Nanâtawihowin: Economic Abuse, Infrastructural Violence, and Intergenerational Wellbeing in Onion Lake Cree Nation

While economic abuse is increasingly identified in mainstream intimate partner violence (IPV) literature, there remains a substantial gap in understanding how this form of coercive control manifests within Indigenous communities, particularly where colonial economic structures already restrict access to housing, employment, and income.

This project aims to investigate how Cree economic worldviews and perspectives on wealth can guide Indigenous economic development as a pathway to community wellness, safety, and economic reconciliation. The research focuses on the lived experiences of Indigenous people in Onion Lake Cree Nation, who are disproportionately affected by economic abuse, economic insecurity, and the chronic underfunding of mental health services. These challenges are deeply intertwined with colonial economic structures and forms of infrastructural violence.

Grounded in Indigenous feminist and economic theory, this project will examine how economic abuse functions alongside broader systems, such as policy neglect, resource extraction, and colonial services, to shape everyday experiences of wellness, safety, and economic independence. It will also explore how community members in Onion Lake Cree Nation are actively resisting these harms through resurgent practices, including kinship-based care, language revitalization, community-led healing initiatives, and relational economic models.

This project is co-funded in partnership with Mitacs and Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation.

  • Dante Carter is a first-year PhD student in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. She is a Cree scholar from Onion Lake Cree Nation with a background in community-based research, Indigenous research methodologies, and Indigenous business and economic theories and practices. Dante currently works as a researcher and lecturer at the Edwards School of Business. Her research interests explore the intersections of community health, Indigenous ways of knowing and being, and economic and business disciplines. She aspires to contribute to scholarly, community, and industry practices that bridge economic and business development with community health and wellbeing. In particular, her work focuses on the intersection of economic abuse, intimate partner violence (IPV), and the ways that business and economic structures, barriers, and opportunities shape the experiences of Indigenous communities in Canada.