1 Introduction to "Indigenous Women: The State of Our Nations"

Bonita Lawrence and Kim Anderson

"Indigenous Women: The State of Our underpin whose perspectives are prioritized are Nations" originated with our desire, as co-editors, to obvious; what is less clear are the ways in which the continue a working relationship that began with the gender divisions forced on us by the colonizer may anthology Strong Women Stories: Native Vision and have resulted in different definitions, among men Community Survival (2003). In Strong Women and women, of "sovereignty" and "nationhood." Stories, the contributors addressed the range of issues that Aboriginal women take on as they work WHERE ARE YOUR WOMEN? to ensure the survival of our communities. A number of them examined the complex legal The absence of Aboriginal women in categories through which classifies politics is rooted in our history, as coined in the Nativeness, and explored how being labelled as a "Where are your women?" question posed by "C-31 Indian," or as "non-status" or "Metis," Cherokee Chief Attakullakulla upon meeting a affected their ability to feel a sense of belonging colonial (US) delegation. As Marilou within their own and other Native communities. Awiakta reports, Chief Attakullakulla's party Other women addressed issues of child-rearing, included women "as famous in war, as powerful in schooling, sexuality, community leadership, women the council," while the US party included only men and "traditionalism," aging, violence against women (1993, 9). In terms of governance, where were (are) and children and healing. Notably absent in these their women - and what has happened to our accounts, however, were articles that explicitly Indigenous female political authority, vision, voice explored the politics of sovereignty. This absence and direction? both intrigued and troubled us, and prompted us to We know that colonial governments ask the contributors to this journal to write about historically refused to negotiate with Indigenous Aboriginal women and nationhood. women, accepting only male representatives when As a starting point, we knew that discussing terms of relationship. They then actively "community issues" and "sovereignty issues" have disempowered women by attacking the clan often been separated within our communities. systems and other forms of female representation, "Sovereignty issues," as articulated by the formal and by making it illegal for Indian women in leadership (largely male) have addressed land Canada to take part in the band councils that claims and constitutional battles, in the courts and replaced traditional Indigenous governments. The within government circles. "Community issues," as legacy of the Indian Act, in the form of all-male articulated by the informal leadership (largely representation, has shaped the nation to nation female), have encompassed a range of struggles, discourse since then. This has set the stage for a including addressing violence against women and political representation that is not shaped by children, alcoholism and other addictions, the health women's ways of knowing the world. needs of children and elders, and education that is Native women have been far from silent culture-based and community controlled. Too often, about community needs and priorities, but our the agendas of the formal leadership are prioritized, voices are only beginning to be heard politically at while the informal leadership's concerns receive the national and international levels. More secondary attention. The gender divisions that Aboriginal women are entering formal leadership

