Their Spirits Live Within Us: Aboriginal Women in Downtown Eastside Vancouver Emerging into Visibility

Anyone passing through inner-city Vancouver on foot, on a bus, or in a car cannot help but SEE, in a literal sense, the concentration of Aboriginal people here. For most urban Canadians, and visitors from elsewhere, this is an unusual and often surprising visual experience on which they feel compelled to remark. Even so, many representations of this and other inner-city neighborhoods in Western Canada are characterized by a marked invisibility of Aboriginal people, and women in particular.' This essay describes both the construction of this invisibility in public culture, and an event that symbolizes Aboriginal women's active resistance to these acts of erasure. (Authors)

Publication Date: 
2003
Pages: 
593-606
Volume: 
27
Issue: 
3/4
Journal Name: 
American Indian Quarterly