ABSTRACT
In a 1968 exhibition hosted by Citadel Hill National Historic Site in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Dr Margaret Johnson, a member of Eskasoni First Nation, displayed a hand-stitched ribbon skirt as part of an installation featuring cultural dress associated to the province's diverse heritage. The ceremonial skirt represented traditional teaching associated with femininity, reproduction, and matrilineal heritage, and disrupted the underlying heteropatriarchal message of the exhibition, intended to present women's cultural dress of Nova Scotia. Through Native Feminist Theories, this chapter interrogates the creative activities of Johnson as forms of resistance and resilience, presented during a period of intense neo-nationalist activities held in Canada as part of the nation's centennial celebrations, designed to reinvigorate a sense of national cohesive identity, first manufactured during the late-nineteenth century. This reinstalled form of nationalism coincided with emerging ideas of multiculturalism and ongoing efforts of aggressive assimilation towards Indigenous peoples in the form of official state policies. Therefore, by exploring Johnson's work, I maintain that Native feminism aims to further complicate Indigenous women's identity.
