ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the unique factors that impact on Aboriginal women experiencing family violence in Australia, and examine how Aboriginal women think about and construct gender. Even though domestic violence transcends all cultures and boundaries and similar experiences can be extracted across groups, family violence in Aboriginal society has its own unique factors created from colonisation. Aboriginal writers and researchers have established that due to colonisation, domestic violence in non-Aboriginal contexts and family violence in Aboriginal contexts cannot be assumed to be the same, and hence managing and preventing it requires different strategies. The tension of discussing gendered power relations and imbalances in family violence is also seen in contexts of justice forums and responding to and addressing violence and abuse of Aboriginal women and children. Feminist post-structuralist ideas challenge the construct of woman in relation to man by suggesting that the gendered woman interacts with and is acted upon by her environment.