Toward a Feminist Perspective in Native History

SYLVIA VAN KIRK

University of Toronto

This paper is intended to provide a basis for discussion about the way in which a feminist perspective can help to illuminate what should be some vital areas in the field of native history. My concerns have arisen out of my own work about the role of women in the history of the fur trade in western Canada. Increasingly I have found that what I call "a feminist perspective" has given me a new and fruitful way of approaching traditional data and ultimately situating women, both native and white, in this historical con­ text. What I would like to do here is to express some of my ideas about how women's history and native history should intersect and to consider some questions about issues which are crying out for more investigation. Both women's history and native history are two quite new specializa­ tions within the discipline of history, and there are some interesting parallels in their development. Both have emerged in the last two decades or so be­ cause of the rise of corresponding movements for political liberation. Both the native rights movement and the women's rights movement seek to throw off the yokes of oppression and discrimination experienced by their respec­ tive constituencies; phrases such as "autonomy", "self-determination" and "economic opportunity" are watchwords of both movements. In this pro­ cess, history has become an important tool, not only in seeking explanations for the roots of domination, but also in the effort to reclaim a past which has been ignored and considered irrelevent to the development of the Canadian nation. I am sure that practitioners of both specializations would agree that to date neither women nor native people have been accorded their rightful place in Canadian history, and that they would further insist that until this is done, we will have failed to understand the real shape of Canadian

377 378 SYLVIA VAN KIRK history and society.1 With such similar backgrounds and common political concerns, one might assume that the findingso f one field would readily be incorporated into that of the other — that scholars of native history would be sensitive to the feminist perspective which insists that gender must be a primary category of analysis and that scholars of women's history would be sensi­ tive to the perspective that ethnicity is a crucial variable in determining a woman's experience. While the latter process is by no means complete, it is the lack of substantial progress in the former that I wish to focus on in this paper. Like Canadian history at large, most native history to date suffers from the lack of a feminist perspective. If one samples most of the major works in the fieldo f Indian-white relations (Ray 1978; Fisher 1975; Upton 1968), for example, one see that while they do provide significant insights into the impact of European contact upon Indian people, there is virtually no discussion of the fact that the sexes were affected quite differently by this process. Yet this is a dimension of considerable significance in the cultural adaptation and dislocation that has been experienced by all Indian societies. Indeed, it can be argued that a study of the role of women in pre-contact native societies is a vital foundation for any historical study of native peoples' response to European contact. In analyzing such failings in the literature to date it can be said that one of the problems is that so little research on native women in a historical context have been done. This unfortunately is true and this paper is partly a plea for this situation to be rectified from a truly ethnographic and feminist perspective. In 1982, Kathleen Jamieson was able to put together quite a comprehensive bibliography on native women in Canada (Jamieson 1983), but it was disappointing for its lack of contributions by historians. Much of the historical analysis to date has been attempted by social scientists, and while their pioneering efforts are very much to be applauded, I hope it will not seem ungenerous to express my reservations about their lack of sensitivity to the specifics of historical time and place. One anthropologist noted for her study of the Montagnais (Leacock 1980), for example, feels entitled to leap from a discussion of that tribe in the mid-17th century to the mid-20th as if the experience of the two centuries in between is somehow irrelevent. We need much more detailed study of the changing historical role of Indian women, differentiated by tribe, with a careful pin-pointing of the varying responses to the intrusion of differing aspects of European

