Native American Women and Feminist Narratives

While Stanton, Cady, and Shaw were lobbying to secure suffrage for white women, women of color were lobbying to have the right to live without fear of being attacked, killed, or accused of any number of "crimes".   They were lobbying for the right to not have their sons and husbands murdered or taken at a whim, and fighting against Jim Crow laws and forcible removal to reservations.

There is a very important question that American Feminism has not asked until recently: 

Where did Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Josylen Gage, and Lucretia Mott get their ideas about women's equality and equal access to Congress?   

The answer?  They formed relationships with Native American women, read documents and listened to speeches that Native American women were giving about the treatment of their families, tribes and children, and borrowed the ideas to form their own ideologue of what an American society should look like.

In Sarah Winnemucca's text,  Life Among the Piutes, she detailed how women functioned in decision making in Piute society: "The women know as much as the men do, and their advice is often asked.  We have a republic as well as you.  The council-tent is our Congress and anybody can speak who has anything to say, women and all" (Suzack, 111)  In considering why Winnemucca's autobiography was published in the first place, one must look to the editor: white feminist Mary Peabody Mann.   Mann raised funds to publish the autobiography, created a speaking schedule for Winnemucca and "ensured prominent politicians received a copy" (Suzack, 111).   While Mann wass publicly quoted as an advocate for Native American rights during this time, she also had an ulterior motive: she wanted these politicians to hear how the women in Piute society were treated as equals.   Sumac explains, "unless the politics of women of color were accommodated to those of first wave feminists, they were rarely acknowledged" (Suzack, 111).   It is significant and valuable that Winnemucca's work was published; but it is important to note that publishing her work was useful to the white feminist movement.   If her text had not included information about the equality of women in Piute society, one wonders if she would have had such success at publication? 

The issue is, these white women were championing their cause based on equality, but they were only championing for white women to receive the vote.   They were not incorporating these women and their societies into the movement as inclusive.   They were taking the things they liked from Native American culture, while completely ignoring the fact that joining in the right to vote in our society was joining in the right to oppress Indigenous people from their own land.

Photo Credit: R.I.S.E.

According to Sally Roesch Wagner, author of Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosanee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists, "the message of omissions is an educational foundation of racism" (Wagner, 2010).  In a combination of the messages we include and the messages we do not, we teach our children "In 1492 Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue", then we reference scalping during the wars, gloss over the Trail of Tears, and glorify all other aspects of white colonialism.  By doing so, we educate all schoolchildren that the Native American experience of our history does not matter.  Through omitting factual information and including whitewashed information, we have created generations that have no understanding of the real experiences of Native American people. Wagner states, "an hour of unease in a classroom or museum and we can move on" (2010).

We have done the same thing in feminist history.   We have established the first, second, and third wave, through a white woman's experience and white woman's narrative even though women of color have been working all this time for equality as well.  I have learned there is an important distinction here: feminism is not a white woman's movement. It is a movement of all women, everywhere, working to overcome oppression.  But feminism is predominantly a white woman's story in America.  By considering when the Native woman's relationship with oppression began at the onset of colonization, we can "see that there are multiple feminist histories emerging from multiple communities of color which intersect at points and diverge in others" (Smith, 2011).

We have included only dominant, white narratives without considering what the story looks like from a Native American perspective.   By forgetting to ask about the women not represented at the table, we have created a crystalline version of feminist history; never stopping to examine the individual facets and color that has been removed from the texts.  Sarah Winnemucca and the friendly Haudenosanee women are referenced only in context of how their structure can serve the white woman's cause for involvement in the political arena.

Discussion Questions: 

Can you think of other voices that have been silenced that have not been mentioned in this blog?
What steps must be taken to develop allied relationships in order to move forward from here? 


Cuzack, Cheryl. (2010). Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism and Culture. UBC Press. Kindle Edition.

Smith, Andrea.  (2011) "Indigenous Feminism Without Apology".  Unsettling America. Web.

Wagner, Sally Roesch.  (2010).  Sister in Spirit: Haudenosanee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists.  Kindle Edition.