Author(s): Yukti Bhardwaj

Abstract: Through a critical reading of George Ryga's landmark play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (1967), this essay examines the ongoing marginalization and resistance of Canada's Indigenous peoples. With its roots in Ryga's personal experience as a cultural outsider and its inspiration from a real-life case of an Aboriginal woman who was murdered, the play effectively exposes the systemic racism, gendered violence, and cultural erasure that Aboriginal communities face. The article frames the ongoing discussion about Indigenous rights with the symbolic act of resistance performed by singer Jully Black, who changed the Canadian national anthem to highlight settler colonialism. The play illustrates how dominant colonial structures like the legal system, the Church, and others criminalize, silence, and obliterate Indigenous identity through Rita Joe's tragic story. The study looks at how memory sequences give voice to subaltern experiences while characters like Father Andrew and the Magistrate enforce assimilation. The study makes the case that Rita and Jaimie both embody marginalized voices fighting against imposed identities and systemic violence, drawing on postcolonial theory, particularly Gayatri Spivak's concept of the subaltern.

Keywords: Indigenous marginalization, systemic racism, postcolonial theory, cultural erasure, subaltern resistance

Article Info: Received: 04 May 2025; Received in revised form: 22 May 2025; Accepted: 28 May 2025; Available online: 04 Jun 2025

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.103.68