Cree Law, Gender, and Difficult Aesthetics

In a broader book project, I detail findings about representations of gender found in public, contemporary educational resources about Cree law. I contend that Cree women are marginalized in and by the resources through two common tendencies – (1) the erasure and absence of women; and (2) women are included and valued primarily in relation to singular conceptualizations of gender and gender roles. In this talk, I will discuss the importance of examining legal aesthetics and how an aesthetic analysis contributes to critical legal analysis and practice. I will examine the representations of gender in relation to a settler colonial context, and introduce the idea of difficult aesthetics as central to Indigenous feminist legal theory.