Changing Gender Roles Of Native Americans During The 19th Century

This paper will review the first five chapters in J.R. Miller’s book Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools. These chapters examine the events that took place before residential schools were made, as well as looking into the historical context of Canada during this time period. The first chapter of the book explains the way in which indigenous communities educated their children before contact by the European settlers. The educational systems from these indigenous communities were much different than the European educational systems, in the sense of a formal, rigid, institution.

The invaders want “remove Indian women from every society position of authority. The settlers also rarely mention the prominent roles that women had in the tribes in their “personal journals and narratives”

Theda Perdue`s Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835, is a book that greatly depicts what life had been like for many Native Americans as they were under European Conquering. This book was published in 1998, Perdue was influenced by a Cherokee Stomp Dance in northeastern Oklahoma. She had admired the Cherokee society construction of gender which she used as the subject of this book. Though the title Cherokee Women infers that the book focuses on the lives of only Cherokee women, Perdue actually shines light upon the way women 's roles affected the Native cultures and Cherokee-American relations. In the book, there is a focus on the way that gender roles affected the way different tribes were run in the 1700 and 1800`s.

The creation of the boarding schools at the start of the 20th century was used to “Civilize and Americanize” Native children so that they could function in American society. (Little Elk) They wanted to culturally transform the Lakota children and make them civilized to American customs. The education they received in boarding schools was also encouraged cultural assimilation, where the Lakota children did not speak their native tongue but English. The Lakota children were only trained to function in specific fields.

Hurt (2002) explains two forms of land tenure, “First, villages claimed sovereignty or exclusive power ownership over an area, which other bands recognized. Second, in contrast, to communal ownership of a large area of land, another concept of land tenure involved individual control of gardens and fields within the general territory boundary” (p. 25). In addition these two methods, another key component is that women were generally responsible for the land. According to Hurt (2002), land typically was inherited through the female line with only a few exceptions in other areas (p. 25-27). Overall, the American Indian’s view of ownership was extremely different from that of white settlers in that it was seen as a gift.

Introduction As a member of The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, this essay topic was chosen to further explore my family’s background. My great-great grandma, Ora Marguerite McLellan, was born on December 27, 1904, and is listed on the Final Dawes Roll as number 554. She is listed as Choctaw by blood and was added to the Dawes Rolls as a newborn. My father, who is Native American and lives in Oklahoma, does not have much knowledge or insight about our family or the trials they experienced. My great-great grandma’s generation was reluctant to identify as Native American due to the stigmas associated with their culture and thereupon did not pass down the history to any future generations.

In the novel “The Surrounded” by D’Arcy McNickle the author depicts the conflicts that many Native Americans went through when they were sent into the “white man’s world”. Native Americans were forced to attend boarding schools and taught to be “civilized” causing many to become alienated with their culture. McNickle shows the disconnection that Native Americans went through and felt between both worlds. They no longer fit in the Native American world and would never fit in with the rest of the world. While Europeans often times thought that they were saving Native Americans and teaching them the right ways to live reality was that assimilation and forced ideals led to the destruction of individuals.

Many Native Americans, as well as the pack in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, were forced to receive an education. Figures of authority tried, and usually succeeded, to force Native American children to attend school. These figures of authority did not give the Native Americans a choice in this matter, nor did they care about these individuals or their culture. Not to mention, over 100 Native American youth were chosen to attend school in PA. This was a noticeable number of people that were forced to attend school, and this was not very considerate.

“American Indian Boarding Schools and Assimilation Policy, 1890-1930.” Cheaper than Bullets, University of Central Oklahoma, 2009, www.se.edu/nas/files/2013/03/NAS-2009-Proceedings-Booth.pdf. Enoch, Jessica. “Resisting the Script of Indian Education: Zitkala Ša and the Carlisle Indian School.” College English, vol. 65, no. 2, 2002, pp.

In 1887 Native Americans were seen as uncivilized in the United States and were prevented from acquiring the benefits of American life. So in an attempt to educate and assimilate the Native American children into the American society, boarding schools were established. However, as time went on these Indian Boarding schools became so much about helping the children adapt to the American culture that they were beaten and punished if they showed any signs of their old tribal life. This idea of abolishing the outward and inward signs of tribal life within the Native American children expresses Pratt’s statement “Kill the Indian…save the man.”

These practices resulted loss of Indian identity and destruction of their culture. The whites set up special boarding schools to teach the Indians. The schools focused on teaching vocational and agricultural skills “schools should be industrial”(#4). Analysis. The boarding schools taught english and white religion “the Indians should be treated as an individual-- like the white man”(#6).

Discussion Question 5: Before the Europeans’ arrival, the gender roles in Puebloan society were loose. The Puebloans believed that both men and women influenced different areas of their lives, thus not one gender had more power over the other. The women spent most of the days preparing food for their households. The men worked the fields: sons worked their mothers’ corn plots, brothers their sisters’, and husbands their mother-in-laws’. In a horticultural society, the women asserted power and control over household activities such as seed production and child-rearing while the men communicated with the gods and protected the village from dissent and factionalism.

The Tlingit of today are putting into action talking about their boarding school experiences in the 1800s in order to heal themselves and generations’ still suffering from it. The nonprofit local urban Native Corporation is using the stories to create a curriculum for K-12 about the impacts of colonialism on the Tlingit people. As I discussed in one of my previous blogs, from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, the federal government split up families and forced the Native children into boarding schools to become civilized. Many were also raised in orphanages.

For decades in Canada, officially beginning in 1892, children were taken away from their families and put into schools that would change and take away their views and beliefs, initial knowledge, image, and identity. In the earlier stages, these schools were referred to as Industrial Schools for Indians. Today, we call them Residential Schools with Aboriginal survivors who are able to tell their stories. Aboriginal people suffered while there schools were running. This essay will compare the knowledge in a recent article to primary sources that were written while Industrial Schools were in action.

Cherokee society was not some savage like the first European settlers liked to pretend. The people were very connected through their religious beliefs and by living in close knit communities. The Cherokee people knew what was expected of them in their communities, but also knew what they could do to improve their status. In this way their lifestyle was very organized. Men and women had their own roles in day to day life, not because one gender was inferior, but because it was what they believed they were meant to do.