Variety of voices in this book

Page 5

Strong Women Stories:

Native Vision and Community Survival

Edited by Kim Anderson and Bonita Lawrence

Sumach Press

264 pages (sc) $26.95

Strong Women Stories picks up where Kim Anderson's last book left off. In A Recognition of Being, published in 2000, Anderson explored the ways in which Native women have been stereotyped and stripped of power, and the steps they could take to reclaim a positive self-image. Anderson spoke with Bonita Lawrence, who asked if blind obedience to tradition prevented women from achieving equality. Strong Women Stories enlarges that critical perspective, presenting stories of female self-determination and showing how that self-determination (or lack of it) affects Aboriginal communities.

The book is a mix of memoir, reportage, and personal and academic essays organized into three sections entitled "Coming Home", "Asking Questions", and "Rebuilding Our Communities". In her first book, Anderson proposed a four-step prescription for reconstructing positive female identity: resist, reclaim, construct, act. If A Recognition of Being was the first step in Anderson's prescription, then these essays recall the final three steps. Strong Women Stories includes essays about women reclaiming their identities (and the identities of their entire communities), questioning "tradition" and constructing critical mindsets, and acting upon that knowledge to start community schools, community-based healing programs for victims and perpetrators of family violence, and programs to deal with Aboriginal people affected by fetal alcohol syndrome.

Coincidentally, the three best essays are by Mohawk women. Laura Schwager's "The Drum Keeps Beating: Recovering a Mohawk Identity" is well-written, emotional and honest. Schwager admits that her Native relatives blocked her way and refused to answer her identity questions, while her non-Native relatives encouraged her genealogical research.

Sylvia Maracle's essay on women, leadership, and community development makes several important points. Although she is the executive director of a Native organization in Ontario, Maracle says that true leaders are not necessarily the people with the titles. She unmasks the neo-colonialism that plagues Native organizations and communities, explains the freedom that urban living can offer to Aboriginal women, and points out that more women are in leadership positions in urban centres than on-reserve.

Diane Martin-Hill says in her essay that Native "tradition" is now so influenced by European religion that it has become patriarchal and denies women their rights. Furthermore, she says that most Elders are survivors of the residential school system, and have been indoctrinated in colonial thought. Martin-Hill's essay continues a theme introduced in Anderson's first book, asking whether Aboriginal people should put Elders on such high pedestals.

Not all essays are as strong or as readable, but the best ones compensate for weaker ones.

Lawrence, a Mi'kmaq and a professor at Queen's University in Kingston, and Anderson, a Metis social- and health-policy analyst, contributed their own strong essays. Lawrence talks about how Aboriginal women in a contemporary context can make the transition into menopause. Anderson's chapter asks whether it is really traditional for Aboriginal women to have many children at a young age.

The women in this book aren't afraid of speaking out. Native communities across Canada will be stronger because of their questions.