Julia Siepak

Since the early colonial times, Indigenous women in Canada have experienced systemic oppression under settler colonialism. Growing activism exposing the extent of violence against Indigenous women, manifested in movements like Idle No More and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), profoundly impacts dominant settler sensibilities. Numerous calls for social justice in that respect prompted Justin Trudeau’s government to conduct a nation-wide inquiry into the problem of MMIWG (2019). Hence, it seems that we are witnessing an important moment for the acknowledgment of Indigenous women’s collective cultural traumas by the dominant settler Canadian society. Literary representations of First Nations and Métis women’s issues constitute an important part of the efforts to voice traumatic experiences, acknowledge them, and provide space for reconciliation. This paper aims to explore the poetics of space emerging from The Break (2016) penned by Katherena Vermette (Métis). Vermette’s debut novel centers at the sexual abuse of a teenage Indigenous girl, Emily, at the hands of her female coeval and, therefore, addresses the problems of collateral violence and intergenerational trauma⸺important contemporary issues for Indigenous communities in Canada. The analysis concentrates on the spaces of degeneration generated by settler colonial land politics, assimilation policies and Canadian institutions that dehumanize and criminalize Indigenous women’s bodies as represented in The Break. Moreover, the paper directs attention to Vermette’s strategies of transgressing these imposed degenerate spaces in her narrative. The sites of resurgence that demonstrate Indigenous women’s sovereignty propose alternative frameworks for approaching the ubiquitous violence against First Nations and Métis women and girls. The discussion will be framed within contemporary Indigenous feminist theoretical orientations, including such voices as Andrea Smith, Robyn Bourgeois, and Suzanne Methot.