JThe failure to integrate recent scholarship in native history into the mainstream of Canadian history has been pointedly demonstrated by James Walker (1983). I have discussed a similar lack of progress in women's history elsewhere (Van Kirk 1984). FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE 379 society. An Indian woman's response to the economic technology offered by a fur trader, for example, might be quite different from her response to the socio-religious programme imposed by a missionary. In our attempts to reclaim the historical experience of native women, the feminist model provides a further useful perspective in insisting that we situate women as actors on their historical stage. We need to understand that, however, limited an Indian woman's options may have been, she did in fact act within that frame of reference and that that frame of reference might be different from that of her male counterpart. This "active agent" model is an important antidote to the "passive victim" model in native his­ tory which in the final analysis only insults native people themselves. The feminist perspective does not ignore the issues of class or racial oppression but it does provide a framework for understanding the specific female ex­ perience within this larger context that carries us beyond the insights that Marxist scholarship has so far had to offer. The feminist perspective, for example, is a useful qualifier to the Marx­ ist enthusiasm for the egalitarian nature of pre-contact native societies in Canada. Anthropologist Eleanor Leacock claims that hunting and gath­ ering societies such as the Montagnais-Naskapi were egalitarian because the women made an essential economic contribution to the survival of the band, they had an important voice in the decision making process and en­ joyed considerable autonomy in domestic and reproductive concerns; his­ torian Ron Bourgeault (1983) makes an even more extravagant assessment of Chipewyan society where the idyllic nature of pre-contact sex roles was apparently destroyed by the fur trade. A feminist perspective demands that such statements be examined with caution and that the scholar guard against translating what are really relativistic claims into absolute ones. The assumption that the woman's essential economic role is a guarantee of high status and social equality is dubious. ~/Even though in hunting- gathering societies women contributed a good deal both in food and labour, it appears that the high status occupations were the male ones of big game hunter and warrior. As a Chipewyan derisively told fur trader David Thompson in the late 18th century: "What is a woman good for, she can­ not hunt, she is only to work and carry out things" (Van Kirk 1980:25). Among the Haida, only men could be carvers, an artistic endeavour which was held in greater esteem than the basketry and weaving of the women, although this too involved a great deal of skill (Mitchell and Franklin 1984). Much attention has been paid to the high status that accrued to Iroquoian women because of their role as agriculturalists, but this does not mean that the men considered them their equals; many Indian males were reluctant to take up agriculture because they considered it demeaning to do women's work. While native women might have their own quite elaborate ritual life, 380 SYLVIA VAN KIRK in many native societies the powerful taboos which excluded women from male ceremonials and councils emphasized the inferiority and polluting na­ ture of women. Bourgeault's claims for the equality of Chipewyan women are based on their economic role, and he ignores various social customs which point to the ways in which female autonomy could be seriously cir­ cumscribed. Women were often the prizes in wrestling matches among the men and, according to Samuel Hearne (1958), they had a wonderful way of making the women comply through fear. Among the Carrier tribe of northern British Columbia, a widow owed a year's service to her husband's family while carrying his ashes on her back; and among the Plains Indi­ ans, a husband could exact severe penalties for a wife's adultury (cf. Van Kirk 1980). This brief catalogue should be sufficient to illustrate that the "golden age" of equal relations between the sexes is probably not to be found among the pre-contact tribes of Canada. I agree with anthropolo­ gists Marjorie Mitchell and Anna Franklin who in their pioneering article on the history of Indian women in British Columbia (Mitchell and Franklin 1984:19) find an inherent tendency toward male dominance, even in such societies as the matrilineal Haida. Although it questions the likelihood of absolute equality for Indian women in pre-contact times, the feminist model can accommodate the con­ cept of relative equality. This, I think, is one of the exciting contributions that the feminist perspective can make to native history. A convincing ar­ gument can be made that relatively-speaking pre-contact Indian societies were less oppressive with regard to women than the European societies which subsequently sought to impose their own patterns of sex roles and values on native societies. That the strength, economic role, personal in­ dependence and influence of Indian women did not accord with European notions of women's proper roles and behaviour is evident from a wide range of accounts by missionaries, fur traders and travellers from the 17th through to the 19th centuries. The issue of strength is particularly interesting, as it is often cited as an innate justification for male dominance over women. HBC traders were frankly astonished at the strength of Chipewyan women, who were evidently much stronger than the men. This apparently did not compromise the Chipewyan male's sense of superiority, for Chief Matonabbee informed Samuel Hearne that "Women . . . were made for labour; one of them can carry, or haul, as much as two men can do" (Van Kirk 1980:18). This should lead us to consider how the supposed natural frailty of women is culturally conditioned, and that strength is not a necessary criterion for male supremacy. Much of Eleanor Leacock's argument about the equality of Montagnais women is derived from the fact that the Jesuit missionaries in the early 17th FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE 381 century were aghast at the domestic power and sexual freedom enjoyed by Montagnais women. This did not sit well with the Jesuits who tried to get the Montagnais men to bring the women into line and be like the French where women did not rule their husbands (cf. Leacock 1980:30-35). Whatever the relative equality of Indian women actually was in pre- contact societies, and it obviously varied, there is a consensus developing that the Indian woman's position declined as a result of European contact and the process of colonization. As Mitchell puts it (Mitchell and Franklin 1980:23), Indian women became subject to "a new and more devastat­ ing form of male domination." The fascinating challenge for the feminist ethnohistorian is now to elaborate the contours and complexities of this process. In this context, I find that again I have reservations about the claims of Leacock and Bourgeault that the subjugation of Indian women occurs almost immediately with the fur trade through the introduction of commodity production and exchange; it seems to me here that they have accepted Engel's hypothesis a priori, and have not subjected this theory to systematic, specific historical analysis. Socioligist Karen Anderson challenges this argument in her comparative study of the Montagnais-Naskapi and the Huron in the early 17th century (Anderson 1985). While both tribes were much affected by the fur trade, Montagnais-Naskapi women experienced considerable subordination while the Huron women did not. She finds that among the more crucial variables was the extent to which the Jesuits were able to impose the controlling mechanisms of European church and state upon the Montagnais-Naskapi at Sillery by destroying their economic base and undermining traditional social relations between the sexes. The Jesuits did not have the same success in Huronia where the women were able to maintain their "relatively undominated position". Anderson's line of reasoning seems to me a fruitful framework for in­ vestigation in Canadian native women's history. When the agency of white contact is simply the fur trade, providing the basis for what is called "undi­ rected social change" it seems to me that the response and experience of Indian women will be quite different than when subject to a period of "di­ rected social change", when agents of acculturation deliberately seek to stamp out traditional customs and attack traditional sex roles. While the fur trade was not of unalloyed benefit to Indian women, evi­ dence gathered in my own research and that of Jennifer Brown (cf. Brown 1980) indicates that most Indian women felt they had something to gain from it. We see Cree and Chipewyan women in Rupert's Land, for example, actively promoting the trade and participating in it, both directly and indi­ rectly. In one notable instance, a Chipewyan woman named Thanadelthur was the chief agent in establishing trade between her tribe and the Hud- 382 SYLVIA VAN KIRK

