We Are Dancing for You

Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women's Coming-of-Age Ceremonies

Cutcha Risling Baldy, Coll Thrush, Charlotte Coté

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780295743455
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi su nativi americani

"I am here. You will never be alone. We are dancing for you." So begins Cutcha Risling Baldy's deeply personal account of the revitalization of the women's coming-of-age ceremony for the Hoopa Valley Tribe. At the end of the twentieth century, the tribe's Flower Dance had not been fully practiced for decades. The women of the tribe, recognizing the critical importance of the tradition, undertook its revitalization using the memories of elders and medicine women and details found in museum archives, anthropological records, and oral histories. Deeply rooted in Indigenous knowledge, Risling Baldy brings us the voices of people transformed by cultural revitalization, including the accounts of young women who have participated in the Flower Dance. Using a framework of Native feminisms, she locates this revival within a broad context of decolonizing praxis and considers how this renaissance of women's coming-of-age ceremonies confounds ethnographic depictions of Native women; challenges anthropological theories about menstruation, gender, and coming-of-age; and addresses gender inequality and gender violence within Native communities.

CHAPTER 1

Dining’xine:wh-mil-na:sa’a:n

Hupa People—With Them—It Stays, There Is a Hupa Tradition

ORAL NARRATIVES AND NATIVE FEMINISMS

Hupa people, Na:tinixwe, the people of where the trails return, I think are a more gynocentric people. Some of our medicines for people, a lot of our ceremonies involve the medicine happening at night because you are tying it to the moon, which we would associate with water, which we would associate with the water from women.

—Melodie George-Moore (Hoopa tribal member, Karuk, Cherokee, Whilkut)

MY ENGAGEMENT WITH NATIVE FEMINISMS BEGAN BECAUSE OF MY own experiences as a Native woman. On one hand I was raised among vocal women who assertively advanced Indigenous issues and actively engaged with traditional cultural practices. I was taught to do the same from a young age. Hupa ceremonies include cycles that have continued uninterrupted since time began. For neighboring tribes, these ceremonies were revived after periods of significant disruption. This process involved community members stepping forward to occupy traditional leadership roles and formulate contemporary articulations of cultural values and traditions. Over time I became aware of unsettling themes emerging in various ceremonial and community contexts.

I recall returning after one particular ceremony to my parents’ house and sitting on the couch with my auntie Mary Jane Risling.¹ I shared with her that in several ceremonies and community events I had attended there was a growing undercurrent of what can best be described as patriarchal “concern trolling” of young women.² On some occasions young women were told that there were rumors about them not being virgins, and that virginity was of utmost importance for our traditions and dances. This felt antithetical to what I had learned growing up about Hupa people, who did not exclude or dismiss women in this way. These traditions did not treat virginity as sacrosanct, but rather held that in certain ceremonies women should not dance after they had their first child. This, coupled with people starting to say that women could no longer wear red at ceremonies because it reminded people of menstruation and that women shouldn’t wear pants but only long skirts, had left me disheartened. I had even heard people say that women generally should not touch men’s regalia and that women who are menstruating should not be at public educational cultural demonstrations, because they could “hurt” or “curse” people. In community conversations I was told that the reason women had to wear long skirts while they danced in ceremony was because otherwise they would be perceived as trying to attract men and would entice them away from their prayers and good thoughts.³

I don’t remember it being this way when I was younger. I have pictures of my mother and Auntie wearing jeans and basket hats at ceremony. I had worn red to ceremonies before. We have many red things on our regalia: woodpecker scalps, beads, and red abalone. Growing up, I had never experienced someone asking me about my virginity or commenting on the length of my skirt. How these seemingly patriarchal conversations about women had become so prevalent I could not understand. Had Native culture always been this way, and I only started to notice as I got older? On the couch that day with my auntie, I asked her, “Do you think our cultures are inherently misogynistic?” She was adamant in her response: “No. I don’t think our cultures were misogynistic, not at all. Women occupied key and powerful roles as healers, leaders, and regalia holders. I think our cultures have become imbalanced in a way that looks, walks, and quacks like misogyny, but it is something that is learned. And you know how I know that? Because traditionally our cultures are tied to the land and rooted in nature, always the best teacher. Nature strives for balance, and the feminine is central to existence. Women are central to Hupa culture. They are central to our spirituality. We respected women, we knew they were important to our future.”

