Readings 10/1/08

Changing Ones, Chapter 4 “Warrior Women and Warrior Chiefs”

This chapter looks at the roles attributed to Native women in different societies, from the role of mother to the issue of lesbianism in different cultures. It also looks at female berdaches, and while I discuss how problematic that term is in my description of Richard LaFortune’s visit it is the term the author uses and so I will continue to use it in this post. Two of the other categories the author looks at are Indian Queens and Women Warriors, in addition to Alternative Genders.

One thing that I think is interesting to note is how the author makes sure to mention how it is difficult to say what is ‘normal’ and what is not in the cultures that were in the midst of being drastically changed due to violence and colonization. As described by the author, in the instance of the Plains tribes, “…as one male leader after another fell before the advancing wave of violence, women occasionally stepped in to fill the breach” (Roscoe, 76).

I feel like this is an important thing for the author to note. By the time the West – our primary source of information (albeit biased) on Native societies – was making contact with Native communities it was the same time violence was being inflicted upon them, making the information gathered about them tainted at best. Add in to that the ethnocentric view most observers had and any observations made about societies definitely have to be taken with a grain of salt.

Dissident Women, “Key Women’s Documents”

This section is a variety of important documents for women, as the title of the chapter suggests. Included in this chapter are ‘Women’s Revolutionary Law’, ‘Women’s Rights in Our Traditions and Customs’, ‘Comandanta Esther: Speech before the Mexican Congress’, and ‘International Day of the Rebel Woman’. The numerous articles are information about the Zapatista women, in their own words. It is a good primer before reading further in the book, to see what perspective the women are coming from.

One thing I found extremely interesting was in the ‘Women’s Revolutionary Law,’ when the women state, “Men want many children because they don’t think, they don’t care. They don’t feel the pain of pregnancy, of childbirth, of raising and feeding children. This is how we are killing ourselves, how we are forcing ourselves to die” (“Dissident Women”, 7). What I liked about this section was that it is an example of how unequivocally independent the women are, distinguishing themselves from men in a way that makes them equals but acknowledges the difficulties that can come between the genders.

Overall the words expressed in this section are strong, independent and uniform as they speak for their movement and the people their movement represents. It is powerful to read their own words, and necessary before passing any judgments on the EZLN and what they stand for.