BJSW Advance Access originally published online on October 31, 2006
British Journal of Social Work 2008 38(2):340-361; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcl335
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Painting the Prison ‘Red’: Constructing and Experiencing Aboriginal Identities in Prison
Joane Martel has recently integrated the School of Social Work at Université Laval (Québec, Canada) after a ten-year professorship in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta (Canada). Prior to her academic career, Joane Martel worked in various Criminal justice agencies such as probation, courts and youth group homes. Her research interests focus on punishment regimes as well as on the place of women in normative systems, mainly within the Criminal justice process.
Renée Brassard is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Université Laval (Québec, Canada), as well as a researcher at the International Center for Comparative Criminology of Université de Montréal. Dr. Brassard’s research focuses on issues of Aboriginal justice, violence against Aboriginal women and poverty. She has been nominated recently for the Governor General of Canada’ Academic Gold Medal for her doctoral research on the socio-penal trajectories of Aboriginal women living in Québec.
Correspondence to Joane Martel, Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Social Work, Pavillon Charles-de Koninck, Room 5444, Université Laval, Québec, QC, Canada G1K 7P4. E-mail: joane.martel{at}svs.ulaval.ca
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Abstract |
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Dominant Western paradigms of the social work profession have largely failed to integrate Aboriginal traditional knowledges and practices on healing and helping. This paper contributes to the promotion of a context-based approach to social work in prison by examining Aboriginality from both institutional and individual points of view. Drawing on documentary analyses and interviews with Aboriginal women prisoners in Canada, the paper sheds light on the prison’s endorsement of a hegemonic vision of Aboriginality, and on social work practitioners’ inclination to adhere to it. Conversely, we argue that Aboriginal women prisoners negotiate their passage into prison through Aboriginal self-identification configurations that often have little in common with the prison’s vision of Aboriginality. Service delivery in prison may be enhanced by considering individual modes of resisting identity-based oppression in prison, and by challenging prisons’ master narrative on Aboriginality.
Keywords: prisons, ethnicity, women