Indigenous Women and Work: From Labor to Activism

12. Charity or Industry? American Indian Women and Work Relief in the New Deal Era

chapter 12 Charity or Industry? American Indian Women and Work Relief in the New Deal Era Colleen O’Neill This chapter begins with a picture of a young Navajo woman sitting in front of a sewing machine, surrounded by mattress ticking in what looks like a semiindustrial context (figure 12.1). For her, such industrial employment within her reservation community was undoubtedly welcomed because the Navajo economy, like the rest of the United States, was in deep trouble. People suffered as they Figure 12.1. An unidentified Navajo Woman working at a WPA mattress-making project in Shiprock, New Mexico, 1940. Photographer Milton Snow. Courtesy of the Navajo Nation Museum, Window Rock, Ariz. Catalog #NO 16-378. watched their pastoral way of life slip away; a process largely engineered by federal authorities who reduced their livestock herds in order to preserve Navajo range lands for long-term economic benefit. But, in the short term, without their sheep and goats to sustain them, many Navajos went looking for a job. Usually, in the depths of the Great Depression, that meant working in a federal work program. We know a little about the Civilian Conservation Corps–Indian Division (CCC-ID), a New Deal–era work relief project, as well as other conservation measures. Those initiatives mostly required heavy physical labor such as building bridges, buildings, roads, and dams—jobs reserved exclusively for men (Biolsi 1992; Hall 1994; Hosmer 2004; Kelly 1968; Parman 1974; White 1983). Thanks to new, innovative scholarship, we know that such New Deal–era conservation projects such as livestock reduction and other schemes intended to draw Native peoples into the market economy, impacted men and women unevenly (Weisiger 2009; Cattelino 2004, 2008; Raibmon 2006).1 Onafundamental level, we know thatwomenworked too. But, unlike their male counterparts, women’s work remained marginal to the bigger story of economic transformation.BIAandcountyextensionagentschargedwithdevelopingwomen’s relief work folded those initiatives, such as the Works Project Administration (WPA) sewing project, into domestic training programs that were already part of the federal assimilationist curriculum. Native women’s labor then became “charity ” work, something they did for self-improvement and community welfare, not to earn wages to support their families (even though they received wages, often on par with men). Conversely, for many Native men, working on a CCC crew provided welcomed income and their initial foray into the waged workplace. More importantly, by building roads, dams, and buildings they were literally beginning to create the infrastructure that would connect their reservations to the larger capitalist market. For some, that experience would later offer a stepping-stone into military service or jobs in the defense industry on the home front. While CCCID jobs pulled men into the capitalist economy, New Deal–era programs offered women a less secure future in the waged workforce. The WPA provided them with the opportunity to earn wages, even acquire vocational training. Yet, those same programs reinforced their status as non–wage earners, their work indistinguishable from the daily tasks of keeping house and caring for their families. Indeed, working on a Works Project Administration project could be a transformative event for many Native peoples.2 In the 1930s wage work was not a new phenomenon for American Indians. They had worked for railroad companies, commercial farmers and ranchers, and in other miscellaneous jobs since at least the mid–ninteenth century. Often seasonal, those jobs provided wages—one resource of many—which Native Americans families pooled to make a living into the mid–twentieth century. But U.S. conquest and colonization over the previous 150 years had severely weakened their communities’ subsistence economies and forced many people to rely increasingly on wages to survive. New Deal–era 194 colleen o’neill projects, developed for reservation communities, accelerated that process to some extent, drawing Native people closer to the capitalist market economy. Previously, finding a job meant leaving home, at least temporarily. Federal relief programs provided work opportunities relatively close to home, briefly easing the burden of migrating to great distances to find a job (figure 12.2). At different times and in different places, American Indian women’s power over the production and distribution of food and the control over livestock often translated into broader cultural and economic influence in their communities. But, when those communities began to produce goods for a larger capitalist market, beyond a kinship-centered trading system, women historically lost economic ground to their male counterparts...