Leisure as a Context for Justice: Experiences of Ceremony for Aboriginal Women in Prison

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the leisure experiences of Aboriginal women in a Canadian federal prison as they engaged in traditional ceremony. Conceptualized as leisure, these ceremonies were examined in the context of justice by exploring the women's resistance to oppression and loss of identity rooted in colonization. The findings of the study suggest that through ceremony, Aboriginal women's identities and understanding of being Aboriginal evolved from pain and shame to pride and connection with cultural values and traditions. Through cultural ceremonies, the women experienced liberation from a colonialized Aboriginal identity. In this process of liberation, women resisted and refocused the dominant conceptualization of justice based on white ideologies of crime and punishment, to encompass Aboriginal forms of justice, as manifest in the collective maintenance of harmony and balance.