Atlantis, Volume 29.2, Spring/Summer 2005 2 Lawrence & Anderson positions nationally and are increasingly addressing broke down, their struggle gradually evolved into international forums on Indigenous issues, yet the the larger issue of loss of Indian status. This reality of ongoing ties our hands. Our ultimately led Sandra Lovelace to the United families and communities require constant attention Nations (UN), where she argued that Section because we continue to move from crisis to crisis. 12(1)(b) of the Indian Act, through which Indian As primary caregivers, these responsibilities weigh women lost their status, was in violation of Article heavily on us. 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and There have been other reasons for us not Political Rights, which protects the rights of taking active roles in formal political structures. minority groups to enjoy their culture, practise their Some Aboriginal women have sought a broader traditions, and use their language in community vision than the band council system forced on our with others from their group. In 1981, the UN ruled communities and so tightly controlled by Canada. against Canada, and found that Lovelace had been These women may have maintained traditional denied her cultural rights under Article 27, thereby leadership as clan mothers, or have worked in other forcing Canada to change the Indian Act in 1985 ways to re-awaken or strengthen the traditional (Lawrence 2004). systems of government in their nations. However, What has been less well documented than other Aboriginal women, particularly those who the above interventions, however, are the ways in have struggled against being formally expelled from which gendered struggles against colonialism have their nations because of gender discrimination in the all too frequently been reduced to "women's issues" Indian Act, have borne the brunt of actually having by the formal male leadership, and then presented formal political structures work against them. as a wholesale threat to sovereignty. The now It is becoming increasingly well-known notorious incident when the National Indian that a critical act of political resistance on the part Brotherhood (predecessor of the Assembly of First of Native women has been against the Indian Act Nations), when faced with the Lavell and Bedard clause that expelled Indian women who had married case, actually lined up, with Canada, to be non-Indians from their communities, while allowing intervenors against Lavell and Bedard (Jamieson Indian men to bestow Indian status on their white 1978), is only one example. There are others. When wives. Indian women struggled long and hard the Lavell and Bedard decision clearly foreclosed against this legislation which disenfranchised them any possibility of legal redress within Canada, Mary from the life of their nations while in many places Two-Axe Early and sixty other women from enabling white women to replace them. The Kahnewake attempted to take Canada's gender organization "Indian Rights for Indian Women," discrimination into the international arena by initiated by the late Mary Two-Axe Early, was attending the International Women's Year probably one of the earliest examples of Native conference in City in 1975. They returned women's resistance to this gendered form of to find that their band council had served them colonialism. However, in the early 1970s, when eviction notices (Jamieson 1979). Meanwhile, the aspects of overt racial inequality within the Indian struggle of the Tobique women for housing and Act were overturned in the Drybones case, two against loss of status, which they waged at one Native women, Jeannette Corbiere Lavell and Irene point by occupying their band office, resulted not Bedard, attempted to have the overt gender only in threats of arrest by the leadership but also inquality within the Act overturned by challenging continuous physical violence against them and their the loss of their Indian status in the courts. families. This happened to such an extent that the Ultimately, however, the Supreme Court judgment American Indian Movement actually offered to in Lavell and Bedard maintained the gender come into the community to protect them (Silman discrimination which had been so central to Native 1987). women's colonial disempowerment. Subsequently, Against this background, it is perhaps not when the women of Tobique First Nation in New surprising that the Native Women's Association of Brunswick began to challenge the manner in which Canada did not feel sufficiently "represented" by housing on reserve was assigned only to men, the Assembly of First Nations, and therefore leaving their families homeless when marriages struggled, fruitlessly, to get a seat for status Indian , Volume 29.2 3 women at the table during the 1982 talks around through many Native communities in Canada, repatriating the constitution. It is also not surprising fragmenting decolonization efforts in a number of that the Métis National Council of Women has been ways and marginalizing women's voices within forced into the courts in their attempts to bring communities. Because gender discrimination has about national representation of Métis women's been a central means through which the voices. These struggles all highlight the extent to colonization of Native communities has taken place, which the formal male political leadership has, in particularly in Canada, addressing the general, refused to address colonialism when marginalization and devaluation of women's voices women, rather than men, are targeted, and why a becomes central to decolonization. section of Native women activists have lost faith in Viewed this way, the political choices these organizations to represent them. facing our communities are not, as they are Indeed, it is only since 1985, when frequently articulated, between "sovereignty" changes in the Indian Act began to threaten the (men's concerns) and "community healing" children of Indian men as well as Indian women (women's concerns). They are about different ways with loss of status, that the formal male leadership of understanding sovereignty. In the shutting out of has begun to see loss of status as the sovereignty women's voices from sovereignty struggles, it is issue that it has always been.1 The implications of impossible for Native women not to fear that this continuous disregard for sovereignty violations "sovereignty," as the formal male leadership when only women are affected are staggering. Over expresses it, may ultimately involve gendered and the past one hundred and twenty-five years, racialized formulations of nationhood. And yet, so approximately 25,000 women and their descendants pervasive has been the devaluation of women's were expelled, by colonial legislation, from their voices by the Indian Act, that many of us take for homes and communities. The most conservative granted that Native men's frameworks of estimates suggest that these women had between sovereignty issues are the only ways to speak of half a million and one million descendents, within sovereignty and nationhood at all. two generations of first losing status. With the exception of the 127,000 who were reinstated in WHERE ARE THE INDIANS? 