Analysis Of Indigenous Women's Rights By Rauna Kuokkanen

The author of “Self-Determination and Indigenous Women’s Rights at the Intersection of International Human Rights”, Rauna Kuokkanen works as an associate professor at the department of Political Science and Aboriginal Studies program at the University of Toronto. She is well known for many of her works on Aboriginal Studies. In this journal, Kuokkanen makes an attempt to explain the relationship between Indigenous self-determination and Indigenous women’s rights under the principle of the international human rights framework. In spite of the “growing studies on indigenous peoples and self-determination, there is a striking absence of research into the gendered process and effects of indigenous self-determination or in other words, indigenous women and self-determination”
The author’s aim is to examine the “interconnections between indigenous self-determination and indigenous women’s rights with a particular focus on the question of violence against women” (Kuokkanan, 225). It places both “self-determination, human rights, and violence against women within the international human rights framework and claims that indigenous self-determination cannot be achieved without taking into account pressing issues involving indigenous women’s social, economic, civil and political rights” (Kuokkanan, 226). The thesis presented by Kuokkanan argues for a specific human rights framework that “all together accounts for indigenous self-determination and human rights violations of indigenous women” (Kuokkanan, 225). In this regard, the article makes the following related argument; firstly, “both self-determination and violence against women must be seen and examines first and foremost as human rights