From the “F” Word to Indigenous/Feminisms

Just as sovereignty cannot be granted but must be recognized as an inherent right to self-determination, so Indian feminism must also be recognized as powerful in its own terms, in its own right.

—Kate Shanley

This essay focuses on the evolution of my classes on Native women and feminism, as well as my personal journey as an indigenous feminist. First, I must mention several academics who impacted my thinking regarding indigenous/feminism.¹ Early in my academic career, I was heavily influenced by the writings of three Native academics: Beatrice Medicine (Lakota), Kate Shanley (Assiniboine), and Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna). Most importantly, I was deeply influenced by my mother, Opal Swaney Cajune. Each scholar added a piece to the definition and practice of feminism for and about Native people.

Beatrice Medicine

Someone who lived comfortably in both urban and reservation worlds was the late Beatrice Medicine. Her vita, located in the appendix in her last book, published in 2001, reveals that she was a charter member of the American Indian Women’s Service League in Seattle in 1954.² This was in-the-trenches activist feminist work. Medicine began the academic exploration of the roles of Native women in the 1960s. I began reading her work in the 1970s. Way ahead of the game, by 1974 Medicine was instructing a class on Native women.³

I had the good fortune to meet Medicine in 1979 in Portland, Oregon. However, I was horrified when a Native man, in his lurch to introduce us, told her with great disdain that I was a “feminist.” In the mistaken belief that she would express disapproval, he was shocked when she announced that she was a feminist, too. In front of a large audience, she took my hand and warmly greeted me—feminist to feminist. She was the first powerfully out-feminist Native academic that I met. This brief encounter influenced me tremendously. Throughout the years, our paths would cross at conferences, and she always remembered me and was extremely supportive of my work.

Her work is important to indigenous/feminism because most of the early studies on Native women were anthropological, and because Medicine was an anthropologist, although she understood the discipline through the lens of a Native woman. I was drawn to her work because of who she was as a Native woman, and I was interested in culture conceptually; my discipline, sociology, did not effectively deal with culture. Her groundbreaking essay on “Warrior Women” (manly hearted women) and sex roles was published in The Hidden Half in 1983.⁴ This essay counters the existing negative stereotypes about Native women. Moreover, she provides excellent examples of role-flexibility and gender variability.⁵ Medicine presents a new image, one of strong and capable Native women, although she did not specifically define “feminism.” Not only did the anthology The Hidden Half provide a valuable text for my class, but Medicine’s work on Native women fed my soul and piqued my interest in ethnography as a method. Moreover, I began to use the notion of role and status as she conceptualized it.

Kate Shanley

I was greatly influenced by Kate Shanley, not through a body of work but by a single thought-provoking essay published in 1984, titled “Thoughts on Indian Feminism.”⁶ Raised on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana, she was thoroughly versed in the realities of reservation life. Shanley, who brazenly calls herself a feminist in the essay, argues that many Native women misunderstand feminism and, therefore, do not want to be associated with a white woman’s movement. Then she bravely asks: Does being a feminist make her less Indian?

In her essay, Shanley outlines issues that all women encounter—for example, equal pay, children’s health and welfare, reproductive rights, and domestic violence. However, the important difference between Native women and other women, according to Shanley, is that we promote tribal sovereignty. She continues:

Thus, the Indian women’s movement seeks equality in two ways that do not concern mainstream women: (1) on the individual level, the Indian woman struggles to promote...