1985, almost all of these individuals were permanently lost to their nations; the numbers Colonization has silenced us in other approach two million if the third generation is taken arenas as well. Within academia, Aboriginal into account (Lawrence 2004). Indeed, by the time women's voices have been largely absent within the the Indian Act was changed in 1985, there were growing body of postcolonial scholarship on only 350,000 Status Indians still listed on the nationalism. The stunning extent of marginalization Department of Indian Affairs Indian Register of both Aboriginal men and women within (Holmes 1987). Canadian universities, in particular, has a central There are other ways in which women's role to play in this. In most universities across concerns have been dismissed by isolating and Canada, you can count the number of Native privatizing them as "individual concerns." A academics, male or female, on the fingers of one number of Native writers, including Emma hand. With such under-representation, those few LaRocque, addressing gender bias in community Aboriginal women who are in the academy have justice inititives (1997), and Madeleine Dion Stout, found that their highest priorities involve finding writing about violence against women (1994), have ways to "bring their communities with them." They commented on the ways in which the rights of men are busy working to utilize academic frameworks to in our communities are continuously framed as address community needs, rather than addressing "collective rights," while women's efforts to protect issues of nationalism on a more abstract level. themselves are continuously framed as demands for Perhaps more to the point, the reality is "individual rights." These so-called "individual" that for Aboriginal people, there is nothing rights are then juxtaposed to "collective rights" as postcolonial about our situation! We find ourselves obstacles to sovereignty. battling non-stop efforts to erase our existence as Gender divisions, then, run like a fault line peoples within Canada. Our Indigenous nations 4 Lawrence & Anderson remain dismembered, their very existence miscast states - is more fluid, but many more borders as the band-level governments erroneously called remain. There is an ongoing need for an "First Nations" which are the only levels of international discourse on nation-building created government that Canada recognizes. Our identities by Indigenous women. The international gatherings are fragmented from the attack on our cultures and of Indigenous women which are happening communities, and by legal definitions of throughout the Americas are one manifestation of "Indianness" that divide us and encourage us to this. We hope that this edition of Atlantis can struggle amongst ourselves for greater access to the stimulate others to take up and enlarge on this state financial support that keeps many of our dialogue. communities alive. In these ongoing attempts to obliterate our THE CONTRIBUTIONS presence from Canada, Native women in academia are struggling to clarify who we were before the From the start, we found that there was a Indian Act redefined our identities, usually through tension within the submissions between those working with elders on cultural recovery. We are women who were accustomed to writing about also trying to understand who we might become, women's roles in community issues, without through the visions of our youth and our artists. regarding this as nation-building, and the women This process involves defining and writing about who were accustomed to writing about nation- the realities we face in our own ways. In the end, building, but in ways that left out any references to postcolonial scholarship on hybridity and the women. It was clear that the contributors were positioning of women within nationalist movements struggling with how to write about sovereignty or may have some value in addressing some of the nation-building in women's terms, and with how to issues Native women are currently involved in. But see community activism as part of sovereignty we need to address these issues in a way that makes struggles or nation-building. sense to our realities which, at present, has little to We have loosely grouped the final do with any level of postcolonial discourse. selection of essays into four categories. The first group of articles focuses on the so-called "social ENGAGING IN THE DIALOGUE issues" that have long been the purview of women and which highlight the importance of healing to Trying to understand what Indigenous decolonization. Secondly, there are articles that female visions of nationhood and the future are out directly address the politics of sovereignty / there, we sent out a call for papers internationally. self-determination or Indigenous governance, The instantaneous nature of how email has become frequently in ways which demand a rethinking, not our "bush telegraph" was immediately apparent: only of the relationships between individuals and within days of issuing the call for papers, inquiries communities but between Native communities and poured in from Indigenous women in , Canada. Thirdly, there are writings that address New Zealand, Latin America and the United States. traditional knowledge, and its centrality to ways of We even received inquiries from Sami women in maintaining our nationhood. And finally, the writers Norway. Ultimately, however, as the reality of press take on issues of representation, not only how we deadlines approached, geographic distance are represented in the colonizer's eyes, but more re-asserted itself. Few of the international importantly, how we see ourselves represented in contributions could be made ready for publication relation to each other. Together with creative in time. The vicissitudes of translating from other writing and poetry, this collection represents a first languages, contextualizing sovereignty struggles in attempt for us as co-editors to have Aboriginal international settings, and the multiple pressures on women speak to each other in writing, specifically women's time took its toll. about the state of our nations. In the end, we are happy to present a fine As many