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Abstract
On November 12, 1971, the badly beaten body of eighteen-year old Cree teenager Helen Betty Osborne was found near The Pas, Manitoba. On November 25, 1990, the frozen body of seventeen year-old Neil Stonechild was found in a barren Saskatchewan field. In 1980, Sandra Lovelace, after losing status as an Indian when she married a non-registered man, took her case to the United Nations based on gender discrimination.
These three stories demonstrate the interaction between law, violence and Indigenous imagery. In my thesis I argue that law, through specific Indian Act provisions, has aided in both the creation and perpetuation of negative imagery of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. I analyze the relationship between specific provisions of the Indian Act and the resulting violence demonstrated in the three stories. In my conclusion I offer ways in which law can aid in the imagery reversal through self-government agreements and Indigenous participation.
