The many directions of four stories : aboriginal women's experiences living with addictions and HIV/AIDS

Stressing the centrality of ordinary human experience by focusing on "what is at stake" for particular participants in particular situations (Kleinman & Kleinman 1991), this exploratory study involved listening, observing, analyzing, documenting and better understanding "things as they are" (Jackson 1996) for four street-involved, HIV-positive Aboriginal women. The particular situation and voices of street-involved Aboriginal women are rarely discussed in reference to policy development in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, in BC, in Canada, or within anthropological literature, Accordingly, this thesis contributes to existing knowledge, grounded in the voices and experiences of the four women who discuss "what is at stake" for them as HIV-positive Aboriginal women residing in Canada's most impoverished neighborhood. The thesis highlights the particular situations and circumstances in which four Aboriginal women live that contribute to their vulnerability not just to HIV/AIDS, but to a number of constraining social factors that affect their overall health, safety and quality of life. To understand and better appreciate the women's lived experiences (Jackson l896), or their positioned knowledge (Kleinman 1995), an ethnographic perspective that placed primary emphasis on narrative was utilized. Through the use of narrative, within a population health framework that takes a more comprehensive view of Aboriginal women's health to encompass the historical, social, cultural, economic, and physical factors as they interact with race and gender, I examine some of the factors that impinge upon the health of Aboriginal women, directed by the four powerful stories/voices of the women themselves.