All class notes covering lectures, guest lectures, and reading analysis for all Soci 312 (Gender Relations) classes in Fall 2021 taught by Craig Meadows at UBC (Vancouver).
WEEL 4: Lawrence, Bonita. 2013. “Regulating Native Identity by Gender.” In Gender & Women’s Studies in Canada: Critical Terrain. Margaret Hobbs & Carla Rice,
eds. Toronto, ON: Women’s Press. 285-93.
LAWRENCE (MATRIARCHY)
● Due to colonisation women were taught their role to play in society (even indigenous)
➔ Even though indigenous societies were traditionally matriarchies, colonisers only negotiated with men - cutting out the authority (326)
LAWRENCE (LEGAL RIGHTS)
➔ “Separate legal regime existed for Indian women with respect to marriage, childbirth, regulation of sexual conduct, exclusion from the right to vote or
otherwise partake in band business, and rights to inherit and for a widow to administer her husband’s estate” (pg 327)
● Explicit statements in legislation through use of constant masculine term
LAWRENCE (GENDER & POWER)
➔ “Indian women who were deserter or widowed” “lost their status were no longer legally Indian and no longer formal band members, but they were not
considered to have full rights that enfranchised women had.” (328)
➔ “the government debates at the time that this legislation was also aimed at undermining the collective nature of Native societies, where lands, monies,
and the resources were shared in common. By restricting reserves only to those who were granted location tickets, by externalising the Indian women
who married white men and their children, by forcing exogamy on Native women, most of the collective aspects of Native society were to be subverted
or suppressed.” (329)
● Women were jailed and fined if they had lost their status through being a widow, if their husbands were non status Indians or Métis, but were staying on
band lands
LAWRENCE (RACE, CLASS, SEXUALITY)
➔ “Indian women were generally denied access to personal property willed to them, evicted from their homes, often with small children and no money,
and generally faced hostile band councils and indifferent Indian Affairs bureaucrats.” (pg 330)
WEEK 4: Pyle, Kai Minosh. 2020. “Reclaiming Traditional Gender Roles: A Two-Spirit Critique.” In Good Relation: History, Gender, and Kinship in Indigenous
Feminisms. Eds. Sarah Nickel & Amanda Fehr. Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press. 109-21.
,Defining what “traditional roles” constitutes
→ Modern gender is shaped by and used as a tool of colonization:
● Used to eliminate understanding of gender
● Used to dominate/control indigenous women and two-spirit people (via direct destruction or assimilation)
→ Residential schools were primary locations for indoctrinating indigenous people into colonial roles:
● Separated into boys or girls
● Outfitted w/ clothing and hair that fit white standards
● Continues to this day (schools, foster care, welfare, health care, white-dominated media)
→ Return to “traditional gender roles” as a response:
● What were ideas of gender before colonisation?
● Standard understandings:
○ Honour and respect women
■ Disputed by many indigenous women
■ Pointed out misogyny and sexism are deep-rooted problems within Native communities
■ Claiming high regard for women but ignoring present reality of these problems → silencing Native women
■ “Traditional” & “highly regarded” → still kept out of leadership positions
○ Men were warriors in the fight for sovereignty
○ Matriarchal → disputed
● “Traditional” refers to before european contact
Generalised Indiginous groups into one category despite cultural differences between them
Traditional gender roles have strains of heteropatriarchy:
1. Restricting women’s & 2S people’s actions
→ Gender roles presented as traditional today reproduce colonial heteropatriarchy under a thin indigenous veneer
● Heteropatriarchy purports to establish a biological root of gender & claims empirical differences b/w men and women
● Places these qualities in a hierarchy → men > women = men deserve control over women
→ Demands of heteropatriarchy regulate behaviour according to gendered prescriptions notably sexuality
● Mandates particular heterosexuality that is not achievable → man is in leading and controlling position
2. Conflating the diverse traditions of Indigenous people into generic indigenous roles
→ Compliance required to continue colonisation:
● Settler men become leaders of family & nation → subdue indigenous (wildness) through force
● Settler women colonise through domestication of the newly conquered spaces
● Settler children seen as products of proper heterosexual relations & icons of the future and as symbols whose protection demands further colonisation
,→ Indiegnous people forced to conform to heteropatriarchal ideology
● Settlers view agriculture as a male enterprise so force native women to stop farming and made native men farm instead
● Boarding schools taught native girls skills that would coerce them into white heteropatriarchal roles (e.g. sewing, cooking, housekeeping)
→ Colonisation + assimilation → internalisation of heteropatriarchal ideas
● Need to protect and strengthen the indigenous nation
● Same sex marriage banned in Cherokee and navajo nations to prevent destabiliasation of nationhood → “tradition” of heterosexuality was used as
evidence
● Even taught at ceremonial events → reinforce status quo that women are subordinate to men
○ Anishinaabe ceremonial event → taught young girls that their duty was to be demure, pure and supportive of male relatives & boys taught to be
strong leaders
○ Man is the law, and woman is to serve the man and to nurture their family
→ Trope of indigenous womanhood as motherhood
● Many groups that aim to decolonise spirituality and activism describe women as being multitaskers (work and children) and being highly respected for
ability to bear children but men's roles have no mention of children → equate womanhood and domestic sphere
● Childbearing → ultimate designator of womanhood ; womans power comes from ability to give birth
● Mothering the nation → supposed to be something to take pride in as a highly respected role but also forecloses other functions and roles that indigenous
women assume in their societies
● Posits biological link b/w women's bodies and social roles → ignores women who cannot give birth or do not wish to or do not identify with womanhood
● Erases other roles that women currently and historically have in societies (e.g. traders, diplomats, healers, eaders)
→ Teaching warriorhood and leadership as male traits also exclude indigenous women from positions and limit roles of men and boys to identities linked to
violence and power
→ When we perpetuate stereotyped, generalized roles as “traditional,” we lose the opportunity to examine the individual teachings each Indigenous nation has
about gender.
