Literary activism and violence against Native North American women: the urgency for sovereignty

The novels examined in the essay divide between those that illustrate and force recognition of the occurrence of violence against Native North American women (Mosionier), and those that also seek to find ways to dismantle the systems that create the conditions in which such violence can thrive and exist. Highway’s novel Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998) links sexualized violence against indigenous women and children to contemporary and historical colonialism. Erdrich’s The Round House includes a political proposal to reinstate tribal thinking into Native American societal structures concerning women.For Simpson, as for Highway and Erdrich, this engagement with indigenous thinking significantly counters the colonial, patriarchal attitudes that have allowed so much violence against indigenous women to go unchallenged and provides a way to begin an indigenous resurgence that includes and protects Native North American women and children.