I have felt a very personal longing to explore Native feminisms because, for me, we cannot build our futures without decolonization and we cannot decolonize or enact self-determination without Native feminisms. This conversation has been a growing discourse not only among Native academics but also in Native communities. The intimate ties between Native feminisms and the enactment of sovereignty and self-determination are a foundational framework built by scholars like Kathryn Shanley, Paula Gunn Allen, Ines HernándezÁvila, Mishuana Goeman, Jennifer Denetdale, Renya Ramirez, Audra Simpson, Joanne Barker, and others. Barker notes that gender, sexuality, and feminist studies are central to sovereignty and self-determination because they critically analyze how sovereignty and self-determination are “imagined, represented and exercised” so that sovereignty and self-determination do not mirror heteropatriarchal standards.⁴ On a community level, Native feminisms can help to formulate a more open discussion about how to empower Native peoples in order, as Barker notes, to confront the “normative gendered and sexed bodies” that seek to create Indigenous peoples as “citizens of the state.”⁵ In Native cultural epistemologies there is a complex engagement with feminism, which values the empowerment of all people in ways that support gender equality and gender balance.

I have seen this type of engaged feminism demonstrated in women’s coming-of-age ceremonies, which enact an epistemological framework that (re)writes, (re)rights, and (re)rites Native feminisms as foundational building blocks of Native culture and society. The (re)riteing aspect of this project requires an intervention in the previous anthropological and historical work that silenced Native feminisms and supported interpretations of Native culture as traditionally patriarchal. Modern understandings of ceremony can become intertwined with patriarchy and misogyny, so much so that contemporary practices of ceremony are used to reinforce this patriarchy in the name of “tradition.” Andrea Smith and J. Kehaulani Kauanui argue that “the imposition of patriarchy within Native communities is essential to establishing colonial rule, because patriarchy naturalizes social hierarchy.”⁶ The patriarchal invasion of our stories, the foundational building blocks of our cultures and epistemologies, has allowed scholars and even community leaders to create a mythological Native past that mirrored the heteropatriarchal structure of settler colonial society.

In this chapter I approach the (re)writing, (re)righting, and (re)riteing of Native feminisms by engaging a Native feminist analytic of the oral tradition to establish that Native feminisms are not introduced by Western culture and are not conceptualized only through a Western cultural framework but are instead integral to the enactment of our culture and to our survivance, decolonization, and Indigenous futures. I am in agreement with Renya Ramirez, who argues that “rather than viewing a Native feminist consciousness as a force that could cause internal conflict or as a white construct, it should be emphasized as furthering an essential goal in indigenous communities: to combat sexism.”⁷ Pueblo scholar Paula Gunn Allen believed that “a feminist approach reveals not only the exploitation and oppression of the tribes by whites and white government but also areas of oppression within the tribes and the sources and nature of that oppression.”⁸ She saw feminist analytics as addressing the effects of patriarchal colonialism to help tribes reclaim their “egalitarian and sacred traditions.”⁹ And Lisa Kahaleole Hall argues that Native feminisms must look not only at how patriarchal ideas of the “dominant” society have affected Native peoples, but also at how “patriarchal colonialism has been internalized within indigenous communities.”¹⁰ This chapter demonstrates that internalized patriarchal expressions of ceremonial practices are not traditional and illustrates how the revitalization of women’s coming-of-age ceremonies center and reclaim Native feminisms.

Throughout history, Native women have been portrayed as either Pocahontas or the squaw.¹¹ Either Native women are assisting in the colonization of their people, or they are dirty and disregarded as overtly sexual, stupid, and lazy. Native women have also been left out of historical scholarship and treated as peripheral to their nations, cultures, and societies rather than shown as integral or as serving in leadership positions. Reframing Native women as central to oral narratives and cultural practices is imperative for (re)righting and (re) riteing Indigenous epistemologies, because as Seneca feminist scholar Mishuana Goeman argues, “Native women are at the center of how our nations, both tribal and non-tribal, have been imagined.”¹² It is through engaging Native feminisms as foundational to our traditional cultures as well as our revitalizations that we can truly build a future with our past.

The crux of this chapter uses a Hupa feminist analytic of oral narratives to center Native women’s experiences, because, as Michelle Jacob notes, this type of feminist analysis can work “toward envisioning a society in which our traditional cultural norms which respect and honor women’s contributions are upheld.”¹³ I aim to reconfigure discussions of Hupa oral narratives and material culture to reflect a gendered analysis focused on how Hupa people valued gender equality in their culture and society as well as their spiritualities and philosophies. Bringing our frameworks of gender balance and equality to bear on how we understand material culture and societal organization demonstrates the feminist practices that should be a part of our contemporary revitalizations of ceremony and culture.

