Decolonizing Gender: Gender, Collective Identity, and Grievance Construction in the Idle No More Movement

Abstract

This thesis examines how gender is portrayed in the Facebook interactions of an emerging indigenous rights social movement in Canada called Idle No More. The theoretical framework presented synthesizes New Social Movement theories of collective identity and grievance construction, theories of gender and social movements, and theories of Native women's resistance against colonial governments. Analysis centers on how the portrayal of gender influences collective movement identity and the role of gender in grievance construction. Interactional data was gathered from the Idle No More Facebook page over a six month period, and qualitative content analysis was then engaged to examine the data for important themes and grievances, like decolonization, environment, and sovereignty. This thesis also contributes to a growing body of intersectional research examining how social movement organizations are using social media as an organizing tool to generate new discussion of collective identities and grievances. I find that gender is a major orienting principle in the underlying ideologies and collective identity of the movement, as illustrated through four typologies - Warrior Women, Ending Violence against Women, Mother Earth, and Native Feminism. INM engages in collective identity processes fundamentally rooted in gendered ideologies, thus producing gendered grievances for the broader movement.