Indigenous Women and Work: From Labor to Activism

Contributors

Contributors Tracey Banivanua Mar is a senior lecturer in colonial history at La Trobe University. She teaches and researches histories of race relations and land transfer in colonies of settlement in the western Pacific. Her book Violence and Colonial Dialogue (2007) explores race relations in Queensland’s Pacific slave trade, and she is completing a book on Indigenous forms of decolonization in the western Pacific. Shehaspublishedwidelyonissuesofraceformationandlaw,frontiers,andcolonial labor relations and has produced two edited collections, the most recent of which is Making Settler Colonial Space: Perspectives on Race, Place and Identity (2010), coedited with Penelope Edmonds. She has completed for UNESCO coauthored research on the slavery in the Pacific and is currently working on an Australian Research Council–funded project looking at colonial cultures of possession and dispossession in Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, and Hawai‘i. Marlene Brant Castellano is a member of the Mohawk Nation and professor emerita of Trent University, Ontario, Canada. She joined the Faculty of Native Studies at Trent University in 1973 and went on to serve as department chair for three terms. From 1992 until 1995 she was Co-Director of Research of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, where she led research and policy analysis on social and cultural affairs, including women’s perspectives. Brant Castellano’s research interests include policy and practice of human services, contemporary applications of Indigenous knowledge, and research ethics. She researched and wrote Volume 1 of the Final Report of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, A Healing Journey (2006), presenting analysis and outcomes of community-based initiatives to heal the trauma of residential schooling. She coedited a collection of papers titled From Truth to Reconciliation, Transforming the Legacy of Residential Schools (2008), also published by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Brant Castellano’s articles on traditional and contemporary roles of Aboriginal women have appeared in journals and books on women’s issues, including the chapter “Heart of the Nations: Women’s Contribution to Community Healing” in Restoring the Balance, First Nations Women, Community and Culture (2009). Her knowledge and expertise are sought after by universities, public institutions, and community organizations across Canada. She is the recipient of three honorary degrees and numerous awards including appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada. Cathleen D. Cahill is an assistant professor of history at the University of New Mexico. Her monograph, Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869–1929 (2011) received the 2011 Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award. She also coedited the special issue on “Intermarriage in American Indian History: Explorations in Power and Intimacy in North America” for Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies (2008). During 2009–10 she held a Bill and Rita Clements Research Fellowship at Southern Methodist University’s Clements Center for Southwest Studies. Her essay, “An Indian Teacher among Indians: American Indian Women’s Labor in the Federal Indian Service,” details the history of Native women’s work experiences within the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs’ Indian School Service in the early twentieth century. As Cahill suggests, the Indian School Service provided Native American women an opportunity for paid employment on isolated reservations; however, sustained patterns of racism within the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs resulted in distinct experiences for these workers compared to their white counterparts. Brenda J. Child is a professor of American Indian Studies and history at the University of Minnesota and chair of the Department of American Indian Studies. Her monograph, Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900–1940 (1998) moves beyond an examination of federal policies relating to the boarding school system and toward an in-depth look at the lives and individual experiences of Native children and families through the use of letters to retell history. As the first study of boarding schools to use letters to document individual experiences, Boarding School Seasons was awarded the North American Indian Prose Award. Child also wrote Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Indian Community (2011) and is coediting a volume of essays on a comparative history of Indigenous education. On top of her academic pursuits, Child has earned praise for her community involvement, winning the President’s Outstanding Community Service Award from the University of Minnesota. Child also serves as a board member on the executive council of the Minnesota Historical Society, on the editorial board for the Indigenous Education Series at the University of Nebraska Press, as a councillor for the American Society of Ethnohistory, and on the board of...