In Weaving Strength, Weaving Power, Venida Chenault argues that “by reconnecting to and utilizing the strengths of the traditional cultures, the wisdom of the origin narratives, the gendered teachings within these creation stories, and the systems and processes that support strong tribal women, the full power of Indigenous peoples is embraced.”¹⁴ As Chenault highlights, Western scholarship does not provide interpretations of Indigenous societal organization that “accurately interpret roles, status, power, and influence of tribal women. Instead, disparaging portrayals of Indigenous women are mired in constructed images advanced in cowboy movies, cartoons, and stereotypes that continue to serve as the basis for information and shaping public opinion.”¹⁵ My Native feminist analytic is built on a tribally specific methodology that shows how oral stories inform Native feminisms and reinscribe them, not as modern-day liberal cultural values masquerading as tradition but instead as dynamic parts of our Indigenous past, present, and futures. My argument is that women’s coming-of-age ceremonies engage Native feminisms and dismantle a heteropatriarchy that is often characterized as “traditional” or even “modern” in some contemporary Native nations. It is important that the types of critical engagement offered in this chapter clearly demonstrate that women’s coming-of-age ceremonies are not vehicles to oppress women, nor a longing for an idealized past, but instead support the (re)writing, (re)righting, and (re)riteing of Native feminisms. As Joanne Barker notes, locating Indigenous gender, sexuality, and feminist study in Indigenous territories contextualizes the relationship between land and people and holds the analysis accountable to specific communities.¹⁶ My feminist study is necessarily accountable to Hupa people. And while I have experienced occasions when patriarchal ideology is held up as tradition, I have also seen engagement with values of gender equality and respect that continue as a part of Hupa cultural practices. I aim to provide a theoretical framework for what Native people already practice in community revitalizations so as to reinforce that their focus on gender equality and the rejection of patriarchy has always been part of Native culture and society.

NATIVE FEMINISM AND THE ORAL TRADITION

Many scholars have written about Native societies as “egalitarian” groups where the roles of women and men were balanced and women had religious, economic, and political autonomy.¹⁷ Scholars who study the role of Native American women in Indigenous societies believe that the centrality of a female divine spirit demonstrates how important Native American women are to Indigenous cultures and societies.¹⁸ Kim Anderson writes in A Recognition of Being that “many native creation stories are female centered, and there are many stories that speak about the role of women in bringing spirituality to the people. The Iroquois attribute the beginnings of the earth to a female, rather than a male. Among the Sioux, the White Buffalo Woman is recognized as the culture bearer, as she brought the sacred pipe.”¹⁹ Devon Mihesuah provides a summary of some of the divine roles of women in Indigenous American Women. She notes that for the Navajo “‘mother’ symbolizes earth, sheep and corn.” Apache also have a central female spirit person, known as Changing Woman. There are also central female spirit people for the Cherokee (Selu), Tewa Pueblos (Blue Corn Woman and White Corn Maiden), and the Shawnee, who refer to their creator as “our grandmother.”²⁰

Native women participated in governmental affairs in a number of Indigenous societies, a fact that highlights their central role in the structure of the society. Sally Roesch Wagner writes that Haudenosaunee women were “involved in all decisions of governmental policy, from the local to the federal level.”²¹ Jennifer Denetdale notes that for the Navajo Nation, “Although written reports do not mention women as leaders or chiefs, Navajo oral tradition and other accounts make note that it was not unheard of for women to serve as headmen or chiefs…. [E]arly American accounts have noted Navajo women’s presence in council proceedings between Navajo and American leaders.”²² In Being Again of One Mind, Lina Sunseri describes the Haudenosaunee women’s roles in traditional society, which included the ability to “exercise sexual autonomy, to divorce, to own property, to approve of war or to order its end.”²³ She also notes that lineal descent had to “run through the female line.”²⁴ Lisa Kahaleole Hall notes that in Hawaii “there were women chiefs as early as 1375” and that in religious systems of Native Hawaiians both male and female gods had power.²⁵ Marilou Awiakta writes at length about the role of women in traditional Cherokee society. Awiakta explains that in negotiating their treaty with Western colonizers, the Cherokee people included women in these talks. When Westerners came to negotiate, however, they did not invite or involve women, which inspired a Cherokee leader to ask, “Where are your women?” thereby noting the fundamental differences in worldview and ideas about gender and gender equality that separated these two very different cultures.²⁶

The (re)writing and (re)righting of the historical record of gender equality in Native communities has been an important and necessary intervention made by Native studies scholars. While anthropological and archaeological studies have attempted to recreate this history through ethnographic interviews and studies of Indigenous burial and village sites, they did not fully engage with or attempt to discuss oral narratives as complex philosophies, methodologies, or ontologies. Early ethnographic studies significantly misinterpreted gender in Indigenous cultures and societies. This has led to several misconceptions about how Indigenous peoples valued and conceptualized gender. It has been up to contemporary Indigenous scholars to reclaim the historical, anthropological, and ethnographic record with a more discerning analysis in order t...