Readings about Native American Women

The following discussion offers suggestions for readings that might help
introduce students to Native American women's experience.  The discussion
took place on WMST-L in January 2008.  For additional WMST-L files
available on the Web, see the WMST-L File Collection..

I'm teaching Intro to Women and Gender Studies in a few weeks, a class
I've taught before and really enjoyed, but I've always felt that my
(sadly) brief section on US-Women's history has always been very
black-and-white, as in exclusive to the experience of African-American and
Caucasian women in America.  I don't have a lot of space, but I'm hoping
to find a short piece that would serve as an introduction to Native
American/American Indian experience in America, particularly women's
experience.  I know that any introduction will be woefully incomplete, but
I'd like to at least introduce my students to the reality that American
history (specifically in the context of gendered experience) a) did not
start with white people stepping on the continent and b) is not exclusive
to white history or white-and-black history.

I have a piece from a Sacred Circle Publication called "A Brief History of
the Effects of Colonization on Native Women," which would certainly work,
but is a narrative better suited for the domestic violence manual in which
it is located and not as a particularly good historical context.

As a side-note, I'll be teaching a short piece on Chinese immigrant
experience in the US as well.  Again, this section can't be comprehensive,
but I'd like to at least nod toward the intersections of race and gender
throughout American history in the multiple race/ethnic groups that make
up our history (and present!).

Any suggestions would be very welcome.  Please email me at
tademant  AT  wustl.edu and I'll post a final list to the list-serve if people
are interested.

Many thanks,
Tarah Demant
Washington University in St. Louis

hi folks,

for syllabi on native americans--women and others--check out the following:

H-AMINDIAN  AT  H-NET.MSU.EDU


--
Dina Dahbany-Miraglia Ph.D.
Associate Professor-Retired
Queensborough Community College & 
MEMEAC (Middle East& Middle East 
American Center) 
The City University of New York
(CUNY) 
E-mail: ddmqcc  AT  att.net

Tarah, I am not sure how long a piece you are looking for.  There is a
really good short novel by Ella Deloria (the aunt of Vine Deloria Jr,
noted recently deceased Lakota activist and scholar) called Water Lily,
that details women's lives among the Plains Indians just before European
contact was common.  I have used it in teaching and students generally
like it.  Makes the importance of family and kin in defining Native lives
very clear. 

For a shorter piece with a more contemporary focus, Laura Tohe (Navajo)'s
article "There's No Word for Feminism in My Language" is excellent: from
wicaszosa Review: a\\A Journal of Native American Studies 15(2000), pp.
103-110.  I also used and liked Andrea Smith's "Native American Feminism,
Sovereignty, and Social Change," Feminist Studies Spring 2005, 116-132.

Of the Women in US History texts I have ever used, I liked the way Sara
Evans began Born for Liberty  with a substantive chapter on Native women's
lives.  

Good luck!  Helen Bannan

Helen Bannan 
Associate Professor Emerita 
Women's Studies and History 
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh 
3129 Honey Creek Court 
Oshkosh, WI 

I'd again like to recommend _Daughters of Mother Earth: the Wisdom of Native
American Women_, with essays by four Native feminists: Paula Gunn Allen, Lee
Maracle, Barbara Mann, and one other author, a Choctaw i think, whose name
i'm forgetting at the moment. The book is a very manageable size, not long.

Max
-- 
Max Dashu
Suppressed Histories Archives
http://www.suppressedhistories.net
Real Women, Global Vision

I just read "Every Day is a Good Day" which is edited by Wilma
Mankiller.  She traveled the country and met with lots of Native women
and includes their perspectives on a number of things, including the
position of women in tribal communities.  It's an excellent book, and
is easy to read and pull sections from.

Brittny Nielsen

Here are a few additional (mostly older but still useful) citations on/by
Native American women I have used with success in my introductory and other
classes in Women's Studies at Southern Oregon University:

Beth Brant, "A Long Story," in Women, Images and Realities: a Multicultural
Anthology, edited by Amy Kesselman, Lily D. McNair and Nancy Schiederwind.
Third Edition (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2003): 263-267.

Kate Shanley, "Thoughts on Indian Feminism" in Women: Images and Realities,
A Multicultural Anthology edited by Amy Kesselman, Lily D. McNair and Nancy
Schniederwind, Third Edition, (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2003): 538-539.

Note that this and the Brant piece listed above are _not_ the current
edition. Kate and I were graduate students together at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor.  She is now Chair and Associate Professor of Native
American Studies at University of Montana in Missoula and has a number of
articles on Native Americans, including:

Kate Shanley, "Blood Ties and Blasphemy: American Indian Women and the
Problem of History" in _Is Academic Feminism Dead? Theory in Practice_ (NY:
NYU Press, 2000).

Chrystos' poem, "I am Not Your Princess," in fourth (current) edition of
_Women: Images and Realities_, pp. 387-388.

A Gathering of Spirit: Writing and Art by North American Indian Women edited
by Beth Brant (1984, Sinister Wisdom Books.) also was a double issue of the
quarterly, Sinister Wisdom issue no. 22/23.

The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions by
Paula Gunn Allen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986).

There are many Native American fiction writers not cited above and too
numerous for me to list comprehensively, whose work is central to
understanding contemporary Native American women's experiences: including
Linda Hogan, Leslie Silko, Louise Erdrich.

