Reviews in American History Pub Date : 2021-03-16 Katrina Jagodinsky
- Dancing, Marching, Theorizing, and Writing: Native Women’s Histories and Futures
- Katrina Jagodinsky (bio)
For generations, Native women have been working to restore their personal and tribal autonomy in the aftermath of colonial violence and dispossession on a variety of fronts. Some of this work has been visible only to family and tribal members, while some of this work has been on a global stage.1 Most recently in the United States, the fruits of their labors can be seen in the wave of Indigenous women elected in the 2018 and 2020 elections as local, state, and federal representatives making critical strides toward Indigenous self-determination.2 In the arena of federal Indian law and policy, Native women’s activism and scholarship have forced a reckoning with boarding school abuses, Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, limits to tribal jurisdiction, and settler claims to unceded lands.3 Indigenous women are also working within the academy to more deeply articulate, historicize, and theorize their pasts, presents, and futures in a variety of disciplines.4 American historians have not always shown themselves receptive to such methodological and narrative interventions.5 Nonetheless, the field of Native women’s history has reached a zenith, and it is this reviewer’s hope that the same is true for Native women’s futures and the rest of us in it.
Two recent books embody the maturing field of Native women’s history with distinct yet overlapping studies of Indigenous women’s efforts to retain and revitalize ceremonial and medicinal knowledge and practices centered on menstruation, birthing, and reproductive health more broadly. While each stands alone with particular aims and methods, they should be read in [End Page 159] tandem as narratives that inform one another. Cutcha Risling Baldy’s We Are Dancing for You: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women’s Coming-of-Age Ceremonies is a powerful and personal analysis of the Hupa Flower Dance that is focused on the relationship between decolonization and Native feminisms in articulating a sovereign future for tribal nations. Baldy’s approach is emblematic of the theoretical and interdisciplinary approach that is Native & Indigenous Studies. Brianna Theobald’s Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century is a study of Crow women’s strategies in retaining and insisting on reproductive health and justice within and beyond their reservations that similarly draws on Native feminisms and decolonization, but is far less explicitly theoretical and reflects the influence of historians of gender and empire as much as Native and Indigenous Studies. Each appears in a series devoted to Native Studies: University of Washington Press’s Indigenous Confluences, and University of North Carolina Press’s Critical Indigeneities. To fully appreciate the praxis and the practice of Indigenous women’s history, readers should look to Baldy first as an orientation to the field and to the political and spiritual significance of decolonization—not merely a method, but a mindset and a mission—and then look to Theobald for detailed examples of such work throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.
We Are Dancing for You begins with Baldy’s personal accounting of the significance of Hupa revitalization that makes this work particularly resonant for undergraduate readers who might relate to Baldy’s story of isolation and abuse while away from home for college. Her story also identifies the emotional and psychic value of decolonization that is sometimes lost in studies centered on law and sovereignty. Baldy makes this connection even clearer throughout her introduction and first chapter, which read as a survey of Native feminist theory and decolonizing methodologies. Here, readers encounter the influence of Native Studies phenoms deployed with tremendous dexterity. As someone who read many of these works incrementally as they...
中文翻译:
跳舞,游行,理论化和写作:土著妇女的历史和未来
代替摘要,这里是内容的简要摘录:
- 跳舞,游行,理论化和写作:土著妇女的历史和未来
- 卡特里娜(Katrina Jagodinsky)(生物)
几代人以来,土著妇女一直在殖民暴力和各种方面的剥夺之后努力恢复其个人和部落的自治。其中某些作品仅对家庭和部落成员可见,而其中某些作品则处于全球舞台上。1最近在美国,他们的劳动成果,可以在2018年和2020年选举,地方,州选出的土著妇女,并使得对土著自决关键步伐联邦代表的波看到。2在印度联邦法律和政策领域,土著妇女的行动主义和奖学金迫使他们对寄宿学校的虐待,失踪和谋杀的土著妇女,部落管辖权的限制以及定居者对未割让土地的要求进行了估算。3土著妇女还在该学院内开展工作,以更深入地阐明,历史化和理论化其在各种学科中的过去,现在和未来。4美国历史学家并不总是表明自己接受这种方法论和叙述性干预。5尽管如此,土著妇女的历史领域已经达到顶峰,这是审稿人的希望,对于土著妇女的未来以及我们中的其他人也是如此。
最近的两本书体现了土著妇女历史的成熟领域,对土著妇女为保持和恢复以月经,分娩和生殖健康为中心的礼仪和医学知识与实践所做的努力却截然不同,但又有重叠的研究。尽管每个人都有各自特定的目标和方法,但它们应在[End Page 159]中一并阅读,作为能够相互交流的叙述。Cutcha Risling Baldy的《我们在为您跳舞》:本土女性主义和复兴女性成年礼的仪式是对“ Hupa花之舞”的有力而个性化的分析,该分析着眼于非殖民化与本土女权主义之间的关系,阐明了部落国家的主权未来。Baldy的方法是本地和土著研究的理论和跨学科方法的象征。Brianna Theobald关于保留地的复制:二十世纪的怀孕,分娩和殖民主义是对乌鸦妇女在其保留之内和之外保留和坚持生殖健康和正义的策略的研究,该策略类似地借鉴了土著女权主义和非殖民化,但理论上的意义远非如此明确,反映了性别和帝国历史学家的影响力与土著一样多。和土著研究。每种都出现在专门研究土著研究的系列中:华盛顿大学出版社的土著合流和北卡罗来纳大学出版社的重要土著。为了充分了解土著妇女历史的实践和实践,读者应该首先将Baldy视为非殖民化领域和非殖民化的政治和精神意义的定位,不仅是一种方法,而且是一种思想观念和使命,然后再看向西奥伯尔德(Theobald)提供了在整个20世纪至二十一世纪进行此类工作的详细示例。
“我们为您跳舞”始于Baldy对Hupa振兴的重要性的个人论述,这使该作品尤其引起了本科生的共鸣,这些读者可能与Baldy出门在外上大学时的孤独和虐待的故事有关。她的故事还指出了非殖民化在情感和心理上的价值,这种价值有时在以法律和主权为中心的研究中会丢失。在介绍和第一章的过程中,Baldy使这种联系更加清晰,这是对本土女权主义理论和非殖民化方法论的概述。在这里,读者会遇到以极大的灵活性部署的“本地研究”现象的影响。作为阅读其中许多作品的人,他们的作品会逐步递增...