Leisure As a Context for Justice: Experiences of Ceremony for Aboriginal Women in Prison (Report‪)‬

Leisure researchers are increasingly encouraged to question invisible assumptions that have shaped our current understanding and facilitation of leisure (Shaw, 2000). Researchers have limited understandings of leisure and perhaps it is time to allow others to define leisure within the context of their experiences (Allison, Schneider & Valentine, 2000). According to Henderson (1998), "if we want to understand the meanings of leisure in society, then we must do our best to acknowledge that social, cultural, and historical differences do exist among people whom we research" (p. 160). The purpose of this paper is to examine the leisure experiences of Aboriginal women in a Canadian federal prison as they engaged in traditional ceremony. Conceptualized as leisure, these ceremonies were examined in the context of justice by exploring the women's resistance to oppression and loss of identity rooted in colonization. Through ceremony, their identities and understanding of being Aboriginal evolved. The study predominantly focused on, though was not limited to, traditional cultural ceremonies such as the annual Pow Wow and Sweat Lodge ceremonies held in the prison.