Barbara Scott Winkler, Southern Oregon University, on sabbatical 2007-2008,
winklerb  AT  charter.net or winklerb  AT  sou.edu

I'm reading this now, Max, and agree with you.  Actually, this is one of
three  books I'm reading by, or edited by, Barbara Alice Mann at the
moment.  May have  mentioned, previously  in   this (or  another)  thread,
that  I  use her  _Iroquoian  Women: the Gantowisas_ in my anthro of
religion class.  Anyway, the 4th essay, in _Daughters  of Mother Earth . .
._, is by Kay Givens McGowan.  Cheers, Suzanne

Laura Suzanne Gordon, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology
Loyola College in Maryland
Advisory Board, Project on
Religion, Culture, and Globalization
Department of American Studies
University of Maryland (UMCP)
lsgordon  AT  umd.edu

[The other author] is Kay Givens McGowan, and Winona LaDuke wrote the forward.  

Thanks for filling in the other author, Suzanne.

Yes, Barbara Mann's _Iroquoian Women_ is an excellent source, especially if
you are looking for an indepth study, and this is one by a Native author who
has some trenchant observations about European patriarchy. She knows all the
primary sources (and puts to the fore the true primary source, the oral
Keepings of the Six Nations) and secondary literature, and she is funny too.

Max

-- 
Max Dashu
Suppressed Histories Archives
http://www.suppressedhistories.net
Real Women, Global Vision

Thank you to everyone who sent ideas for readings related to Native
American women's history/ies in my Intro to Women and Gender Studies
class.  I really appreciate all the suggestions (and there were so many
great ones!).  Below is a list of suggestions I received that I'm passing
back along to the listserve.  There are many excellent resources on this
list for anyone who may be looking for readings related to race/gender in
general, and on Native American women's history more specifically.

Many, many thanks, again, to everyone!
Tarah Demant

"The Pocahontas Perplex: The Image of Indian Women in American Culture."
Green, Rayna. In Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's
History, Ellen Carol DuBois & Vicki L. Ruiz eds., New York: Routledge, pp.
15-21.

"Gender and the 'citizen Indian.'" In Writing the range. Wall, Wendy (1997).

_Messengers of the Wind: Native American Women Tell Their Life Stories_. 
Ed. Jane Katz.  New York: One World, 1996.

_Indigenous American Women: Decolonization, Empowerment, Activism_.  Devon
Abbott Mihesuah.  Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 2003.

"Feminist Nations? A Study of Native American Women in Southwestern Tribal
Politics." Diane-Michele Prindeville.  Political Research Quarterly, Vol.
57, No. 1, 101-112 (2004).

"Collaboration or Colonialism: Text and Process in Native American Women's
Autobiographies," Kathleen Mullen Sands, MELUS, Vol. 22, No. 4, Ethnic
Autobiography (Winter, 1997), pp. 39-59.

_My Homeland_, Kimberlee Medicine Horn
http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/vol1iss6/medicinehornhomeland.html

"Native American women and agriculture: A Seneca case study."  Joan M.
Jensen.  Sex Roles, October, 2004, Vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 423-441.

_Sifters: Native American Women's Lives_. Theda Perdue, ed.  Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2001.

"Ojibwe, Women of the Great Lakes."  Poupart, Lisa.  In Women's Rights:  A
Global View, Lynn Walter, (ed.) Greenwood:  2001, pp. 169-181.

"'This evil extends especially to the feminine sex': Negotiating
captivity in the New Mexico borderlands." Feminist Studies, 2(2),
279-309.

"The role of native women in the creation of fur trade society in western
Canada, 1670-1839."  In S. Armatage & E. Jameson (Eds), Writing the range
(pp 53-62). U of Oklahoma P.

_On the Trail of Tears_ .  Perdue, Theda (2000).

"Cherokee women and the Trail of Tears." In V Ruiz & E DuBois (Eds.),
Unequal sisters (pp 93-104). Routledge.

_Waterlily_. Ella Deloria

_The Third Woman_. Ed. Fisher


"There's No Word for Feminism in My Language." Laura Tohe. Wicaszosa Review:
a\\A Journal of Native American Studies 15(2000), pp. 103-110.

"Native American Feminism, Sovereignty, and Social Change." Andrea Smith. 
Feminist Studies Spring 2005, 116-132.

_Daughters of Mother Earth: the Wisdom of Native American Women_.

_Lakota Woman_. Mary Crow Dog.

"Iroquois Women: The Gantowisas Every Day is a Good Day." Barbara A. Mann.
 Ed. Wilma Mankiller.

"A Long Story." Beth Brant.  Women, Images and Realities: a Multicultural
Anthology, edited by Amy Kesselman, Lily D. McNair and Nancy Schiederwind.
Third Edition (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2003): 263-267.

"Thoughts on Indian Feminism."  Kate Shanley. Women: Images and Realities,
A Multicultural Anthology edited by Amy Kesselman, Lily D. McNair and
Nancy Schniederwind, Third Edition, (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2003): 538-539.

"Blood Ties and Blasphemy: American Indian Women and the Problem of
History."  Kate Shanley.  Is Academic Feminism Dead? Theory in Practice.
(NY:
NYU Press, 2000).

"I am Not Your Princess." (Poem) Chrystos. _Women: Images and Realities_,
pp. 387-388.

_A Gathering of Spirit: Writing and Art by North American Indian Women_. 
Ed. Beth Brant (1984, Sinister Wisdom Books.)

_The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions_ .
Paula Gunn Allen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986).