Complex Alliances: A Community- and Institution-Based Project for Educating Justice-Involved Women

Abstract

In this article, we report on work to establish educational initiatives in the face of the unevenness of power in institutions of justice and education. We explore literacy and social co-operative training options for justice-involved women, caught in a vicious cycle leading back to prison. Despite responding to a variety of calls for decolonization and democratization, institutions of justice and education have been resistant to non-Eurocentric frameworks and to community engagement. As non-Aboriginal researchers and educators at the University of Winnipeg, we have observed the needs of a particularly vulnerable population. The rapidly growing numbers of incarcerated Aboriginal women are often victim- offenders yet society continues to deal with incarcerated women and those transitioning from prison as “risks” rather than attempting to consider their need for safety. Our paper presents work we have done in community and institutional settings to cultivate Indigenous/non-Indigenous partnerships and develop our role as interactive partners rather than more conventionally as teachers or advisors. We summarize some of our successes and challenges emphasizing wider trends in teaching multiple literacies and employing a more self-reflective approach in both research and education. We describe collaborative work at Eagle Women Lodge, a women’s transition residence, and at the Women’s Correctional Centre, Headingley, aimed at curbing the inequities that affect criminalized women (and their families) directly, and all of us in the wider community indirectly. We offer this narrative as a model of a community-based approach to alliance-building and cross-cultural understanding.