Picturing the Margins:Exploring the Visual Terrain in

Aboriginal Women’s Health Through Photovoice Jennifer Poudrier, Department of Sociology, University of Saskatchewan Canada

Context: 2 community based research projects in Saskatchewan Canada:

1) Aboriginal women’s experiences of breast cancer survivorship

2) First Nations women’s perspectives on healthy body weight and body image.

Discussion: Aboriginal women cannot be viewed as a homogenous group. Do these images, taken outside of their community context, re-entrench neo-colonial and racialized representations?

Methodology: Informed by decolonizing theory and feminist visuality, Photovoice is used as a qualitative participatory method to enable Aboriginal women to use their own photography to: make visible their personal and community strengths and concerns; promote collective dialogue and share knowledge and reach health policy makers

Identity and Spirituality: I think my strengths came from the cultural and spiritual ceremonies they gave me the strength to deal with the

disease and having faith in Creator.

There are so many First Nation’s people, [with] different languages, different cultures. Although there’s a lot of

similarities, there’s some great differences too. We’re not all just ‘beads and feathers.’

Empowerment: [Participating in Photovoice] was was a powerful exercise. I really liked it. It helped me set some priorities, you know?...

What’s important to me.

This project can bring some of the women in the community closer. There are so many things happening on our reserve,

so there is fighting. Lets look at something that is positive and I think this [project] is something that will bring our

women closer together.

Strength and Resilience:I am a residential school survivor and come from four

generations of residential school survivors. I got a lot of beatings. I would fight back. I fought back against cancer

too.

Objectives: We aspire to interrogate and disrupt the dominant visual terrain wherein Aboriginal women are either entirely invisible or visible in disempowering ways. Where Aboriginal women hold the camera and their perspective is primary, visual imagery can reveal the colonial gaze in health care settings.

I was nice and slim here. I was happy to be dancing because its so healing for me. It is empowering for me and I do a lot of praying too.

I love soccer. This picture represents the feeling that, you know: ‘Here I am in my backyard. I am just going to make a fool of myself kicking this ball and I don’t care who sees me’

The kids give me energy even though they don’t know it. I might be exhausted after work and they say: ‘Let’s go for a walk!’ Whether they are biking or walking, we do something… So they give me energy and I think that’s pretty cool. I think I am really lucky.

Some days its so hectic, with work and looking after children and grandchildren. I don’t take the time to eat properly, to take care of myself.

The sweat lodge ceremony is a big part of my life and that’s where I did most of my healing… Anything and everything in there is safe. When that door is closed its black – there’s no color. There’s no racism. It’s really a positive experience.

I was taught that when people cut their hair, they lost a loved one. When I lost my hair, I cried. I cried. I had that braid and my husband smudged it and prayed. “You’re gonna live” he told me.

This is a tipi, where I’m standing inside. It’s a skeleton. The skins are missing, so I’m exposed. You see the past (in the tipi) and the present, with the new [First Nations] university behind. I’m trying to hide, but you can very much see that I’m an Indian.

I would have loved to see another brown face. I want [other women] to feel that they are not alone, so they know other people care about their illness. I want to pass this along to them.

References•Brooks, C., Poudrier, J., and Thomas-MacLean, R. 2008. Creating Collaborative Visions with Aboriginal Women: A PhotoVoice Project. In Doing Cross-Cultural

Research: Ethical and Methodological Perspectives, ed. Pranee Liamputtong, 193-211. New York: Springer.•Haraway D. 1999. The virtual speculum in the new world order. In Revisioning women, health, and healing, eds A Clarke and V Olesen, 49-96. New York: Routledge.•Poudrier, J, and Thomas-MacLean, R. in press. We’ve Fallen Into the Cracks: Aboriginal Women’s experiences of Breast Cancer Through Photovoice. Nursing Inquiry•Smith LT. 1999. Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London and New York: Zed Books.•Thomas-MacLean R, J Poudrier, and C Brooks. 2007 (in press). Envisioning the future with Aboriginal breast cancer survivors. Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal.•Wang C, and M A Burris.1997. Photovoice: Concept, methodology and use for participatory needs assessment. Health and Behaviour 24: 369-87.