son's Bay Company in 1716. 1 must say that it does scant justice to the Chipewyan to view Thanadelthur, as Bourgeault does, simply as the insti­ gator of her people's exploitation. The dynamics of the trade were much more complex than this, and it. is surely significant that in the oral tra­ dition of the Chipewyan, recorded in the 20th century, Thanadelthur was regarded as a heroine (cf. Van Kirk 1980:68 70; Bourgeault 1983:56). In attempting to account for the women's interest in the trade, I have suggested that this was because they, perhaps even mon; than their men folk, desired access to European technology which had the potential to lighten their onerous work role. As Nor'Wester David Thompson observed, "Show an Indian woman a needle or an awl and she will gladly give her finest skin for it" (Van Kirk 1980:72). This statement implies women's di­ rect involvement in commodity exchange, and indeed the sexual division of labour in terms of trapping pelts that was common among the Algonquian has been ignored by most historians, contrary to the observations of con­ temporaries. Again to quote Thompson, "Among the Natives, the snaring of hares and trapping of Martens are the business of the Women and be­ come their property for trade." While it is true that men were the principal hunters and traders, the women were still very much part of the scene, both in the processing of fur, leather and meat and in the bargaining. Among the Chipewyan observed Alexander Mackenzie, the women possessed "a very considerable influence on the traffic with Europeans" (Van Kirk 1980:71). To date, however, there has been little systematic study of the way in which the fur trade actually affected Indian women's material and social lives in the context of their tribal societies.2 Fascinating questions arise: what was the rate at which European goods were utilized by Indian women? How did this affect the pattern of women's work? Did European technol­ ogy provide for an intensification of female art forms as it appears to have done for Indian males? Of course, there needs to be much more analysis of the negative aspects of the fur trade alcohol and disease especially - as well. What impact did epidemics have on sex ratios and what are the implications for social organization? Are there sex-specific aspects to the problems associated with the introduction of alcohol? James Isham's 18th-century account of the Cree, for example, indicates that initially Cree women around the HBC posts had greater exposure to alcohol than did the men since women were given it in payment for making mocassins and snowshoes, at a time when alcohol was not generally traded (cf. Van Kirk 1980:29). The whole question of the relationship between alcohol and vio­ lence against women remains to be investigated. Fur trade literature pro-

