Abstract

In September 2001, a 12-year-old Saulteaux Cree girl-child of the Yellow Quill First Nation was sexually assaulted by three white men from Tisdale, Saskatchewan--Dean Edmondson (24), Jeffrey Kindrat (20), and Jeffrey Brown (25). This thesis interrogates the discursive construction of this crime and its representation as an ongoing media event in one of Saskatchewan's major newspapers, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. Analysing coverage that begins in October 2001, the scope and trajectory of this thesis includes an analysis of numerous preliminary court appearances and hearings, two trials, Edmondson's conviction and Kindrat and Brown's acquittal in 2003, the ensuing appeals, and associated and related stories. The approach to media discourse employed in this thesis strives to locate this media event firmly within the time and place it occurred--contextualising it within intersecting discourses of race and sex specific to this case, in Saskatchewan, at this time. This work problematises not only the hegemonic production of media discourse, but the power-knowledge of authorised speakers and the dominant discourses of rape and Aboriginality that were invoked and reproduced. As such, this thesis forwards an understanding of the physical and discursive contestations of power involved in discourses of rape, racism, and sexism, paying particular attention to violent ways in which this victim's credibility was attacked and erased, as well as the reproduction of the conditions that produced this rape. It concludes by identifying how hegemonic constructions are defended and reinforced at the expense of Aboriginal girls and women.