Behind Closed Doors: Aboriginal Women's Experiences with Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

This study provides a critical analysis of Aboriginal women's experiences with intimate partner violence, and how this experience is affected by their lives on a reserve and their access to resources while there. By taking a social ecological perspective—looking at individual, interpersonal, community, institutional/organizational, and society/policy levels of the ecosystem—a comprehensive analysis can be done. The study explores the role of colonization in the development of today’s circumstances, and its associated factors. It analyzes the role of the government, both past and present, in perpetrating and enabling the problem. This study concludes by arguing that Aboriginal women's experiences are much more complex, needing more innovative and community-based initiatives in order to deal with its intracies. The Canadian government's attention and efforts thus far have fallen short of what is needed within many of Canada's Aboriginal communities.