The studies of Jennifer Brown and myself focus on the experience of nnli who married fur traders, a relatively small group in terms of the whole. FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE 383 vides considerable documentation of the victimization of women as the result of drinking bouts, but the historical dimensions of this problem have never been subjected to systematic analysis. In spite of these problems, native people appear to have been able to maintain considerable control over their lives in the fur trade, especially when compared to the later reserve experience. Here the loss of traditional economic resources was compounded with a loss of identity and autonomy, resulting from a political and cultural assault directed by agents of Euro­ pean society, namely the Indian agent and the missionary. In assessing the various schemes propounded for "civilizing" the Indian, an issue which has been largely ignored is that inherent in these schemes was an attack on the traditional division of labour and social relations between the sexes of most Indian tribes. Frequently, for example, one findscomment s from mission­ aries decrying the amount of work done by Indian women as inappropriate and uncivilized, and attributing this to the inadequacy or laziness of Indian males. Their goal was to make the Indian male assume his responsibility as the breadwinner, with the Indian woman assuming her proper place as a domesticated dependant. The problems created by the application of such a scheme, especially in an agricultural Indian society, is shown in Diane Rothenberg's (1980) fascinating study of the Seneca women's response to the civilizing program which Quaker missionaries attempted to introduce in the late 18th century. The Quakers wanted the Seneca men to become the agriculturalists instead of the women and to divide the reserve up into private holdings. The Seneca were able to resist these plans, but what is particularly regrettable is that Seneca women were denied access to Euro­ pean agricultural technology which they were interested in utilizing, simply because this was not deemed an appropriate occupation for women. The feminist framework employed by Rothenberg illuminates an important di­ mension of the impact of the missionary agenda upon native people, and it is to be hoped that such an approach will be applied more to the Canadian scene. We also need to know much more about the way in which Indian women have been able, in spite of acculturative pressures, to maintain and adapt their traditional economic roles, be it in selling native crafts or work­ ing in the fish canneries in British Columbia. In terms of the educational programmes devised by white society for native children the racial and class biases of such plans also need to be analysed in a sex-specific way. While the lack of training for Indian boys has certainly been lamentable, so too has been the sex-role stereotyped education imposed on Indian girls. For much of the modern period, the most that was envisioned for native girls was that they become domestic servants; indeed Mitchell (1984:24-25) shows that female pupils were actually used as servants in Indian residential schools. r 384 SYLVIA VAN KIRK

