white picket fence - Diana Stoicescu

Dismantling the White Picket Fence: Indigenous Women, Substandard Housing and Denied Privilege , by Diana Stoicescu, 2011


Aboriginal women in Canada often struggle to find and maintain safe, affordable, and culturally appropriate shelter on and off reserve. This constant battle with systemic and internalized oppression, violence, and denial of voice and opportunity gravely affect Aboriginal women’s sense of being, becoming and belonging. Colonialism and Eurocentrism continue to have devastating effects on Indigenous populations, particularly in relation to the invisibility of Indigenous women in political agenda as well as in their own communities, the classism and feminization of poverty experienced on and off reserves, and the injustice created by oppressive power structures which continue to perpetuate systemic racism, sexism and Aboriginal dependence on paternal systems.

The image of the wired fenced with roses peeking through represents the unpredictability and unstable footing experienced by many Indigenous women in precarious shelter. The end of the fence is obstructed from view, making it impossible to see ahead (or to make goals). The paradoxical disorderliness of the flowers with the uniformity (stability) of the wired fence symbolizes the motivation behind residential schools and forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples; thus the perceived “savagery” of Indigenous peoples as opposed to the “civilization” of White colonizers. The truth depicted through these fives images calls attention to the vital need for upstream thinking, recognition, and the reclaiming of Indigenous identity.


In order for Indigenous women to reclaim their voice, agency and ability for self-determination, dominant society must stop tolerating and start celebrating the First Peoples. Students and faculty alike must question whose history we are focusing on and how this one-sidedness influences the forces surrounding systematic oppression and denied privilege. It is time to dismantle the “white picket fence” ideal of housing and opportunity and open our eyes to the third world conditions that Indigenous women, children, and men have no choice but to face every day.