of us have learned from our collection of articles out of Canada and the United mothers, sovereignty must begin with the individual States. This means that at least one border - the one and it is impossible to be sovereign peoples when separating those colonized by Anglo-American the very safety and well-being of women and Atlantis, Volume 29.2 5 children are at risk. We therefore begin this issue between individual and collective with two articles that link the politics of the self-determination to the diverse circumstances of individual to the politics of sovereignty. In their respective nations. "Decolonising the Body: Restoring Sacred Vitality," Val Napoleon has contributed a complex Alannah Earl Young and Denise Nadeau bring us analysis of the circumstances facing her home right into the female body with an article about their community, the Saulteau First Nation, in Northern work with women from Vancouver's downtown British Columbia. Napoleon locates the eastside. They demonstrate how regeneration and particularities of this community's experience healing from violence can begin from this bodily (cultural isolation and location in another nation's location. In rediscovering the "sacred vitality" of territory) within the larger framework of British our bodies, we have the potential to rebuild home Columbia colonial policies that deliberately and nation in the most powerful and elemental way. established tiny and fragmented reserves, and set up We often hear the phrases "our children are band and reserve structures which would cut across out future" and "our children are the heart of our the traditional legal orders and political structures of nations." The state of our nations thus depends on the Indigenous nations of the region. Addressing the how we rectify the injustices to our children of the flaws in notions of self-determination based on past and how we ensure the well-being of the western liberal concepts of autonomy, Napoleon children of present and future. We had a desire to examines Nedelsky's notion of personal autonomy hear from those who are most implicated in this that is social and relational, and finds potential for processes. We were fortunate to have received a building structures which promote collective beautiful article entitled "The Ultimate Betrayal: cohesion and enable the Saulteau First Nation to Claiming and Re-Claiming Cultural Identity" from conceptualize new forms of governance. Tamara Kulusic, who outlines the history and Natasha Powers, on the other hand, current situation of Aboriginal child welfare in articulates new ways of understanding treaty Canada, starting and concluding with her own story relationships. She does this in a context where as an adoptee. contemporary Mi'kmaq resistance to ongoing In a "special Native Women's edition" of colonization is based on popular understandings of a feminist journal, some individuals might find it the rights affirmed in the terms of the treaty of ironic that, although the guest editors have struggled peace and friendship between the Mi'kmaq and the to assert the importance of Native women's voices, British. Powers takes guidance from stories about neither of us have held strong positions about Glooscap and uses Nedelsky's concept of autonomy feminism. Ultimately, we have found the arguments as inter-dependence and relationship to suggest that by Aboriginal women which either attack or support the Mi'kmaq, in negotiating the peace treaty, were feminism to be less useful than the importance of fundamentally concerned not with defining exact Native women finding their own strengths from terms of co-existence, but with establishing within their own heritage. Furthermore, like relationships of mutual respect. postcolonial theory, feminism in general may have Reinterpretation of the roles of Indigenous both positive and negative aspects for Native women in their nations (as well as in Canadian women to work through, accept or discard. It is society) is central to the next two articles. Kahente therefore not surprising that as Aboriginal women Horn-Miller, in "Otiyaner: The 'Women's Path' begin to explicitly address the politics of nation- Through Colonialism," focuses squarely on building, they are not afraid to mine feminist Indigenous women's tellings of their own history, sources for their potential insights. Both Val highlighting both the effects of colonization on Napoleon, with "Aboriginal Self Determination: Haudenosaunee women, and their long resistance. Individual Self and Collective Selves," and Natasha Horn-Miller links the reawakening of knowledge of Powers, with "Beyond Cultural Differences: women's power explicitly to cultural and political Interpreting a Treaty Between the Mi'kmaq and regeneration of sovereignty, noting that cultural British at Belcher's Farm, 1761," analyse aspects of identity is central to Haudenosaunee empowerment. sovereignty, and have applied the ideas of feminist For many of us who are attempting to write legal scholar Jennifer Nedelsky on the relationship about women in our own communities, how we 6 Lawrence & Anderson know what we know is important. In "After the Fur relearn our languages because to speak one's Trade: First Nations Women in Canadian History, Indigenous language is to understand the distinct 1850-1950," Janice Forsyth provides a thoughtful worldview of one's people. Jeane Breinig has overview of many of the basic concepts about contributed a wonderful article about her mother Native women and colonization that have been "Wahlgidouk," a woman of eighty-four who has articulated by Canadian historians in the past two worked diligently to regain and pass on the Haida decades. As historiography, her article asks crucial language to the people that have been scattered questions about the common-sense assumptions that from their original communities. Breinig we may be relying on in formulating our views of contexualizes the language and culture recovery the past. Perhaps not surprisingly, she also provides within the history of her people, giving a solid stunning evidence of the centrality of gender in the understanding of how language and historical suppression of plains Indian communities during memory are a central part of sovereignty struggles. this era, and the emergence of the Canadian nation. In another exploration of traditional However, echoing the concerns of Devon Mihesuah knowledge, Deborah McGregor raises some critical (2003), Forsyth also suggests that feminist questions about neo-colonial practices related to historians focusing on Native women need to begin "TEK," the appropriation of traditional ecological to work with Aboriginal women within the context knowledge by the resource