INTRODUCTION For more than a century, anthropological interest in the status of aboriginal women of North America has been shaped primarily by theoretical debates concerning the complex relationships between women’s changing social position, social evolution, and economic transformation and, more recently, the penetration of colonizing state societies. Since the 1970s’ however, feminist scholars have redirected theoretical attention either to interpretations of how gender categories are conceptualized, symbolized, and privileged or to historical materialist analyses of women’s status as measured by their relative autonomy and dependence, their control over human and economic resources, and their capacity to exercise public authority. Historical materialists have concentrated on documentary research in their efforts to assess the impact of colonialism on women’s sociopolitical status. They have embarked on case studies to understand how the articulation between marginal community economies and capitalism establishes the material bases of women’s empowerment.

Aboriginal peoples in Canada are increasingly moving to urban communities in search of educational and economic opportunities. For many urbanization is not an easy process, in particular when they move to cities that historically have had few Aboriginal citizens and where social traditions of resistance and resentment towards Aboriginal rights prevail. In this paper we explore one such case through studying the phenomenon known as NIMBY (not in my backyard). We apply critical discourse analysis to understand how concepts of citizenship were taken up when a non-profit society of Aboriginal women sought to establish a transition home for women and children moving to a small Canadian prairie city. Resistance to the women’s plans was expressed in neoliberal discourses that denied the women civic citizenship while affirmation of the women in terms of collective values and relational citizenship was undermined in the political maneuvers of public debate.