The politics of knowledge, positionality and power: The ‘inclusivity’ of Indigenous women in peacemaking in Turtle Island (North America)

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the narrative agency of Indigenous women producing knowledge on peace and conflict resolution in Turtle Island (an Indigenous term for North America). The concept of ‘inclusive peace’ is problematized as a normative imperative promoted by the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda to ensure greater meaningful inclusion of women in peace processes. This agenda is promoted primarily in armed conflicts territorially located in the Global South, eliding structural conflict, oppression and ongoing forms of colonialism in the Global North. Our argument is two-fold. First, the chapter argues that this is a by-product of the production of knowledge about what contexts count as ‘conflict’ and where ‘inclusive peace’ is promoted (and where it is not). Turtle Island is named as a settler-colonial context and as a site of conflict rather than a so-called peaceful society. Second, we argue that Indigenous women have always possessed narrative epistemic agency and epistemic power and through their roles in social movements such as Idle No More and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2SLGBTQQIA are reclaiming epistemic power despite their erasure within the ‘global’ WPS agenda.