A sex-role perspective on the history of Indian education would also provide insight into the way in which the European curriculum was loaded with moral judgments about appropriate social behaviour and relations be­ tween the sexes. The missionary proscriptions for native girls in Red River, for example, included cutting them off from their Indian mothers, so that they could be better inculcated with a puritanical moral code in which female chastity and subservience to male authority was emphasized. Tra­ ditionally, historical accounts of Indian women's response to Christianity have been concerned to glorify those who were leading converts — consider why the character of Kateri Tekakawitha is well-known, for example — but a more critical line of inquiry is beginning to show that there was also a pattern of resistance on the part of Indian women to missionary preaching. Leacock, (1980:32-33) for example, demonstrates that many Montagnais women did not take kindly to the Jesuits undermining of their traditional personal autonomy, while there is mounting evidence that Huron women also worked against the Jesuits because they had more to lose than their male counterparts (Anderson 1985:58). A fascinating insight into the importance of personal autonomy to In­ dian women emerges in the fur trade literature, where there is much per­ plexed talk about how strong-willed and stubborn Indian wives were. The conflicts which arose reveal that the Indian wives of the fur traders were struggling to maintain control in what had suddenly become a more patriar­ chal world. White husbands now intervened in areas which had traditionally been the women's preserve, ignoring post-partum taboos and discouraging the customary long periods of nursing. These practices, in part birth con­ trol techniques, had contributed to Indian women having some control over birth spacing; that they were loosing this control is evidenced by a dra­ matic rise in the birth rate among fur trader's wives. Historical literature certainly does contain considerable praise for Indian women's traditional child-birth and infant care techniques. An important question for further research would be to trace the process through which these traditions were interfered with, and what the relationship might be between this and more contemporary problems relating to Indian maternal and infant welfare. In fur trade society, one of the greatest traumas for Indian moth­ ers would have been to lose control over child-rearing, a customary pre­ serve. Now, however, white fathers arbitrarily decided it was best to send their children away to be educated in the white world. We need to know more about the reaction of Indian mothers as this process was repeated in the later period with the enforced sending of children away to residen­ tial schools. Other native women undoubtedly shared the view of a group of Micmac women in Nova Scotia in the 1840s, who resisted the plan to send their children to white schools "because, when so educated it would FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE 385 break off the natural ties of affection and association between them and their Tribe, and mutual dislike and contempt would be the result" (Upton 1968:21). Suggestions of student resistance are also beginning to emerge, which hint at a sex-specific dimension. Mitchell (1984:25) quotes a Roman Catholic teacher in British Columbia in the late 19th century as saying that the girls were always more difficult to handle than the boys: "The teaching missionaries always had difficulty with the girls . . . the girls were more capricious and very, very hard to please." This can be interpreted as a sort of back-handed compliment. Perhaps nothing is more symbolic of the new level of subordination that white society sought to impose on Indian women than the passing of a series of federal Indian Acts in the late 19 th century. Inherent in these acts were white patriarchal concepts with regard to women, that were often quite contrary to traditional native concepts. In the Indian Act of 1869, an Indian is defined in male terms as "any male person of Indian blood reputed to belong to a particular band." Women achieved Indian status only through their relationship to men, either as daughters or wives. As Kathleen Jamieson in her pioneering study Indian Women and the Law: Citizens Minus (1978:38) states, the government intended to bring Indians into line with European thinking on this subject: "Indian women should be subject to their husbands as were other women. Their children were his children alone in law. It was inconceivable that an Indian woman should be able to own and transmit property and rights to her children." Such definitions, of course, violated traditional Indian notions of kinship, particularly in matrilineal and matrilocal societies such as the Iroquois. Until 1951, the Indian Act also deprived Indian women of any formal political rights. The band councils, which were set up in the 19th century, were to be comprised of men only elected by men only. Again this ran counter to traditional practices, whether it be women's involvement in the group decision making process of the band or the more formalized process as among the Iroquois where the clan matrons chose the sachems or chiefs who made up the Council of the Iroquois. One wonders to what extent native women have still been able to exert an influence in band politics, or to what extent they have been able to reclaim their political voice since 1951. Likely, if white women's experience is any indication, it has proved difficult to break into a domain where women have been excluded for so long. It should also be noted that under the Indian Act an Indian women could be subject to particular punitive measures if they failed to measure up to European standards of morality. Until 1951, an Indian agent could deny Indian status to the illegitimate child of an Indian woman. Mitchell cites cases from British Columbia where this law was used deliberately 386 SYLVIA VAN KIRK

against Indian women who were perceived as being politically troublesome or allegedly promiscuous. Again such action appears in defiance of Indian custom. Although the Indian Commission in Lower Canada in the 1840s worried about illegitimacy, it acknowledged that among the Indians them­ selves events of this nature did not cast a stigma upon the mother, nor upon the children who were usually adopted into the tribe (Jamieson 1978:23). I think it is important to emphasize the way in which the Indian Act has discriminated against Indian women in general, because the focus of atten­ tion in recent years has been so much on the discrimination against Indian women who have "married out", who on marrying white men or non-status Indians have lost their Indian status as have their children. Technically, the Conservative Government has recently righted this wrong, but the bill to revise this aspect of the Indian Act was not passed without tremendous controversy, some of the hostility coming from native groups themselves. Historically, one of the significant aspects of this question is that this arbitrary denial of native women's rights constituted a violation of Indian notions of kinship and contradicted patterns of miscegenation which had a long history during the fur trade era. In my work, I have examined the extensive, really quite unique Canadian pattern of intermarriage that de­ veloped between incoming white traders and native women. This pattern indeed exemplifies one of the ways in which the fur trade had significantly different implications for Indian women than it did for their male counter­ parts. But from the Indian point of view, this process was never regarded as marrying out. Indeed, it was regarded in quite the opposite way, with marriage being an important means of incorporating the traders into na­ tive kinships networks. The Indians were insistant that the whites abide by their marital customs, including the payment of bride price. Throughout the 18th century on Hudson's Bay, on the dissolution of a country marriage, the wife and her children were welcomed back into the tribe. The legacy of the fur trade obviously had little to do with Indian Act legislation in the mid-19th century. Depriving Indian women who married non-Indians of their status appears to have been primarily a cost-saving measure on the part of the Indian department, as the firstsuggestio n of this practice is to be found in the context of payment of Indian presents. The Bagot Commission which investigated Indian affairs in the Canadas in the 1840s noted approvingly: "The principle has been lately sanctioned by the Governor General, who has directed that no Indian woman, living, married or otherwise, with a whiteman shall receive presents" (Leslie 1982:42). This principle was extended in the Indian Act to apply to reserve rights and band monies. In the late 19th century, an Indian woman who married a non-Indian was deprived of her legal right to hold land on the reserve, her children were denied Indian status, but she could continue on the band list FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE 387 to collect her annuity, unless she chose a lump sum commutation. Under the 1951 Indian Act, no choice remained — any woman who married out was subject to involuntary enfranchisement, meaning the complete loss of Indian status. From the Department of Indian Affairs point of view, this was yet another way of hastening assimilation which has always been an underlying objective of Indian Policy in Canada. The physical and psychological dislocation that has been suffered by hundreds of native women, and the disruptive effect that this has had on native families and groups has not yet been the subject of any systematic study. We need to hear native women's voices on this subject — what motivated individuals to make the choices they did, what have been the consequences both for them and their families? This might be the subject of a rich oral history project, if sensitively undertaken. A new chapter in this story has now begun to unfold, and one must hope that native women now do not find themselves penalized in other ways as the government grapples with the practical and financial implications of making amends for decades of injustice. In the struggle to amend the Indian Act, the charge was frequently hurled about that white feminists were interfering in native concerns, that feminism was a foreign import of which native women should beware. I hope that I will have demonstrated that this is not the case; rather white society's dominance over Indian people in the last several hundred years has resulted in the subversion of the active and integral socio- economic role that Indian women once played in their societies. The patriarchal values of European society as symbolized in the Indian Act have unfortunately become internalized in many cases. I would like to close then, by saying that rights for Indian women should not be seen as being at odds with Indian rights in general. Without overly- glorifying native women's traditional experience, it can be argued that a reclamation of the lost roles of native women constitutes an important basis from which to build a just society for native people in the future.

