Legal Violence and the Gendered Necropolitics of Coloniality: Feminicide, Socioeconomic Marginalization, and Housing Rights Violations against Indigenous Women in Guatemala and Canada

Abstract

This paper argues that feminicidal and sexual gender-based violence faced by Indigenous women in Guatemala and Canada is a cause and consequence of these states’ failure to effectively guarantee Indigenous women's intersecting socio-economic rights, namely their right to adequate housing. Exposing the historically-rooted, economic and political interests and investments of the two countries, this paper argues that Indigenous women's rights have been co-opted by legal violence in both contexts. Revealing the complicity of settler democratic states and the international human rights regime in sustaining these rights violations, this paper evidences Indigenous women's socio-economic marginalization, inadequate housing, and consequential feminicidal violence as the product of the gendered necropolitics of coloniality. Interrogating why and how these colonial genocidal structures sustain the subjugation of Indigenous women's bodies, this paper exposes how colonial genocidal structures have rendered Indigenous women illegible for protection under international human rights law. Highlighting a range of performative 1 attempts undertaken by the Guatemala and Canada to address the grave rights violations facing Indigenous women, this paper provides a feminist, decolonial framework that evidences why and how Indigenous women's experiences of socioeconomic marginalization, inadequate and unsafe housing, and the alarming rates of feminicidal and sexual gender-based violence continue to persist unabated.