Settler colonial violence is gendered: Emily Grafton, Amber Fletcher, ‘Settler Colonial Saskatchewan and Gender based Violence Against Indigenous Women’, Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, 12, 2, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonial violence is gendered: Emily Grafton, Amber Fletcher, ‘Settler Colonial Saskatchewan and Gender based Violence Against Indigenous Women’, Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, 12, 2, 2025

04Jan26

Abstract: Women and gender nonconforming people living in Saskatchewan, Canada, face staggeringly high rates of gender-based violence (GBV). These rates are disproportionately experienced by Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit or gender-queer individuals, and can be attributed to both historical and ongoing settler colonial practices. This article provides a structural analysis linking GBV against women and gender nonconforming people to the province’s settler colonial politics. Drawing together theoretical and empirical sources, we provide a conceptual synthesis that connects macro-level political and sociocultural ideologies to past and present colonial events. We analyze relevant legislation, policy, provincial budgets, peer-reviewed scholarship, industry-related reports, and media documents. As such, this article argues that GBV perpetrated against Indigenous women is central to settler colonial violence, enabling the settler state to foster settler colonial expansion and Indigenous dispossession, which are power imbalances in urgent need of redistribution. These settler colonial mechanics are readily observable in Saskatchewan, a province at the forefront of settler colonial development in Canada, partly through these disproportionate GBV rates.

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