Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T10:08:22.810Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

19 - Mapping the Future: Indigenous Feminism

from Part III - Native American Renaissance (Post-1960s)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

Melanie Benson Taylor
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
Get access

Summary

Louise Erdrich’s 2010 novel Shadow Tag, a story about an artist who obsessively paints his Native wife, emphasizes the connections among gender, colonialism, and representation at the heart of indigenous feminism. In the novel, this essay argues, the relationship between Gil and Irene, along with the ways that Gil paints Irene’s body, underscores the centrality of gender in colonialism, the ways that patriarchy has served as both instrument and rationale for colonial processes that carry particular consequences for indigenous women. The novel thus gestures towards the consequent necessity of feminism in anticolonial projects and scrutinizes the role of representation in colonial power and Native resistance. In Erdrich’s story, contests over power and possession unfold in part as contests over representation, and by illustrating the ways that representation is bound up with social power, Shadow Tag ultimately reflects on the political possibilities of Native American literature itself.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, Paula Gunn. 1986. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Barker, Joanne. 2017. “Introduction.” In Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, ed. Barker, Joanne, 144. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Barman, Jean. 1997/98. “Taming Aboriginal Sexuality: Gender, Power, and Race in British Columbia, 1850–1900.” BC Studies 115/116 (Autumn/Winter): 237–66.Google Scholar
Berger, John. 1990. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Blaney, Fay. 2003. “Aboriginal Women’s Action Network.” In Strong Women Stories: Native Vision and Community Survival, ed. Kim Anderson and Bonita Lawrence, 156–70. Toronto: Sumach.Google Scholar
Cosgrove, Denis. 1985. “Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea.Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 10, 1 (March): 4562.Google Scholar
Erdrich, Louise. 2012. The Round House. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Erdrich, Louise. 2016. Shadow Tag: A Novel. New York: Harper Perennial.Google Scholar
Fabian, Johannes. 1985. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Huhndorf, Shari M., and Suzack, Cheryl. 2010. “Indigenous Feminism: Theorizing the Issues.” In Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture, ed. Suzack, Cheryl, Huhndorf, Shari M., Perreault, Jeanne, and Barman, Jean, 117. Vancouver: UBC Press.Google Scholar
Hulme, Peter. 1985. “Polytropic Man: Tropes of Sexuality and Mobility in Early Colonial Discourse.” In Europe and Its Others: Proceedings of the Essex Conference on the Sociology of Literature, July 1984, ed. Barker, Francis, Hulme, Peter, Iversen, Margaret, and Loxley, Diana, Vol. II, 1732. Colchester: University of Essex.Google Scholar
Laflen, Angela. 2014. Confronting Visuality in Multi-Ethnic Women’s Writing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
LaRocque, Emma. 1996. “The Colonization of a Native Woman Scholar.” In Women of the First Nations: Power, Wisdom, and Strength, ed. Miller, Christine and Chuchryk, Patricia, 1118. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Bonita. 2003. “Gender, Race, and the Regulation of Native Identity in Canada and the United States: An Overview.Hypatia 18, 2 (Spring): 331.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Henri. 1992. The Production of Space. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Nead, Lynda. 1990. “The Female Nude: Pornography, Art, and Sexuality.Signs 15, 2 (Winter): 323–35.Google Scholar
Pearce, Roy Harvey. [1953] 1988. Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the American Mind. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise. 2007. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prucha, Francis Paul. 1986. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Redbird, Elsie B. 1995. “Honoring Native Women: The Backbone of Native Sovereignty.” In Popular Justice and Community Regeneration: Pathways of Indigenous Reform, ed. Hazlehurst, Kayleen M., 121–42. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Rose, Gillian. 1993. Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Scully, Pamela. 2005. “Malintzin, Pocahontas, and Krotoa: Indigenous Women and Myth Models of the Atlantic World.Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 6, 3: 128.Google Scholar
Trask, Haunani-Kay. 1996. “Feminism and Indigenous Hawaiian Nationalism.Signs 21, 4 (Summer): 906–16.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×