Heartbeat: The Voices of First Nations Women RAYNA GREEN AND HOWARD BASS woman hums songs to a child. Three family, clan, ceremonial, or work activities, old ladies sing as they pick chokecher­ those who are unfamiliar with these traditions ries or cactus buds, husk corn, or dig rarely see or hear women sing. Thus the com­ camas root. A woman's high-pitched lu-lu-lu-lu mon perception is that women have little rises over the men's voices at the end of an presence or significance in the performance honoring song for returned veterans. "Chorus and preservation of Native musical traditions. girls" back up the men's lead song at the drum A few tribal or regional collections have during a war dance. The pulsating, driving included women's singing and instrumental hand-drum beats and magic-making songs music. Recordings by contemporary Indian women sing at a stick game. The woman women musicians like Buffy Sainte-Marie first whose songs make the Sun Dance circle right. received favorable attention in the late 1960s. These are the voices of Native women. Like Since then, the ranks of such women have the drum whose heartbeat is that of a woman, grown to include Sharon Burch, Joanne these women and their songs are at the heart Shenandoah, Geraldine Barney, and several of Indian Country. But unlike the drum, their groups of women singers. songs and voices are rarely heard beyond their Native men and women, like men and communities. women everywhere, historically had different Along with the first of two recordings roles and ways of being in daily life and in made available on Smithsonian/ Folkways music and dance. In the 18th and 19th cen­ (Heartbeat: Voices of First Nations Women, SF turies, the roles and activities of all Native peo­ 40415) and a two-week presentation at the ple changed radically as disease, war, land 1995 Festival of American Folklife, this essay loss, removal, and relocation shifted popula­ is part of an effort to present an overview of tions and devastated traditional ways. The U.S. Heartbeat: The Voices of music by Native women - traditional, new, government forced men to farm where once First Nations Women has innovative, and little known. Included are tra­ they had hunted and women to sew where been produced in collabora- tion with the Division of ditional women's songs from tribes in the once they had farmed. The government and Cultural History at the United States and Canada as well as material missionaries forbade the performance of National Museum of usually sung by men and recently taken up by Native ceremonies and the wearing of ceremo­ American History, with sup­ women. We also discuss fresh material, Native nial clothing. New settlers and hunters wiped port from The Recording women's music that m erges traditional music out the once-abundant supply of buffalo, Industries Music Performance with many styles of popular American music. salmon, wild rice, and deer. Indians were sent Trust Funds, the Smithsonian Educational Outreach Fund, Very little women's music is known and to schools and church es to "civilize" them ; in the John Hammond Fund for appreciated, even by those who value and those places they were forbidden to speak the Performance of American know Native American music. People may see their own languages. As for music, dance, and Music, the American Native wom en dan cing wh en public perfor­ song - so integral to traditional life - much Encounters Project, the mances take place, wh ether they are on stage went underground or was altered to be made Smithsonian Special or in a community setting. Still, men's danc­ acceptable to government agents and mission­ Exhibition Fund, the National Museum of the American ing dominates the public arena. Because aries. Some was lost forever, but much Indian, and the National much of Native women's traditional singing remained, has resurfaced, and been renewed Museum of American History. occurs in a private setting associated with in the 20th century. VOICES OF FIRST NATIONS WOMEN The Crying Woman Singers is a new women's drum group with Cree, Gras Ventre, and Assiniboine singers from Ft. Belknap, Montana. Photo by Ted Whitecalf CEREMONIAL AND SOCIAL MUSIC sing in public ceremonials on feast days. In Ruth Underhill, working with T'ohono dance performance, men and women are O'odham people in the 1940s, tells of asking equally represented: the world is divided into the women why only the men sang and male and female domains and spirits; even danced. 