REFERENCES Anderson, Karen 1985 Commodity Exchange and Subordination: Montagnais-Naskapi and Huron Women, 1600-1650. Signs 2:48-62.

Bourgeault, Ron 1983 The Indian, the Metis and the Fur Trade: Class, Sexism and Racism in the Transition from "Communism" to Capitalism. Studies in Political Economy 12:45-80. 388 SYLVIA VAN KIRK

Fisher, Robin 1975 Culture and Conflict: Indian European Relations in British Columbia 1774-1890. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Hearne, Samuel 1958 A Journey to the Northern Ocean. Richard Glover ed. Toronto: Macmil- lan.

Jamieson, Kathleen 1978 Indian Women and the Law in Canada: Citizens Minus. Ottawa: Advi­ sory Council on the Status of Women.

1983 Native Women in Canada. A Selected Bibliography. Ottawa: Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Leacock, Eleanor 1980 Montagnais Women and the Jesuit Program for Colonization. Pp. 25-42 in Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives. MonaEtienne and Eleanor Leacock, eds. New York: Praeger.

Leslie, John 1982 The Bagot Commission: Creating a Corporate Memory for the Indian Department. Pp. 31-52 in Canadian Historical Association Historical Papers. Ottawa.

Mitchell, Marjorie, and Anna Franklin 1984 When You Don't know the Language, Listen to the Silence: An Historical Overview of Native Indian Women in British Columbia. Pp. 17-36 in Not Just Pin Money: Selected Essays on the History of Women's Work in British Columbia. Barbara Latham and Roberta Pazdro, eds. Victoria: Camosun College.

Ray, Arthur 1978 Indians in the Fur Trade. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Rothenberg, Diane 1980 The Mothers of the Nation: Seneca Resistance to Quaker Intervention. Pp. 63-87 in Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives. Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, eds. New York: Praeger.

Upton, Leslie 1979 Micmacs and Colonists. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

1975 Indian Policy in Colonial Nova Scotia, 1783-1871. Acadiensis 1:3-31.

Van Kirk, Sylvia 1980 "Many Tender Ties": Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670-1870. Win­ nipeg: Watson and Dwyer. FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE 389

1984 What Has the Feminist Perspective Done for Canadian History? Pp. 43- 58 in Knowledge Reconsidered. Ottawa: Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women.

Walker, James 1983 The Indian in Canadian Historical Writing. 1972-1982. Pp. 340-357 in As Long as the Sun Shines and the Water Flows. Tony Lussier and Ian Getty, eds. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.