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Url: http://www.mediafire.com/?krhaedk79fruv64

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“composed entirely of found images from blogs, juxtaposed with critical quotes from theorists and bloggers examining the effects of cultural appropriation.”

by Nancy Bonillain

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URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?dnnhiq4y0jo

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Analyses of gender roles in societies throughout the world have raised questions about the causes of equality or inequality in status and inter-gender relations. Much of the recent research contradicts the often-stated claim that some degree of male dominance exists in all societies. The notion of reputed universal male dominance has been challenged on several fronts. First, most anthropologists have been male and have dealt with male informants in their fieldwork, and ethnographic material has been framed by the gender perspective of observer and participant. Second, historical accounts of earlier cultures are like-wise tainted by the attitudes of explorers, missionaries and government officials, all of whom were men. It is well to be reminded of Lafitau’s admonition in 1724 that “… authors who have written on the customs of the [Native] Americans” concerning the rights and status of women “… have formed their conceptions, in this as in everything else, on European ideas and practices.” Finally, by the time colonial agents, and later anthropologists, interacted with indigenous peoples, traditional gender relations were already distorted by rapid sociocultural and political changes resulting from colonial processes. Therefore, even the earliest post-contact data are not truly representative of aboriginal society.

This paper will examine gender differences in five Native American societies: The Naskapi, Navajo, Eskimo, Iroquois, and Plains peoples. We will see the extent to which ecological and social conditions have molded gender roles in Amerindian cultures and the extent to which they have been re-shaped by post colonial historical forces. We begin with the discussion of societal features bearing on gender relations and then proceed to the analysis of each of the five societies, which were chosen to demonstrate the impact of various factors in different ecological contexts. 

by Kathryn E. Holland Braund

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URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?mmzymnnmery

Muscogulge or Creek women were members of the largest Indian nation in the southeast. The Creeks claimed most of the territory encompassed by the states of Georgia, Alabama, and northern Florida, but most of the population was concentrated in interior settlements along major rivers. By the late eighteenth century, Creek population stood at twenty thousand persons. The loosely structured confederacy had two geopolitical divisions comprised of many different ethnic groups. The Upper Towns, in modern north-central Alabama, were peopled by Alabamas, Tallapoosas, and Abeikas, Cowetas dominated the Lower Towns, which were scattered along the Chattahoochee River, though there was much ethnic diversity. Although, there were sixty-two major Creek towns.  

Beginning in the late seventeenth century, the Creek towns established trade relations with the Europeans who had settled around them in Carolina and Florida. By the middle of the eighteenth century, most Creek commerce was conducted by traders from Augusta, Georgia. the barter of deerskins for European goods was the single most powerful force in Creek history during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Though they were dependent on foreign goods for their survival, Creeks were able to retain their most cherished beliefs and social systems. Although most historians have overlooked women in their discussions of Creek life during this period, Creek women were central elements in a complicated cycle of cultural adaptation, change, and persistence that dominated Creek history in the late eighteenth century. 

There are several difficulties associated with the study of Creek women. Most importantly, the written sources are entirely European and exclusively male in origin. White male traders, travelers, and employees of the British, French, Spanish, and American governments left general descriptions of these women and their place in Indian society. But, white European males were denied access to many feminine activities. And even when they married Creek women, European males were excluded from many aspects of their wives’ social lives. moreover, they often did not record information avilable to them that would be valuable to Creek scholars today. Sometimes, they drew the wrong conclusion from what they recorded. For example, only a few ever acquired a working knowledge of Creek kinship. Nevertheless, it is possible to understand women’s role in tribal life from the accounts left by white men who lived and traveled among the Creek towns during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.