Women Of The First Nations

Great Women from our First Nations profiles ten trailblazing women leaders who have raised the profile of indigenous culture in North America.

"From diversity comes strength and wisdom": this was the guiding principle for selecting the articles in this collection. Because there is no single voice, identity, history, or cultural experience that represents the women of the First Nations, a realistic picture will have many facets. Accordingly, the authors in Women of the First Nations include Native and non-Native scholars, feminists, and activists from across Canada.Their work examines various aspects of Aboriginal women's lives from a variety of theoretical and personal perspectives. They discuss standard media representations, as well as historical and current realities. They bring new perspectives to discussions on Aboriginal art, literature, historical, and cultural contributions, and they offer diverse viewpoints on present economic, environmental, and political issues.This collection counters the marginalization and silencing of First Nations women's voices and reflects the power, strength, and wisdom inherent in their lives.

First Nations peoples believe the eagle flies with a female wing and a male wing, showing the importance of balance between the feminine and the masculine in all aspects of individual and community experiences. Centuries of colonization, however, have devalued the traditional roles of First Nations women, causing a great gender imbalance that limits the abilities of men, women, and their communities in achieving self-actualization.Restoring the Balance brings to light the work First Nations women have performed, and continue to perform, in cultural continuity and community development. It illustrates the challenges and successes they have had in the areas of law, politics, education, community healing, language, and art, while suggesting significant options for sustained improvement of individual, family, and community well-being. Written by fifteen Aboriginal scholars, activists, and community leaders, Restoring the Balance combines life histories and biographical accounts with historical and critical analyses grounded in traditional thought and approaches. It is a powerful and important book.

"Xwulmuxw Slhunlheni (Indigenous Women) have, since time immemorial, played critical leadership roles in Indigenous communities. However, with the imposition of racist and sexist colonial policies, Indigenous women's roles were systematically displaced. As a result of these policies, which formalized colonial governance systems, the vital informal leadership roles the Xwulmuxw Slhunlheni play rarely receive recognition. This book strives to honour the women in our communities who continue to embrace their important roles as givers of life and carriers of culture. This book reviews new ways to view Indigenous women's leadership. Thirteen women from various Hul'qumi'num communities on Vancouver Island and the Mainland, share their thoughts on leadership and stress the importance of living our cultural and traditional teachings. A central theme for leadership emphasizes the importance of keeping the past, present and future connected--a Sacred Cycle that will ensure we bring our teachings forward for the future generations."--

When dealing with Indigenous women’s history we are conditioned to think about women as private-sphere figures, circumscribed by the home, the reserve, and the community. Moreover, in many ways Indigenous men and women have been cast in static, pre-modern, and one-dimensional identities, and their twentieth century experiences reduced to a singular story of decline and loss. In Indigenous Women, Work, and History, historian Mary Jane Logan McCallum rejects both of these long-standing conventions by presenting case studies of Indigenous domestic servants, hairdressers, community health representatives, and nurses working in “modern Native ways” between 1940 and 1980. Based on a range of sources, including the records of the Departments of Indian Affairs and National Health and Welfare, interviews, and print and audio-visual media, McCallum shows how state-run education and placement programs were part of Canada’s larger vision of assimilation and extinguishment of treaty obligations. Conversely, she also shows how Indigenous women link these same programs to their social and cultural responsibilities of community building and state resistance. By placing the history of these modern workers within a broader historical context of Aboriginal education and health, federal labour programs, post-war Aboriginal economic and political developments, and Aboriginal professional organizations, McCallum challenges us to think about Indigenous women’s history in entirely new ways.

Violence against Indigenous women in Canada is an ongoing crisis, with roots deep in the nation’s colonial history. Despite numerous policies and programs developed to address the issue, Indigenous women continue to be targeted for violence at disproportionate rates. What insights can literature contribute where dominant anti-violence initiatives have failed? Centring the voices of contemporary Indigenous women writers, this book argues for the important role that literature and storytelling can play in response to gendered colonial violence. Indigenous communities have been organizing against violence since newcomers first arrived, but the cases of missing and murdered women have only recently garnered broad public attention. Violence Against Indigenous Women joins the conversation by analyzing the socially interventionist work of Indigenous women poets, playwrights, filmmakers, and fiction-writers. Organized as a series of case studies that pair literary interventions with recent sites of activism and policy-critique, the book puts literature in dialogue with anti-violence debate to illuminate new pathways toward action. With the advent of provincial and national inquiries into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, a larger public conversation is now underway. Indigenous women’s literature is a critical site of knowledge-making and critique. Violence Against Indigenous Women provides a foundation for reading this literature in the context of Indigenous feminist scholarship and activism and the ongoing intellectual history of Indigenous women’s resistance.

Despite a recent increase in the productivity and popularity of Indigenous playwrights in Canada, most critical and academic attention has been devoted to the work of male dramatists, leaving female writers on the margins. In Indigenous Women’s Theatre in Canada, Sarah MacKenzie addresses this critical gap by focusing on plays by Indigenous women written and produced in the socio-cultural milieux of twentieth and twenty-first century Canada. Closely analyzing dramatic texts by Monique Mojica, Marie Clements, and Yvette Nolan, MacKenzie explores representations of gendered colonialist violence in order to determine the varying ways in which these representations are employed subversively and informatively by Indigenous women. These plays provide an avenue for individual and potential cultural healing by deconstructing some of the harmful ideological work performed by colonial misrepresentations of Indigeneity and demonstrate the strength and persistence of Indigenous women, offering a space in which decolonial futurisms can be envisioned. In this unique work, MacKenzie suggests that colonialist misrepresentations of Indigenous women have served to perpetuate demeaning stereotypes, justifying devaluation of and violence against Indigenous women. Most significantly, however, she argues that resistant representations in Indigenous women’s dramatic writing and production work in direct opposition to such representational and manifest violence.

Cover -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Indigenous Women's Writing, Storytelling, and Law -- Chapter One: Gendering the Politics of Tribal Sovereignty: Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez (1978) and Ceremony (1977) -- Chapter Two: The Legal Silencing of Indigenous Women: Racine v. Woods (1983) and In Search of April Raintree (1983) -- Chapter Three: Colonial Governmentality and GenderViolence: State of Minnesota v. Zay Zah (1977) and The Antelope Wife (1998) -- Chapter Four: Land Claims, Identity Claims: Manypenny v. United States (1991) and Last Standing Woman (1997) -- Conclusion: For an Indigenous-Feminist Literary Criticism -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index