Native American Women's History: Tribes, Leadership, and Colonialism

R. David Edmunds, editor. The New Warriors: Native American Leaders Since 1900. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. 346 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-8032-1820-6 (cl); 0-803267517 (pb).

Devon Abbot Mihesuah. Indigenous American Women: Decolonization, Empowerment, Activism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. xxii + 236 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-803232276 (cl); 9-780803-28 2865 (pb).

Theda Perdue, editor. Sifters: Native American Women's Lives.New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. vi + 247 pp. ISBN 0-195130804 (cl); 0-19-513081-2 (pb).

Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown. Esther Ross: Stillaguamish Champion.Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. xix + 312 pp. ISBN 0-8061-3343-0 (cl).

Susan Sleeper-Smith. Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001. xv + 235 pp. ISBN 1558493085 (cl); 9-781558-493100 (pb).

Although scholarship in Native American history has grown substantially in recent years, studies of Native women's experiences have lagged behind. Scholars trained in American Indian history have generally not shown themselves to be adept at using gender as a tool of analysis, even when they notice women, while historians of women, with a few exceptions, have tended to avoid doing ethnohistory—the in-depth research that requires both cultural and historical understanding.

To be sure, researching the history of indigenous America is difficult, given hundreds of distinct cultures, languages, and ecosystems. For most projects, the scholar also needs to have a general understanding of U.S. government policy, riven as it has been with internal contradictions, plagued by corruption, and shifting radically from one era to another, but one must also recognize that policies impacted tribes differently. Furthermore, within any Native community or group, there were differences of experience and opinion. Analyzing the extent to which gender was a factor in Native American history adds yet another layer of complexity to the scholar's work, and so far, few have risen to the challenge.

All the more reason to welcome these five books, offering as they do a wide range of scholarship on Native women's experiences, some tackling key issues head-on, others inviting reflection and future interpretation. Recurring themes of colonialism, identity, sovereignty, activism, and leadership are joined by explorations of the complex relationships of women to their tribes. Considerations of stereotypes and public image also find their way into several of the works. Three of them—the essay collections edited by Theda Perdue and R. David Edmunds and the volume by Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown—use biography to sketch the lives of leaders, artists, and other activists. (Edmunds's anthology includes profiles of both women and men.) Devon Abbot Mihesuah's book collects her essays (previously published elsewhere) on topics related to theory, literature, methodology, history, and American Indian studies generally. Susan Sleeper-Smith's work is a monograph exploring the Great Lakes region during the colonial and early national periods.

Mihesuah's Indigenous American Women recognizes that Native American women's history is particularly important to feminist historians because traditional American Indian societies present an alternative to patriarchy. In addition, she is part of a wave of scholars and activists with a renewed interest in colonialism. In probably the strongest essay of the collection, "Colonialism and Disempowerment," Mihesuah reviews both egalitarian Native traditions and the ways that Europeans' conquest and appropriation of North America affected Native women. She writes, for example, "Women faced the intruders who invaded their lands and watched the devastation of their ways of life. . . . Indigenous women suffered sexual violence and abuse at the hands of Euro-Americans, and those men created stereotypes and false images of Natives for their own gain" (41).

Three of her essays explore the intersections and contradictions of feminism, American Indian studies, and activism. In "A Few Cautions on the Merging of Feminist Studies with Indigenous Women's Studies," Mihesuah advises, "Though the...