Settler colonialism, anti-colonial theory, and “indigenized” prisons for Indigenous women

Abstract

Indigenous women are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and are now considered the fastest growing federal inmate population within the country. While such trends are not new and have been the subject of much scholarly debate, its growing severity has had lethal implications for many Indigenous women. Previous government efforts attempted to remedy this overrepresentation by focusing on integrating Indigenous traditions and culture within the criminal justice system through several prison and institutional reforms. Shifting away from mainstream criminological scholarship, this chapter draws upon anti-colonial theories to explore the criminal justice system’s ongoing emphasis on Indigenous “tradition and cultures as the primary solution” to Indigenous overrepresentation in the criminal justice system. In this sense, Canada’s efforts to “Indigenize” prison systems reifies the centuries-old “Indian Problem” by constructing Indigenous women’s criminalization as “cultural” problems, which ignores how systemic discrimination, racism, and settler colonial violence, both inside and outside of prisons, contributes to Indigenous women’s imprisonment.