Transcript The Role of Native American Women in Cultural Continuity

The Role of Native American Women in Cultural
Continuity and Transition
Bea Medicine
http://www.naturallynative.com
Native women traditionally responsible for:
• Socialization of Children
• Mediation with Whites – Cultural Broker/Cultural
Mediator
• Evaluators of language
Cultural Mediators
The Jamestown Legacy:
Pocahontas Algonquian Indian, Virginia.
1595 - 1617
“Pocahontas not only served as a
representative of the Virginia Indians, but
also as a vital link between the native
Americans and the Englishmen.
Whatever her contributions, the romantic
aspects of her life will no doubt stand out
in Virginia history forever.”
The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities
http://www.apva.org/history/pocahont.html
• Brokers were defined less by what
they did than by who they were –
gained identities through long
service in multiple contacts
• Broker’s experience liminal – effects
could always be compromised
• In anth lit, brokerage represented as
either as: A) a creative act that
enhances identity (Handsome Lake,
Seneca) or a marginalizing process
that alienates broker from cultural
roots
• Women have often been especially
effective – and controversial –
brokers
• For Native women, brokerage often
translates only to becoming wives or
concubines. Ramifications today?
American Indian Women as “mediator between their own
community and white society”
http://www.a
pple.com/trai
lers/newline/t
he_new_wor
ld
• Often vested in this role because of their facility in the English
language
• dislike, criticism and frustration from males for learning the
English language “too well”, getting too close to white society a
sign of assimilation and consequent rejection of one’s own
cultural values. Males emasculated resulting in conflict –
verbal , physical
•Indian women did not as frequently loose their traditional
language in boarding schools as men, called upon as
speakers
•“The thrust to biculturalism and bilingualism was seen as a
means to understanding the superimposed culture with a
strong background in the Native one. Females fulfilled both.”
Patricia DePerry, President of the Great Lakes Intertribal
Council and Chairwoman of the Red Cliff Band of Lake
Superior Chippewa, giving her State of the Tribes
Address. http://www.wpr.org/news/stateoftribes-2007.cfm
Tribal sovereignty is "a decree ordered by the United States government
when treaties were signed," said DePerry. "It's not up for negotiation; it is not
up for discussion. It is the law." DePerry is the first female to serve as
chairwoman of the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council,
Cultural Broker: Ella Deloria
Ella Cara Deloria, 1889-1971
A Yankton Dakota whose native name was Anpetu Waste Win (Beautiful Day
Woman) was born on the Yankton Dakota Reservation at Lake Andes in South
Dakota. Known primarily for her linguistic and ethnographic work with the
Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota (Sioux nations), Ella was most "remembered by
reservation residents for her contributions as an educator" (Medicine, 45).
Nephew Vine Deloria, Jr.
http://www.cas.usf.edu/anthropology/women/deloria/deloria.htm
•
http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_010100_deloriaella.htm
Contemporary Native Artistic Responses
•
•
•
Lori Blondeau,
COSMOSQUAW (1996-)
The story of Native women and their relation
to power and authority between precolonial
and postcolonial advance of
patriarchy(p.307).
For native peoples and particularly native
women, popular stereotypes of the Indian
princess or squaw drudge are nonrecouperable sites of early Native
womanhood. Like “Sapphire” ir “Brown
Sugar” these Indian female images are
ciphers and cultural inventions that cannot
be reappropriated by native women without
complicity in or service to their enterprise.
(p. 313)
What… would Native women’s history look
like if Native Americans had been able to
circulate and safeguard their written
histories? (p. 315)
Lori Blondeau, performance artist
COSMOSQUAW and The Lonely Surfer Squaw
" With tongue-in-cheek humour, Blondeau
captures the word that wounds and
redeploys it in COSMOSQUAW and The
Lonely Surfer Squaw, making of it
something startlingly subversive,
compulsively entertaining and highly
political. Fighting stereotypes with
stereotypes, however, can be risky
business, and her invented personas often
spark heated debates about the need for
positive images—as opposed to the use of
subversive repetition—to reroute and
reconfigure inherited patterns of thinking in
contemporary culture.” Lynne Bell,
Canadian Art Winter 2004
http://www.canadianart.ca/articles/Articles_Details.cfm?Ref_num=259
Lori Blondeau, The Lonely
Surfer Squaw (1997-).
What qualities are necessary for a ritual to be
ethnically "authentic"? Dr. Bea Medicine, a
Native American anthropologist and her
... all » Lithuanian colleague, Dr. Liucija
Baskauskas explore this issue as they visit a
group of Russians who have met for their
annual two week Pow Wow in an isolated
wooded area outside of St. Petersburg. The
Russians, predominantly couples with
young children, tell us they initially
became interested in Native American
culture via Hollywood films. Back on a
reservation in South Dakota, upon viewing a
video of the dances and elaborate costumes
of the Russians, a Lakota woman goodSeeking the Spirit
naturedly jokes, “They must've seen A Man
Bea Medicine & Liucija Baskauskas Called Horse". We see at close range the
careful attention to detail the Russians have
1999
invested in the recreation of the look and the
feel of Native America ritual and life. When
asked why they are doing this they tell us it is
for their children. They are seeking the "right
way to live", in order to impart authentic
Native American values to their offspring and
to escape the cycle of consumerism and the
negative aspects that they see in their own
culture. «