Contesting Patriarchy: Granddaughters Fight Back

Abstract This paper argues that colonial policies discriminating against Native women, as well as defining and circumscribing Native rights and identity, continue to cast a long shadow over the cultural and socio-economic landscape on First Nations Reserves in Canada. The study historicizes the emergence of these discriminatory practices on the Six Nations Reserve, entailing the transformation of Native social organization from a matriarchy to a reification of patriarchy, subordinating Six Nations women and denying them their human rights, if they chose to marry non-Natives. Banished from their homes and families, constrained from participating in Six Nations culture, women continue to suffer under this yoke of oppression that has been naturalized through the hegemony of internal colonialism and meted out according to Canadian statutory law, codified in the Indian Act. The narrative describes several signal cases that posed legal challenges to discrimination, the intervention of the United Nations to protect Native women's cultural autonomy, as well as the internal Canadian political struggle over reform, women's rights and the movement for Native self-government. As Native women continue to struggle against the patriarchal mentality and colonization of consciousness evidenced by their leaders, First Nations communities are attempting to determine their own codes of citizenship, define their own cultural identities and design new indigenous institutions to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, to ensure the continuation of our Native cultures. Introduction St. Edmund's Hall houses a portrait of a Mohawk Indian, known as Oronhyatekha, (Burning Sky), who was invited to come to study here in Oxford by the Prince of Wales in the late nineteenth-century. He traveled from his home on the Six Nations Reserve in Canada and became a physician. Oronhyatekha was called a Red Indian and he was depicted in full Iroquois attire, far different than his dress in nineteenth-century Canadian society. His name, in English, was Peter Martin and he was my great-grandfather's brother. The reserve in Oronhyatekha's lifetime was a poor, rural agricultural community. Canadian colonial policy proffered assimilation and enfranchisement, as an incentive for First Nations people to leave the Reserve and become members of the Euro-Canadian society. Oronhyatekha, however, was proud of his identity as a Mohawk and he resisted being defined in any way, but as an Indian. Oronhyatekha was named a national historic figure in Canada, last August. Today the reserve is no longer a simple farming community, but home to businesses, a bank and a population of approximately 26,000. Almost 11,000 Band members live off-reserve. (1) Many people seek to live on the reserve now, not only to retain their sense of Native culture, but also to partake of socio-economic benefits. Native identity, since Oronhyatekha came to study in Oxford, has become much more complicated and contested, for these entitlements are yoked to Indian status. Native leaders and communities have become invested in and protective of their membership and rights as status Indians. Indian status in Canada is a complex political and social construct. Canadian legislation naturalized gender discrimination and enshrined patriarchy by altering the basic organization of most Indian groups, such as Six Nations. Many Indian women were literally disinherited and disavowed as Indians in this process. For over one hundred years, Native women, not only from my reserve, but also from all over Canada, were denied their identity as Indians, through Canadian statutory law. The laws were embedded in the Indian Act, defining an Indian and a Band with reference to Canadian mores, not in Native terms. Through political pressure and court rulings, these laws were challenged as discriminatory. Women's rights were partially restored in 1985, through a Bill entitled, C-31. …

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.