Book advocates Native women's issues

Page 9

Women of the First Nations:

Power, Wisdom, and Strength

Edited by Christine Miller and Patricia Chuchryk

22 pages, University of Manitoba

$39.95 (hc.), $18.95 (pb.)

This anthology is an excellent introduction to the ideas and issues that confront First Nations women today. Sixteen essays from Native and non-Native women ? feminists, activists and academics ? combine scholarly research with personal experience to clarify the colonial and modern experiences of Canadian Aboriginal women. Writers include Mohawk, Blackfoot, Blood, Cree, Metis and Okanagan women.

The book Women of the First Nations grew out of the National Symposium on Aboriginal Women of Canada, held at the University of Lethbridge on Oct. 19, 1989. It is the ninth volume of the Manitoba Studies in Native History series.

Jeanette Armstrong's keynote address at that symposium ? "Invocation: The Real Power of Aboriginal Women" ? explains the background of resistance that is covered in this collection.

In reading this anthology, one must confront colonialism and its racist ideology to begin the process of unlearning. Racist and sexist biases have marginalized at best, and erased at worst, the contributions of Aboriginal women to Canadian society. The anthology traces the destructive position

of the Indian Act in dictating the terms of life for Aboriginal women. The act assumed that the lives of Aboriginal women took second place, if that, to the interest of colonialism. A long-overdue re-education process has begun, one that reveals an ongoing and effective resistance to colonialism and its parallel ideology of racism.

Emma LaRocque sets up the framework for the unlearning, compelling the reader to examine the weak educational process to which we were all subjected in the colonization process. Diane Payment, in "La Vie En Rose'? Metis Women at Batoche 1870-1920." Reveals that over half the inhabitants of Batoches in 1883 were women. They were written out of the history of that rebellion, and none of us were ever told. Clearly, it was not in the interest of colonial ideology to advance the notion that Aboriginal women had a stake in history.

The anthology presents empowered Aboriginal women practicing in art, literature and sport, in addition to the productive and reproductive activities in their lives. Jo-Anne Fiske argues that resistance happened in the Lejac Residential School, where Carrier women used colonial policies to empower their matriarchy. Rosemary Brown discusses how the continuation of that resistance occurred at Lubicon Lake, where Native women continue to struggle to strengthen community ties and to support the land claim.

Resistance from Aboriginal peoples has its root in the voices of Native women like Beverly Hungry Wolf and Betty Bastien, who reveal the power of First Nations women who are connected with the land and cultural traditions.

First Nations women are able collectively to direct change, thus ensuring the continuity of their traditions and culture. They are rebuilding that culture from a legacy of colonial dehumanization. Well-developed survival skills were evident in Aboriginal women in the pre-contact period; modern First Nations women are the inheritors of this tradition of strength, writing themselves into history as free subjects capable of remarkable actions.