Contesting patriarchy: granddaughters fight back.

AuthorCatapano, Andrea

Abstract

This paper argues that colonial policies discriminating against Native women, as well as defining and circumscribing Native rights and identity, continue to cast a long shadow over the cultural and socio-economic landscape on First Nations Reserves in Canada. The study historicizes the emergence of these discriminatory practices on the Six Nations Reserve, entailing the transformation of Native social organization from a matriarchy to a reification of patriarchy, subordinating Six Nations women and denying them their human rights, if they chose to marry non-Natives. Banished from their homes and families, constrained from participating in Six Nations culture, women continue to suffer under this yoke of oppression that has been naturalized through the hegemony of internal colonialism and meted out according to Canadian statutory law, codified in the Indian Act. The narrative describes several signal cases that posed legal challenges to discrimination, the intervention of the United Nations to protect Native women's cultural autonomy, as well as the internal Canadian political struggle over reform, women's rights and the movement for Native self-government. As Native women continue to struggle against the patriarchal mentality and colonization of consciousness evidenced by their leaders, First Nations communities are attempting to determine their own codes of citizenship, define their own cultural identities and design new indigenous institutions to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, to ensure the continuation of our Native cultures.

Introduction

St. Edmund's Hall houses a portrait of a Mohawk Indian, known as Oronhyatekha, (Burning Sky), who was invited to come to study here in Oxford by the Prince of Wales in the late nineteenth-century. He traveled from his home on the Six Nations Reserve in Canada and became a physician. Oronhyatekha was called a Red Indian and he was depicted in full Iroquois attire, far different than his dress in nineteenth-century Canadian society. His name, in English, was Peter Martin and he was my great-grandfather's brother.

The reserve in Oronhyatekha's lifetime was a poor, rural agricultural community. Canadian colonial policy proffered assimilation and enfranchisement, as an incentive for First Nations people to leave the Reserve and become members of the Euro-Canadian society. Oronhyatekha, however, was proud of his identity as a Mohawk and he resisted being defined in any way, but as an Indian. Oronhyatekha was named a national historic figure in Canada, last August.

Today the reserve is no longer a simple farming community, but home to businesses, a bank and a population of approximately 26,000. Almost 11,000 Band members live off-reserve. (1) Many people seek to live on the reserve now, not only to retain their sense of Native culture, but also to partake of socio-economic benefits. Native identity, since Oronhyatekha came to study in Oxford, has become much more complicated and contested, for these entitlements are yoked to Indian status. Native leaders and communities have become invested in and protective of their membership and rights as status Indians.

Indian status in Canada is a complex political and social construct. Canadian legislation naturalized gender discrimination and enshrined patriarchy by altering the basic organization of most Indian groups, such as Six Nations. Many Indian women were literally disinherited and disavowed as Indians in this process. For over one hundred years, Native women, not only from my reserve, but also from all over Canada, were denied their identity as Indians, through Canadian statutory law. The laws were embedded in the Indian Act, defining an Indian and a

Band with reference to Canadian mores, not in Native terms. Through political pressure and court rulings, these laws were challenged as discriminatory. Women's rights were partially restored in 1985, through a Bill entitled, C-31.

In an effort to make this complex case clear to you, I had to look no further than my own life. I have never written as a "participant-observer" before, but in this instance, it seems appropriate to explain this colonial construction of identity, and the power it holds to define one's life. My mother, born on the Six Nations Reserve, was my source for the oral history of Oronhyatekha, for his achievements were not well known on the reserve. Oronhyatekha was a frequent guest in her family home and he taught my grandmother all about Indian medicine, so she could treat her ten children with natural remedies she made at his direction. My mother was "full-blood," yet she lived most of her life classified by the Canadian government, as well as her own community at Six Nations, as white, for she chose to marry out of the Band. When she married a non-Indian, she lost her membership and treaty rights not only for herself, but also for her descendants. Still, it was my mother who carefully taught me all the details of Oronhyatekha's education and career. In our matriarchal culture, women transmitted the history and culture of our people. Even though after her marriage she was essentially banished from the Six Nations community where she was born, she retained and transmitted her own pride in Native identity and history. Indigenous people across Canada are still living with the discrimination that gendered and discriminatory Canadian policies created.

My remarks focus on the historical context for this problem and the truncated legislative efforts to repair the damage it did to Indian families. By restoring only some women and some children to their rightful place in their communities, but not others, the implications of continuing the same patterns of gender discrimination and inequality continue to divide indigenous families, today. As leaders of our matrilineal culture at Six Nations, the granddaughters, my daughter, will continue the fight against the racial and gendered construction of identity, as it has evolved through the Indian Act and as it continues to be perpetuated by our own leaders, today.

Six Nations Women and the Indian Act

Onkwehonwe (the real people) women are historically renowned for leadership in matrilineal societies, such as Six Nations. We are still exercising that leadership today, bringing attention to the gender inequities that intrude in our lives. Committed to the social reproduction of the Native extended family and clan, we instill a cultural identity, rooted in indigenous spiritual and ecological consciousness and mutual respect. Native women are the embodiment of tradition, while also serving as the harbingers of change; perhaps, serving as the crucial link N. Scott Momaday refers to as a "memory in the blood." (2)

This paper focuses on the contested issue of Native identity and status, not as an expression of self-definition or reflexive sense of cultural consciousness, but as defined by a body of statutory laws known as the Indian Act. Under the British North America Act, the legislative authority for both Indians and Indian reserves rests in the Parliament of Canada. It is important to understand the difficulty of mounting an effective Native challenge to any law promulgated by the Federal government of Canada, due to this political construct, for there is no constitutional separation of powers where Indians were concerned. Native affairs are regarded as a separate entity, as the responsibility of the Federal Parliament of Canada. Subsequently, Natives have often had to go outside of Canada, to international forums, to fight unfair legislation and to challenge patriarchal norms.

Canadian officials recognized the power of women in sustaining native communities and sought to abrogate their power, both in the public and private spheres. The Federal approach to the "Indian problem" was assimilation, including education and enfranchisement. This policy was not always implemented gradually, though. At Six Nations Reserve, near Brantford, Ontario, Canada seized power at gunpoint in 1924, replacing our Confederacy Council of hereditary chiefs with a democratically elected Council. After a Canadian commission investigated conditions on the reserve, it was argued that "a comparatively small number of old women have the selection of those who are entrusted with the transaction of business of the Six Nations Indian." (3) Notably, though, the elected council still does not draw a mandate from our community; most of the Indians on the Reserve simply choose not participate in the voting process. I will argue that the assimilation process was more readily accomplished at Six Nations Reserve, by extinguishing and circumscribing Native women's identity, through the statutes of the Indian Act. Male authority was gradually naturalized, effacing the leadership of women in Native families, clans and cultural life. Patriarchy was reified in Euro-Canadian society and it was inculcated within the local gender relations of Six Nations through federal statutes, limiting women's roles in the community. Patriarchal norms and forms became entrenched, severely impacting the matriarchal character of Six Nations culture, as well as engendering widespread discrimination against Native women in Canada.

Under the Indian Act, Native women who married non-Indians were stripped of their legal status and Band membership; so were their descendants. Yet, if an Indian man married a non-Indian, he not only kept his status and Band membership, his spouse and their children became Indian. This was obviously gender discrimination. Since assimilation was the objective of Canadian policy, Native people might also lose their status by enfranchisement, namely, by pursuing a higher education, a professional occupation or serving in the military. (4) Native men were empowered to enfranchise their entire family, without the consent of their wives and children.

Given the discordant and fractious relationship between Native and Euro-Canadian...

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