The Voice From North Point Douglas: Spatial Justice, Embodied Dispossession and Resistance in Winnipeg

Abstract

This thesis is a participatory action research project using the photovoice method to examine women’s perceptions of safety and ideas for positive community development in Winnipeg’s urban core. I work with women who frequent the North Point Douglas Women’s Centre to create a platform for participants to raise safety concerns and to actively participate in mapping unsafe space in the city. I combine emerging analytical frameworks in feminist geography, critical race theory, and spatial justice to create an intersectional-spatial framework to interrogate the production of unsafe space and the perpetuation of colonial gendered violence in Winnipeg. Together with the women, we produced an arts-based public exhibit on safety, community concerns and strengths – The Voice from North Point Douglas. Most importantly, my research investigates women’s grounded community activism and Indigenous resistance as a form of spatial justice in the colonial city.