Aboriginal women's history in the West, and other things
I had a really good time today giving a guest lecture/leading a discussion on aboriginal women's history in Canada, in an American women's history class, of all things!
I drew mostly from my experience researching at Fort Edmonton Park, and we had some very good talks about the problems associated with sources for telling the stories of women's history, particularly Cree and Métis women in what would become Western Canada. I told them about expectations people have of me when I'm in my Métis country wife outfit, versus when I'm a Nancy Harriott, a Métis woman wearing European-style clothing, versus stories I've heard of women in dresses with bustles on 1885 street. We discussed issues of presentation of gender, of the collision of gendered expectations of Cree and Métis women from their own people as well as Euro-Canadians, etc. We also talked about some of the strange questions I get at work, like, "Who was the first woman out West?" and what they mean... They're asking about the "first white woman", of course, but what does it mean when they inadvertently erase a whole history of native women?
Originally, the talk was supposed to be like fifteen or twenty minutes long, but it stretched to just about an hour long, which was unexpected but fun! I had a powerpoint presentation, but unfortunately it doesn't look as if the computers have been properly installed after the renovations yet - despite turning things on and off, unplugging things from one place and replugging them in another, and general wishful thinking on my part, it looks like the computer was telling the truth about "the operating system is not installed". :P Oh, well! I'd brought a bunch of books to recommend anyway, so I could pass them around and show people some pictures similar to the ones I'd wanted to show them.
Also, one of the students in the class recognized me from her visit to Fort Edmonton last month! :D That was super awesome.
After I returned home, I thought I'd look on the university's library website for electronic copies of some of the books I mentioned in class... and I found out that the publisher for my favourite author on the subject of aboriginal women's history offers their books for free online, in downloadable PDFs that I can read on my sony e-reader! :D IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING LIKE THAT YOU SHOULD DOWNLOAD THEM FOR SERIOUS. I've read chunks of "The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation-Building in Western Canada to 1915" (which I reviewed, or at least talked a lot about and excerpted here), and I'm currently reading "Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and Borderlands", which she edited. There are articles on things like aboriginal country wives who were taken back to the Orkney Islands or Scotland by their husbands, and another fascinating one on an incident in 1896 with Wîhtikôw (or wendigos, AKA cannibal monsters) in the Athabasca region. I can't recommend these books highly enough. And because they're free online, there are no excuses! ;)
That is all for now! :D
I drew mostly from my experience researching at Fort Edmonton Park, and we had some very good talks about the problems associated with sources for telling the stories of women's history, particularly Cree and Métis women in what would become Western Canada. I told them about expectations people have of me when I'm in my Métis country wife outfit, versus when I'm a Nancy Harriott, a Métis woman wearing European-style clothing, versus stories I've heard of women in dresses with bustles on 1885 street. We discussed issues of presentation of gender, of the collision of gendered expectations of Cree and Métis women from their own people as well as Euro-Canadians, etc. We also talked about some of the strange questions I get at work, like, "Who was the first woman out West?" and what they mean... They're asking about the "first white woman", of course, but what does it mean when they inadvertently erase a whole history of native women?
Originally, the talk was supposed to be like fifteen or twenty minutes long, but it stretched to just about an hour long, which was unexpected but fun! I had a powerpoint presentation, but unfortunately it doesn't look as if the computers have been properly installed after the renovations yet - despite turning things on and off, unplugging things from one place and replugging them in another, and general wishful thinking on my part, it looks like the computer was telling the truth about "the operating system is not installed". :P Oh, well! I'd brought a bunch of books to recommend anyway, so I could pass them around and show people some pictures similar to the ones I'd wanted to show them.
Also, one of the students in the class recognized me from her visit to Fort Edmonton last month! :D That was super awesome.
After I returned home, I thought I'd look on the university's library website for electronic copies of some of the books I mentioned in class... and I found out that the publisher for my favourite author on the subject of aboriginal women's history offers their books for free online, in downloadable PDFs that I can read on my sony e-reader! :D IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING LIKE THAT YOU SHOULD DOWNLOAD THEM FOR SERIOUS. I've read chunks of "The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation-Building in Western Canada to 1915" (which I reviewed, or at least talked a lot about and excerpted here), and I'm currently reading "Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and Borderlands", which she edited. There are articles on things like aboriginal country wives who were taken back to the Orkney Islands or Scotland by their husbands, and another fascinating one on an incident in 1896 with Wîhtikôw (or wendigos, AKA cannibal monsters) in the Athabasca region. I can't recommend these books highly enough. And because they're free online, there are no excuses! ;)
That is all for now! :D