Community and resistance in Marie Clements’ The Unnatural and Accidental Women

Abstract

ABSTRACT Examining representations of gendered violence in Marie Clements’ The Unnatural and Accidental Women as they are used for decolonizing purposes, I aim to elucidate the complexity of the linkage between colonization, violence against Indigenous women, and contemporary Indigenous women's dramatic production. Employing Clements’ play as an example, this paper contends that plays by Indigenous women do not merely memorialize colonial transgressions, but they also provide an avenue for individual and potential cultural healing by deconstructing some of the harmful ideological work performed by colonial and occasionally postcolonial misrepresentations. Dramatic texts by contemporary Indigenous women, I argue, especially those containing revisionist historical components, revive and preserve cultural memory and function in direct opposition to colonialist disparagement of Indigeneity/Métissage. So, too, do these works educate readers/spectators concerning colonial histories of violence, ultimately facilitating a process of relearning, which can lead to reconciliatory understandings thereby creating potential for collective healing.