3. Flattening all pre-colonisation history into a single imagined traditional period of time
→ People in indigenous communities speak of the traditional in unspecified terms which implies singular unified understanding
→Traditional becomes eternal and temporal
→ Refusing to acknowledge impact of change over time → static idea of tradition that disavows indigenous ability to transform self and culture
→ Ancestors were not only passive objects of the changes caused by colonisation; were also active participants in creating and recreating their culture in ways that
demonstrated both continuity and change
Examines critiques that two-spirit people have expressed regarding gender in Indigenous communities:
1. Lack of flexibility in role for people who do not conform to the male/female binary
→ Especially harmed by appeals to tradition due to internalisation that only cis-gender hetereosuxality is tradional & view LGBTQ+ indigenous people as being
overly colonised and (even) corrupted
, 2. Ways modern two-spirit people have been deemed less authentic than their ancestors → exclusion from community activities (e.g. ceremony)
→ Two-spirit people are forced to conform to unreasonable standards of tradition in order to claim the term itself → claiming the role of two spirit is to take on
spiritual responsibility that the role traditionally had
→ Two-spirit people have been and continue to be described and analysed primarily by non-indigenous scholars → clear division b/w “true” two-spirits and
modern two-spirits
→ Modern two-spirits are not as authentic or traditional → blame placed on them for not continuing traditional ways
→ But then you’re stuck in this paradox where empowering two spirit people can reinforce the idea that two-spirit people should be held to higher standards of
traditionalness to be considered authentic
→ Special roles of two-spirit people are emphasised (e.g. spiritual leaders, medicine people etc) but obscures the fact that they are just regular people
→ Indigenous women and men today do not have the pressure to carry out the same roles they did years ago and it is not required of them to do so to be
considered men and women → so why is there pressure on two-spirit people to be held at an impossible standard?
3. How two-spirit people are shaking up expectations surrounding traditional gender roles & creating futures for indigenous people that are not saturated
in colonial heteropatriarchy
→ Two-spirit teachings that recognise experiences of two-spirit people and connect them to their kin → compliments teachings about men and women & offers
alternative ways of looking at gendered teachings
→ Two-spirit scholars create new ways of looking at the place of queer indigenous people in communities
Influences of colonization, colonial trauma, and colonial heteropatriarchy have left indelible marks on the ways indigenous people relate to one another
→ The harmful effects of these forces are visible in the lives of indigenous people from the earliest of ages
→ Important to acknowledge that two-spirit people are central actors in the efforts to reimagine and recreate gender roles in indigenous communities
→ Provide decolonized and Indigenous-centred articulations of gender, sex, and sexuality that push past the gender binary and heteronormativity prevalent in
health curricula and settler-colonial society
WEEK 5: McKegney, Sam. 2014. “Into the Full Grace of the Blood of Men: An Introduction.” MasculIndians: Conversations About Indigenous Manhood. Ed. Sam
McKegney. Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press. 1-11.
2 Tropes: The Noble Savage & the Bloodthirsty Warrior
➔ Taiaiake Alfred: there is no living with it, it’s meant to be killed every time (1)
➔ Gerald Vizenor: the Indian is a simulation representing complexity--a reduction to a constellation of tropes
● These characters were created → system of representation
● Reproduces these images as something to be killed → implies need for an agent to kill it
○ These characters exist solely for white settler colonists to kill them
● Purpose: reduction of the Indian
● Why the need for this?
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