SELECTED THESES ON THE CIRCUMPOLAR ARCTIC

In 1975, various crucial issues faced Yukon women: wife-battering; lack of housing; migration from rural communities into Whitehorse; and conflict with the Justice system. The First Nations women of the Yukon Indian Women's Association resolved to build a multi-purpose hostel for Yukon women in crisis as a partial response to these problems.
The Yukon territorial government had also identified these issues as areas of concern, such that various social welfare and justice system agencies responded to requests from the First Nations Women to assist in building a transition home. Well educated, professional workers (who were also feminists) from governmental and non-governmental agencies became actively involved in the development of a 1979 proposal to the federal Department of Health and Welfare for a demonstration grant.
A combination of archival and interview data reveals that this ostensibly collaborative involvement of state agencies and feminist bureaucrats had the consequence of merely imposing the historically unequal male/female power relations found within state agencies onto the grass-roots shelter. The result was that, by 1982, First Nations women had completely withdrawn from involvement in the transition home.
Feminist theory and a specific view of state theory are used to examine that transformation process. Particular attention is paid to how issues of class, race, and professionalism permeated the framing and resolution of crucial issues in the Whitehorse transition home.
The concept of the 'privilege of feminism' is used in explaining why women of colour and First Nations women have felt marginalized and isolated, and been led to reject what they see as white-middle-class feminists imposing belief systems that are incongruent with other cultures' world views. The author joins these women in calling for a deconstruction of privilege, and the building of mutually respectful coalitions among women of different cultures and world views to address women's issues.'