Understanding the ways, experiences, and voices of Indigenous women requires the reader to start with the self. Who are you and where do you fit into an Indigenous world? In many Indigenous traditions, governance starts with the self. We then fit into clans, families, communities and nations. Understanding yourself is always balanced by understanding your relationships. Primary among Indigenous relationships is our relations to the natural world. Territory is equally an important concept. This Aboriginal women's studies reader is organized under the above themes. It is intended to assist readers in learning about the great diversity across Aboriginal nations in Canada, but also the diversity of women within those nations. The articles chosen represent many of the struggles that Aboriginal women have faced in Canada. These include struggles with the Canadian criminal justice system, with inclusion in self-government and constitutional reform, issues of membership in bands and matrimonial real property. Many of the articles are framed around the quest for equality.

Questioning the ability of political organizations to assist in fully eradicating the oppression of First Nations and their citizens, the author critically reflects on the meaning of "self-government"--and the obstacles as well as solutions to some of its challenges. Concluding that self-government as a goal is too narrow and overly inundated by colonial meanings to be a full solution, Monture-Angus rejects the idea of "self-government" in favor of a much larger idea, independence.