You are just being nosey about our lives: Ethical Listening as Indigenous Adolescent Girls Tell Their Stories

• In Event: Volatile Bodies and Boundaries: Ethical Dilemmas in Teaching and Research

Abstract

Purposes or Objectives:
The pervasiveness and intensity of violence in the lives of Indigenous women and girls has been extensively documented. Sexual assault, physical abuse, and childhood sexual abuse, are documented at higher levels amongst Indigenous girls and women than the rest of the Canadian population. It is not surprising then that Indigenous adolescent girls are particularly disadvantaged in terms of emotional and behavioral adjustment and that they have relatively high rates of antisocial behaviors, and internalizing challenges. Wanting to accomplish change in our ways of knowing about and responding to the experiences of Indigenous girls, in this paper I ask what purpose might their anger and aggression serve, what are the girls struggling to accomplish with and through their aggressive actions and how can school communities respond to the needs of Indigenous adolescent girls?

Theoretical Framework:
This study originated at a time when there was increasing attention to girlhood aggression in the media, popular culture, academic theorizing and research. The literature that emerged during the 1990's contributed to the construction of a discourse on "aggressive girls" that in many ways served to pathologize them. Drawing on the work of critical feminist scholarship (Brown, 1998; Gonick, 2004; Ringrose, 2006) I develop a contextual definition of aggression as a strategy. Rather than pathologizing or criminalizing their aggression, I work at seeing what the girls want to accomplish, and hear their expressions of anger as a communicative act, an act of resistance, an act of self-protection, an active search for attention to that which is unbearable in their lives.

Methods of Inquiry:
Data informing this paper is drawn from a larger research project titled Talking Back: Aboriginal Girls Telling Their Stories. Conscious of the oppressive ways in which research activity was done on and done to Indigenous peoples the Talking Back project was informed by decolonizing, feminist and critical methodologies.

Data Sources:
I focus on the interviews of four girls. The case study approach allows for a detailed telling of each girl’s story creating the possibility for readers to hear individual voices. When I received the first set of transcribed interviews (a subset of 9), I read through all 9 and chose four based on the depth and clarity of the girl's responses.

Results:
Drawing on these interviews, I argue that while the girls navigate a world in which they are in multiple ways confronted by and implicated in violence and aggression primarily they are concerned with participating in experiences and cultivating relationships that affirm their sense of themselves as worthy beings.

Scholarly Significance:
Aboriginal people know that improving our life experiences is a complex and daunting task and those of us working in support of transformation know that if we are to succeed we must involve our children and youth. The girls who participated in the Talking Back project made a significant contribution to the work. Their stories provide understanding and specific actions required to accomplish change.

Author

• Susan Dion, York University