sector. She speaks from of their communities. her perspective as a scholar and an Indigenous A central concern for First Nations women woman who wishes to maintain an ongoing living within their communities is the manner in which the relationship to the land. The article maps out the Indian Act does not include provisions for the contradictions that she faces in terms of her work division of reserve-based real property when relative to TEK. marriages break down. "Divorce and Real Property To be sovereign peoples, we need to have on American Indian Reservations: Lessons for First the right to self-representation, and there are two Nations and Canada," by Joseph Thomas Flies articles in this collection that address this need. Away, Carrie Garrow and Miriam Jorgensen, Emerance Baker's "Loving Indianness" provides an provides valuable insights which Native women in inspiring inquiry into how we can rewrite ourselves Canada need to seriously consider. This paper, as protagonists within our own Indigenous story. based on extensive research among four different She demonstrates how we live these experiences, as tribal regimes, demonstrates clearly what works the article is also a telling of Baker's personal story. best for American Indian women. The authors also If we love ourselves back into being as Aboriginal grapple with perceived conflicts between gender women, surely we can reclaim much of the territory rights and sovereignty rights, suggesting that the that has been lost. directions which bands take in addressing such It has long been acknowledged that our "women's issues" as matrimonial property rights artists are in many respects our greatest leaders have everything to do with sovereignty and the today. In "Re-constructing the Colonizer: survival of our nations. Self-Representation by First Nations Artists," The next series of articles deal with Shandra Spears takes a look at how we tell our traditional knowledge. The management of stories in a setting that is still colonized. Spears traditional knowledge is undoubtedly a sovereignty examines how colonizer images of "the Indian" issue. We are at a critical time of defining how to establish Canadians in a position of dominance create borders around our intellectual property, our relative to Aboriginal people, and the strategies that knowledge, philosophies, worldviews, and ways of Aboriginal artists employ to subvert those images being. How do we prevent a neocolonial mining of and create other ones, images that challenge us to these resources? How do we regain our foothold in re-imagine ourselves as unique and special and this territory for ourselves and for the future whole, and that empower us and heal us. generations? In our Community Voices section, we have One of the key factors in Indigenous two contributors who address viscerally the turmoil epistemology and knowledge is language. Our of their nation's sovereignty struggles. Heather elders are continually reminding us of the need to Majaury and Lynn Gehl are two Algonquin activists Atlantis, Volume 29.2 7 who describe the multiple ways in which the strengthen us in the fractured reality of the present. Ottawa Valley land claim is accelerating colonial In the end, nationhood is all about finding divisions within Algonquin communities that were home. Jennifer Fox Bennett gives us a poetic created by two centuries of denial of their description of what home means to her, by taking us sovereignty. on a journey to her homeland of Wikwemikong The poetry and fiction in this collection First Nation. Home is also the Sassafras tree of remind us how important it is to include our artists Caitlin Kight's poem "Sassafras," and as personified in defining our nations. We enter the journal by way in the father in Pamela Dudoward's poem, "When." of Jaime Koebel's picture on the front cover; a In "Living Language," by Molly McGlennen, home telling about woman as the essence of creation. is also the simple practice of picking blueberries, Jaime's picture of her own pregnant belly affirming, in traditional activities and reclamation encapsulates how truth telling and the envisioning of language, the reality of our survival. of our nations begins with self. Fyre Jean We are so happy to have engaged with all Graveline's story, "Wonder Learns Women's Ways" the fine material that is presented here. We offer shows us how women, located as we are in our this issue of Atlantis with the hope that it bodies and cycles, have much to contemplate in contributes to the dialogue of how Indigenous terms of our place and how we manage that place in woman are defining themselves, their homes, their our nations. Laura Schwager's work is based in the communities and their nations. We offer heartfelt Iroquois creation story. She calls upon us to thanks to all of the contributors, including those remember that, since the time when Sky Woman women who wrote book reviews. We also wish to fell to , Aboriginal women have exercised a thank the league of Indigenous female academics, resistance and resilience that are key to our survival. some fifty in all, who peer reviewed the many Resilience is a common theme in the submissions that we received for this edition. We literature that appears in this volume. "War Curio," feel rich, indeed, to have been part of a working by Molly McGlennen, is about Lost Bird, an infant environment of all these brilliant Indigenous survivor from the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890. women. This experience leaves us with great hope In this poem, McGlennen brings up themes of for the future of our nations. representation, sovereignty of the body and the person, and reclamation. In "I Will Sing (For my people)," Caitlin Kight demonstrates how our ancestors can continue to support and drive us through time. Rebeka Tabobondung's "Mukwa and Her Sisters Still Walking" shows both the resistance and the resilience of Indigenous women internationally - about how we are "still walking" in spite of some of the abuses that we have endured. As Indigenous people, we know that there is no separation between past and present. "modernity" by grace red earring, shows how past, present and future interface with one another, and how we struggle to make sense and reclaim our Indigenous selves in the toxic environment of the present. "Premonition," by Jennifer Foerster, highlights the bleak nightmare of America that the colonizer has created. In this poem, we are haunted by past and present images of genocide, the murders of Native women and the destruction of so many of our children. Meanwhile, "Medicine," by Jody Barnes, speaks to the healing power of dreaming, and how the strength of our collective pasts can 8 Lawrence & Anderson