11 0h," one of the older women dance steps have male and female parts and responded, 11 you sing and dance to get power" lines. Songs make constant reference to Corn - the inference being that the women already Maidens (and Corn Youths), the Green Earth had power. Although women are thought to Woman, Mother Earth (and Father Sky), Dawn have a substantially lesser role than men in Maidens (and Dawn Youths), to the role of the area of spiritual or religious music, there women in agriculture and new life. Yet wom­ are in fact serious and profound roles for en's voices are not heard in these serious cere­ women in the performance of music associat­ monial events, only in less public, more inti­ ed with ceremonial life. In areas that have tra­ mate ceremonies mostly associated with ditions of female spiritual leadership in heal­ women, such as the Basket Dances. ing, for example, women have significant, Often the singing connected with the most acknowledged roles in public ceremony. powerful of women's rites of passage - com­ Gender differences in vocal range and reso­ ing-of-age or puberty ceremonies - is per­ nance and culturally based notions of male formed by men. In the Apache and Navajo and female performance dictated the varying puberty ceremonies, men sing the songs for roles of men and women, roles that differ from the ceremonial parts of the events. Among the tribe to tribe. Mescalero Apache, however, women sing the On first glance at Pueblo ceremonial morning songs after the Crown Dances and dance, one would never think that Pueblo join the men in singing for the back-and-forth women sing at all. Certainly, women rarely dances that are part of the all-night ritual asso- OF FIRST NATIONS WOMEN Women members of the Cherokee Baptist Association sing a hymn in Cherokee at an annual gospel sing. Photo by Sammy Still, courtesy Cherokee Advocate ciated with the girls' annual coming-of-age Describing a Sun Dance song, ceremony. In Northern California, men would Angelina Wagon, a Wind River customarily sing the songs for the Flower Shoshone woman, said, 11My mother, Dance, the girls' ceremony celebrating the she found that song. She was sleeping first menstruation. Recently, as this ceremony is being restored, women have begun to sing the first time she heard that song. So these songs. she got up and she went to the room In tribes where women have formidable where my dad was sleeping, and she ceremonial and public roles, they do sing and sang that song for him, and my dad "make" songs, and their songs may be like just caught that song all at once. And those of male spiritual leaders. In the Plains nowadays you hear this prayer song Sun Dance, for example, women always had a all over; even in Idaho {and] Utah, special role in the ceremony, and thus in mak­ ing and singing songs. they sing that song" (Vander 1986). Some peoples, like the Northern California Porno and those on the Halfway The medicine woman, healer, or dream­ River Reserve in Canada, had healers whose er is not always a singer, though she may be healing songs came to them in dreams. Many the center of the ritual aspects of a healing of these were women. The Kashia Porno ceremony. In the Yurok Brush Dance, the Dream Dances were recovered and restored medicine woman is joined by men and by a female dreamer. Navajo women can and young girls who sing and dance, the men do become medicine women and have sever­ beginning on the so-called heavy songs, fol­ al different specialties within Navajo healing lowed by light songs by men and the young traditions. Those who become medicine girls. These light songs may include verbal women must learn the stories, prayers, and interplay, signifying the eligibility of the songs that are an essential part of ceremonial young girls present for marriage. The use healing. and presentation of the voice by young VOICES OF FIRST NATIONS WOME Nancy Richardson sings in a 11Storysong 11 associated with the Karuk world renewal tale: ((They once told lizard, they said, don't make human beings. They won't get along, but lizard said Tm going to do that."' Betty Mae Jumper, in a 11Storysong, 11 has the turtle sing to the wolf he has outsmarted: 11Ya ha, ya ha! I told you I was little, and can't run fast, but I can outsmart you. Wolf, wolf, your bones will be quivering. The flies will be buzzing around you. II women are different from that of men singers; male relatives, the men have begun to teach Annie Long Tom, a the young women also do not sing with the daughters, nieces, and granddaughters to sing Clayoquot woman who group, except as soloists. In recent times, them instead. kept the old religion in however, some Karuk women like Nancy Yupik musical performance is based in spite of the pressure Richardson have begun to sing the heavy ceremonial dance-drama. Generally, the men to become Christian, songs, using the sobbing, emotion-laden vocal sing, using a large, thin, hand drum with a said, "You must not be characteristics that once belonged only to handle, beaten with a thin stick, and the ashamed to sing your men (Keeling 1989).