Asserting Coast Salish authority through Si'em Slheni'

Colonization within Indigenous territories has impacted Indigenous governance structures and women in leadership in different ways. In order to best understand the violence, displacement and oppression that Coast Salish women face today we need to focus on the ways that the state has attacked the powerful role that si´em slheni´ (honoured and respected woman) held within her socio-political societies prior to contact. I use an historical institutional analysis to draw out the ways that history has impacted Coast Salish people. I also utilize Diane Million’s Felt Theory (2008) by weaving Coast Salish women’s stories, experiences, and understandings of colonization within their own ancestral territories. The research question at hand is: How have Coast Salish si´em slhunlhéni´ (honoured and respected women) been impacted due to colonization historically and how are these impacts still affecting our slhunlhéni´ and our communities today? In asking this question, I hope to urge the reader to engage a territorially-based approach in dealing with the violence and displacement that Indigenous women in Canada face today. I aim to do so by illustrating what an approach based in Coast Salish history and governance would look like. I argue that if we do not choose to take up a territorial based approach, we are only furthering the erasure and silencing of Indigenous womanhood denying its resurgence. I highlight how settler statecraft has played out in Coast Salish territory and explore the myriad of ways that racist ideologies and colonial violence have taken shape within Coast Salish territories. To do so, I examine the different ways that the state has attempted to control and pathologize coastal people and illustrate the shift that has occurred in moving from Coast Salish economies to capitalism. Ultimately, I demonstrate the multi-faceted approach taken by legislative discrimination that was fueled by ideological racism that the settler colonial project depends upon in order to maintain control over Indigenous lands, waters, and people. By examining these issues, I highlight how the settler project was able to weaken slhunlhéni´ role and therefore firmly establish itself within Coast Salish territories Finally, I turn to present day reality in Coast Salish territory and argue that while there are ways the state, settlers and Indigenous people living within Coast Salish territories are attempting to address the wrongs of colonization, Coast Salish women’s voices and roles are being left out of decolonial discourse and actions. In order to liberate Coast Salish women, we need to turn back to our ancestral ways and for those who are not a descendant to these territories one must work to understand what your responsibility is to the local people and women of these lands. In this way, centering a territorially based approach to governance in all acts of resurgence and decolonial action allows for Coast Salish women to maintain authority, therefore empowering these women. Centering local laws and governance will center Indigenous women, lifting them from the displaced positions they find themselves in today.

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