Women's Role In Native American Literature

Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.

Typical Native American and African society was often matrilineal. This meant that familial relationships were divided through the maternal line, rather than the paternal one like in Europe. This provided women in these societies a great more power and authority than it did in Europe. Women often were involved in making and influencing decision making in the tribe or group. To Europeans, this type of gender egalitarianism was not just foreign but also considered savage. This reinforced the belief that Europeans were superior.

Native American and Puritan Literature have their own distinct culture and traditions. They also incorporate it into their literature. Puritan literature was mostly passed down through sermons, diaries, journals, and poems. Native Americans were indigenous people of the Americas and their literature was traditional oral and written. Both Native Americans and Puritan Literature have similar elements of culture, such as religion, beliefs, and morals. Even though they share common ideas, they are quite different, for example, their stories were passed on differently.

The development of agriculture and the rise of industrialization generated new cultures and innovations in the new world. Native people in early America developed cultural distinct , men were in charge of the fishing, hunting, jobs that were more exposed to violence, and the women stayed closed to the village, farming, and child bearing. The way of life possessed by natives Americans did not compel them to conquer and transform new land. As opposed to European colonizers, Native Americans subscribed to a more “animistic” understanding of nature. In which they believed that plants and animals are not commodities, they are something to be respected rather than used. This ideal way of life clashed with the worldview of Europeans. Early European colonizers believed that because Native Americans were not using the vast amount of land which included forest to maximize their profits, then they were justified for colonizing North American land. This settlement led to the enslavement of people, worldwide distribution of diseases, and transfer of goods that shaped America to what it is today.

The prescribed question that I have chosen is Power and Privilege: “How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?”

It’s the Pre-Columbian era and Native Americans don’t have a thought of Columbus’s arrival. Before 1492, the Americas was occupied with tribal societies who took part in trade, battle, and sacrificial offerings to their gods. “In a tribal society, members usually took on gender roles. For example, the males would hunt for food while the females would prepare the meal. Duties of both genders were unique to the success of their community. Without the touch of European hands Natives were living life as they’ve been since their unknown arrival in the Americas.”(Encyclopedia of the Great Plains)

The Native Americans were the original owners of the United States of America. However, due to the population increase in Europe, the European migrated to America in seek of land for farming, settlement, and spread their religion (Desai, n.p). The two communities lived together and interacted with each other. Nevertheless, the Native American also known to as the Red Indians and the Settlers had differences in many aspects of their economy, religion, and culture. In some situation, it is hard to identify their disparities. On the other hand, the dissimilarities are easily identified. Additionally, there are similarities between these two nations. Culture is the outline of human

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. Native

While reading about American history the thing that I found most appealing was the limited rights that women had during this era. Although women gave the early settlers longer life expectancy and brought hope to their future, women still were not considered equal to a man. Women were discriminated against and didn’t play an important role in early American history. Generally, women had fewer legal rights and career opportunity than men because they were considered weak and not able to perform certain tasks. Different women came from different ethnic backgrounds and were all created equal in the eyes of men. Men believed that women served only one purpose which was to take care of the household. Being a wife and a mother was considered

Although Native Americans are characterized as both civilized and uncivilized in module one readings, their lifestyles and culture are observed to be civilized more often than not. The separate and distinct duties of men and women (Sigard, 1632) reveal a society that has defined roles and expectations based on gender. There are customs related to courtship (Le Clercq, 1691) that are similar to European cultures. Marriage was a recognized union amongst Native Americans, although not necessarily viewed as a serious, lifelong commitment like the Europeans (Heckewelder, 1819).

The narrative offers an account which can be used to describe the particularly puritan society based on the ideals of Christianity and the European culture. It offers a female perspective of the Native Americans who showed no respect to the other religious groups. The narrator makes serious observation about her captors noting the cultural differences as well as expectations from one another in the society. However, prejudice is evident throughout the text which makes the narratives unreliable in their details besides being written after the event had already happened which means that the narrator had was free to alter the events to create an account that favored her. Nonetheless, the narrative remains factually and historically useful in providing the insights into the tactics used by the Native Americans

First Generations: Women of Colonial America, written by Carol Berkin, is a novel that took ten years to make. Carol Berkin received her B.A. from Barnard College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She has worked as a consultant on PBS and History Channel documentaries. Berkin has written several books on the topic of women in America. Some of her publications include: Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence (2004) and Civil War Wives: The Life and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant (2009). The prejudice that the author brings forward strongly is the notion of feminism.

“Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place to love and be irritated with.” (“Where I ought to Be: a Writer’s Sense of Place”). Whenever she 's at a place, she loves to write, she feels inspirational. Louise Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a band of the Anishinaabe. She also attended a Catholic school in Wahpeton. As a storyteller, her own past tells the story of her journey to being a famous writer. Erdrich focuses a lot on multiculturalism that includes conflicting religious beliefs. American novelist and poet, Louise Erdrich utilizes her life experiences and ideas to show her thoughts on feminism, multiculturalism and the supernatural within her writings.

Before the Spanish ship that changed it all, which arrived in the “New World” in 1492, thriving organized communities of native people had centuries of history on the land. That ship, skippered by Christopher Columbus, altered the course of both Native American and European history. 1492 sparked the fire of cultural diffusion in the New World which profoundly impacted the Native American peoples and the European settlers.

In her essay, “Where I Came from is Like This,” the author Paula Gunn Allen effectively utilizes ethos, logos, and pathos to convince her audience, women studies and ethnic scholars, of her claim that the struggles of American Indian women have had with their identities. Gunn Allen uses all three modes of persuasion to describe the struggles of American Indian women. She uses ethos to strengthen her credibility, logos to logically explain the issue, and pathos to emotionally explain the struggles of American Indian women have had with their identities. With ethos she tells us where she is from and how she got her information, which makes her more trustworthy and believable.