Is Active Voice Enough? Community Discussions on Passive Voice, MMIWG2S, and Violence against Urban Indigenous Women in San José, California

Abstract

Men commit violence against Native American women at higher rates than other racial or ethnic groups. When violence against Indigenous women is discussed and written about, it is often in passive voice. Several scholars note the problem of using passive voice to talk about violence against women, but there is little research on how women themselves understand passive voice as connected to the violence perpetrated against them, and we found no literature on how Native women understand passive voice. This research asks how urban Native and Indigenous women understand passive language in relationship to violence. The authors, who are all members of the Red Earth Women’s Society (REWS), took up this conversation with urban Indigenous women in San José, California, in a year-long series of meetings that culminated in three focus-group discussions (FGD)/talking circles (TC) where Native women expressed their understanding of passive language and violence against Native women. From these exploratory talking circles, we found that Native women’s understanding of passive voice aligned with previous research on passive voice, but also contributed new insights.