American Indian Studies

Directs attention to the bravery, determination, and talents of American Indian women of the past and the present.

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Karen Anderson offers the first book to examine the lives of women from three important ethnic groups in the United States - Native American, Mexican American, and African American women - revealing the specificities and commonalities of their experiences. Changing Woman provides the first comparative history of women from these racial ethnic groups, explaining changes in the sources and nature of the oppressions in their lives and tracing their progress over time.

Examins the life of American Indian women in all their variety from Apache coming of age ceremonies to Algonkian marriage taboos, childhood games of the Crows and old age among Chinook.

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"Oklahoma Choctaw scholar Devon Abbott Mihesuah offers a frank and absorbing look at the complex, evolving identities of American Indigenous women today, their ongoing struggles against a centuries-old legacy of colonial disempowerment, and how they are seen and portrayed by themselves and others. Mihesuah first examines how American Indigenous women have been perceived and depicted by non-Natives, including scholars, and by themselves. She then illuminates the pervasive impact of colonialism and patriarchal thought on Native women's traditional tribal roles and on their participation in academia. Mihesuah considers how relations between Indigenous women and men across North America continue to be altered by Christianity and Euro-American ideologies. Sexism and violence against Indigenous women has escalated; economic disparities and intratribal factionalism and "culturalism" threaten connections among women and with men; and many women suffer from psychological stress because their economic, religious, political, and social positions are devalued. In the last section, Mihesuah explores how modern American Indigenous women have empowered themselves tribally, nationally, or academically. Additionally, she examines the overlooked role that Native women played in the Red Power movement as well as some key differences between Native women "feminists" and "activists."

This pioneering work documents the continuing vitality of the American Indian tradition and of women's leadership within that tradition. In her new preface to this edition, Allen reflects on the remarkable resurgence of American Indian pride and culture in recent times.

Biographical encyclopedia of indigenous women. An older version is also available in print.