Gendering Disposability

Author's Abstract, Page 285:

"In 2011, thirty-six-year-old Cindy Gladue, a Cree woman, bled to death in a hotel bathtub in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. On the night she died, Gladue had contracted for sexual exchange with Bradley Barton, a white man who worked as a trucker. In 2015, Barton was tried for the murder of Cindy Gladue. With more than 1,200 missing and murdered Indigenous women, there is compelling reason to focus on the violence Barton inflicted on Gladue, understanding it as a part of a history of the sexual brutalization and attempted annihilation of Indigenous women. To show that Gladue's death and the trial of Barton for her murder are part of a history of colonial terror, it is necessary to unpack the framework utilized by the court, a framework that revolved around the ideas of consent and contract. I propose that we utilize a framework of disposability instead, focusing on the Indigenous woman's expendibility in settler colonialism. Sexualized violence is key to disposability, and flesh is the site at which racial and sexual power are both inscribed. I emphasize the excessive violence that is meted out to Indigenous women as evidence of colonial power imprinted on their bodies." (285).