Indigenous Women's Writing and the Cultural Study of Law by Cheryl Suzack

Abstract

Reviewed by: Indigenous Women's Writing and the Cultural Study of Law by Cheryl Suzack Maggie Ann Bowers INDIGENOUS WOMEN'S WRITING AND THE CULTURAL STUDY OF LAW, by Cheryl Suzack. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017. 208 pp. $27.95 paper; $27.95 ebook. The title of Cheryl Suzack's monograph Indigenous Women's Writing and the Cultural Study of Law reveals the unique content that gives this work its value: the cultural study of law in relation to and explored through indigenous women's writing. Suzack's book reminds us that any discussion of culture, social structures, gender relations, and personal identity is bound by pressures from the conflicting legal frameworks within which indigenous peoples of the Americas live. With an emphasis on the representation in fiction of the influence of legal structures upon indigenous women's lives, this study proposes "the literary as a source for imagining social transformation and community decolonization" (p. 16). While essays exist that consider colonial violence against indigenous women and the lack of legal protection as depicted in indigenous women's writing, this is the first book-length study of novels by contemporary indigenous women writers and connected legal cases. Based at the University of Toronto and published by the institution's press, Suzack adds to the large body of innovative work in contemporary intersectional feminist writing from Canada. Understandably for a monograph of indigenous studies, the scope of the study moves beyond colonial nation-state borders and across regions to include the Anishinaabe writers Louise Erdrich and Winona LaDuke, Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko, and the Métis writer Beatrice Culleton Mosionier. Suzack's chosen materials, drawn from a wide geographical area from the Southwest to the Northern Great Plains, are selected for their connectedness to specific and significant legal cases rather than for their cultural or geographical proximity. Novels by Erdrich and Silko are established works familiar to [End Page 186] non-specialist readers of indigenous writing while Mosionier and LaDuke, although well recognized in their own regions, are less internationally known and receive overdue critical attention in this study. In this sense, Suzack's text is well-constructed for both specialist scholars of indigenous studies and for those approaching the text from the context of feminist studies of literature or law. This tightly structured book is written in a clear academic style with each chapter focusing upon a single text that is read in conjunction with a particular legal case and examples highlighting an aspect of injustice for indigenous women of North America. The study is situated in a strong theoretical framework of transitional indigenous feminism aiming, as Suzack states, to reinforce "how identity is shaped by multiple sources of meaning-making—discourses of colonialism, practices of racialization, and systems of gender relations" (p. 12). In fact, the one criticism that I would level at this work is that it adheres to its theoretical framework so strongly that there is little exposition to help readers fully understand the rationale of the opposing legal positions that create the complex and conflicted discourse around the cited issues of tribal sovereignty. The selected legal cases exemplify the negative effects of gender imbalances in issues of tribal sovereignty, such as gendered access to tribal membership; lack of agency for indigenous women regarding child custody and "out-adopting"; restrictions on tribal nations to seek justice in cases with non-indigenous offenders; and judgements of land claims being made on the grounds of ancestry (blood quantum) and held in colonial records (p. 14). The repeated structure of the first three chapters provides an introduction, an examination of a case, an examination of a novel, and then a concluding analysis to draw these together. The final, shortest chapter concerns the work of Winona LaDuke, who is both the appellant in the cited case and the author of the connected creative work. For Suzack, LaDuke represents a feminist writer and activist who places community at the heart of her indigenous feminist framework, exemplifying how indigenous women's writing "creates new forms of political community" (p. 125). This study is rare in confronting taboos of gender-related issues facing indigenous women in the context of legal battles...