arbitrary. Systematic violence against girls and women pervades cultures and societies; operates at three main levels: institution and state, structural and cultural, and community and individual; and manifests in myriad shapes, forms and categories. Systematic violence in this research comprises historical, colonial and contemporary aspects of violence and its impact on Indigenous girls and women. Unlike comparative studies, this research is founded on heuristic arguments derived from validating the formation, establishment and continuity of the voices of Indigenous peoples in Liberia and Australia. While many studies isolate ‘gender-based violence’ and the ‘rule of law’ in separate contexts, none has explored the extent to which the Western concept of the rule of law impacts systematic violence against Indigenous girls and women in Australia and post-war Liberia. The research assesses the efficacy of the ‘rule of law’ in dispensing justice to Indigenous girls and women who have suffered systematic gender-based violence. The scope of the research demands a comprehensive and complex systematic empirical approach that draws on the principles of phenomenology, community-based participatory research, and feminist and Indigenous methods. The study adopts an interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach informed by theories of decolonization, feminist jurisprudence, intersectionality, critical legal/race studies, and social determinants of health. Data is drawn from case law, secondary data, empirical evidence, textual/content analysis, electronic mailing and informal participant observation. Over a period of two years, a survey of 231 social service providers working with Indigenous girls and women; in-depth interviews with 29 Indigenous Women Advocates; and 22 informal email exchanges with male colleagues were conducted in both Australia and Liberia. Statistical analyses were carried out on records of 127 708 convicts to Australia; 14 996 former slave returnees to Liberia; 2701 sexual and gender-based violence cases reported to the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection in Liberia; seven case files from the Sexual and Gender-based Crimes Unit in Liberia; and 1200 interview entries from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children in Australia. This analysis of historical documents, jurisprudence and case studies triangulates a philosophical inquiry intended to migrate issues of violence against Indigenous girls and women from the margins of complex socio-legal structures towards the core of Western-centric perspectives, such as the rule of law. Situated between dominant academic conventions and resistance, the research provokes readers to consider ontological, epistemological and ethical arguments regarding access to justice outcomes for Indigenous girls and women. Contrary to the research hypothesis and despite socioeconomic differences between Australia and Liberia, findings show that: although the principle of the rule of law is an emancipatory tool for justice and redress generally, it can also be an apparatus for persistent systematic violence against Indigenous girls and women. Furthermore, the intersection of colonial history, race, gender, class and social status exacerbates the ongoing perpetration of institutional/state, structural/cultural and interpersonal/community violence against Indigenous girls and women. In conclusion, the research recommends adopting a holistic approach to educating girls and women and encouraging boys and men to participate equally in the gender justice agenda, to ensure justice for Indigenous girls and women. The research also suggests incorporating diverse and comprehensive conceptual and methodological frameworks into further research. Finally, throughout the work, this dissertation attempts to give agency to Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing justice.

Towards the 'tangible unknown': Decolonization and the Indigenous future

Abstract: On the occasion of the inaugural issue of Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, we examine the many contradictions, contestations and possible pathways to decolonization. In working to explore the many themes that the articles in this issue bring forth, we recognize that, despite our certainty that decolonization centers Indigenous methods, peoples, and lands, the future is a ‘tangible unknown’, a constant (re)negotiating of power, place, identity and sovereignty. In these contestations, decolonization and Indigeneity are not merely reactionary nor in a binary relationship with colonial power. Decolonization is indeed oppositional to colonial ways of thinking and acting but demands an Indigenous starting point and an articulation of what decolonization means for Indigenous peoples around the globe. This editorial works towards the possibility of a global Indigenous movement that strengthens and supports local moments for decolonization, and does so by exploring some of the many layers and questions that this necessarily entails.