ENDNOTE 1. As Chatsworthy and Smith (1992) note, if out-marriage patterns remain stable, declining numbers of status Indians will become a serious issue within fifty years (two generations); it is expected that within a century, some First Nations will cease to exist as none of their members will have Indian status.

REFERENCES

Anderson, Kim and Bonita Lawrence, eds. Strong Women Stories: Native Vision and Community Survival. Toronto: Sumach Press, 2003.

Awiakta, Marilou. Selu: Seeking the Cornmother's Wisdom. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1993.

Chatsworthy, Stewart and Anthony H. Smith, "Population Implications of the 1985 Amendments to the Indian Act, Final Report," prepared for the Assembly of First Nations, December, 1992.

Dion Stout, Madeleine. "Fundamental Changes Needed to End Violence," Windspeaker (November 20, 1994): 7.

Holmes, Joan. "Bill C-31-Equality or Disparity? The Effects of the New Indian Act on Native Women. Background Paper," Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1987.

Jamieson, Kathleen. "Multiple Jeopardy: the Evolution of a Native Women's Movement," Atlantis 4. 2 (1979): 157-76.

_____. Indian Women and the Law in Canada: Citizens Minus. Ottawa: Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women and Indian Rights for Indian Women, 1978.

LaRocque, Emma. "Re-Examining Culturally Appropriate Models in Criminal Justice Applications," Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada: Essays in Law, Equity, and Respect for Difference, Michael Asch, ed. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997, pp. 75-96.

Lawrence, Bonita. "Real" Indians and Others: Mixed-Blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004.

Mihesuah, Devon. Indigenous American Women: Decolonization, Empowerment, Activism. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.

Silman, Janet, and Tobique Women's Group. Enough is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak Out. Toronto: the Women's Press, 1987.