Indigenous Women’s Resilience and Resistance to Historical Oppression

Abstract

This article broadens awareness about the resilience of indigenous women from one southeastern tribe in the United States and critically analyzes the societal constraints that have impaired their status and power. Throughout colonization, the centrality and authority experienced by indigenous women has been impaired by clashing beliefs and practices. Despite experiencing historical oppression, these women have continuously resisted colonial subjugation and have demonstrated resilience in response to adversity. Currently, some indigenous women are experiencing a resurgence of power and status, as they fill the highest ranks of political and leadership roles within their community.

Despite their remarkable strengths, indigenous women in the United States tend to either be invisible to mainstream society or attract negative attention due to the disproportionate rate many experience violence (Burnette, Sanders, Butcher, & Salois, 2011; Burnette, 2013). As Grandbois and Sanders (2009) report, when a group is primarily described in relationship to problems, this deficit portrayal can stigmatize and further marginalize groups. Thus, researchers have begun to emphasize the need for a greater focus on resilience, which is thought to have a long-term positive impact on indigenous populations (McMahon, Kenyon, & Carter, 2013). Resilience is the ability to positively adapt, withstand, and recover from adversity, often with greater skills and capacity than before experiencing the challenge (Greene, 2008). Although strikingly evident in their lived experiences (Burnette, 2013), the resilience of indigenous women has been glaringly underrepresented in research.

This article uses Freire’s (2008) critical framework to broaden awareness about the resilience of women from one southeastern tribe in the United States, critically analyze the societal constraints (such as colonization), which have impaired their status and power, and provide evidence that their contemporary status and power are demonstrably improving. Critical theory is uniquely suited to attend to power relationships between dominant and marginalized groups with its ability to delineate human agency, resilience, and resistance to historical oppression and subjugation (Freire, 2008). Freire’s (2008) theoretical framework was chosen because it directly incorporates colonial processes, which impaired the status of many indigenous women. It is associated with anti-oppressive social work, which seeks to reverse power inequalities experienced by minorities, feminists, and those with disabilities (Sakamoto & Pitner, 2005). Freire’s framework is foundational to the development of both critical theory and feminist practice; as Weiler (1991) stated, “Paulo Freire is without question the most influential theorist of critical or liberatory education” and “Feminist pedagogy as it has developed in the United States provides a historically situated example of a critical pedagogy in practice” (p. 450).

Indigenous women are distinct from other minorities, in that they have experienced patriarchal colonialism, which includes the multiple burdens of colonialism, racism, and sexism (Guerrero, 2003). Through the process of colonialism, indigenous women have experienced historical oppression, which includes the chronic, insidious, and intergenerational experiences of oppression that have become normalized and internalized into the daily lives of many indigenous populations (Burnette, in press). Indigenous people have experienced historical oppression through historical traumas (Brave Heart & Daw, 2014) such as genocide, land loss, forced relocation and boarding school attendance, and the loss of the majority of the original population, and many continue to experience disproportionate rates of violence (Burnette et al., 2011; Burnette, in press). Relatedly, scholars have emphasized how historical oppression and trauma are key social determinants related to the health disparities present among groups that have been marginalized (Klawetter, 2014). Historical oppression and resilience are in constant tension with each other, and indigenous women continually develop innovative ways to respond to adversity.

The Tension Between Historical Oppression and Resilience

The following section uses Freire’s (2008) framework to critically analyze the complexities of the multiple layers of resilience and oppression experienced by indigenous women from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians (MBCI). Presently located in East Central Mississippi, MBCI women were targets of colonial efforts through warfare, being taken as sex slaves, and through the imposition of gendered treaties that reversed their previously matrilineal social structure (Kidwell, 1986; Pesantubbee, 2005). Despite this oppression, the MBCI have continuously demonstrated survivance (Vizenor, 2008) by remaining on their homeland despite efforts to eradicate and remove them, resisting colonial subjugation, and demonstrating resilience in response to adversity. According to Vizenor (2008), survivance is a term specific to indigenous North Americans describing their ability to transcend the colonial efforts to subjugate and erase them by highlighting their active presence and ingenuity when faced with adversity, as demonstrated by attributes including humor, courage, and strength of spirit.

According to Freire, colonization is manifested through the following dehumanizing, or antidialogic, tactics: cultural invasion, conquest, divide and rule, and manipulation (Freire, 2008). The remedies to these tactics, or dialogic characteristics, are humanizing and include cooperation, communion, unity, organization, and cultural synthesis (Freire, 2008). Ironically, these dialogic characteristics were inherent within the indigenous worldview that organized many indigenous nations prior to European contact. In contrast to colonization, decolonization involves reconnecting with the dialogic strengths and practices present prior to colonial contact (Freire, 2008).

As Freire (2008) proposed, analyzing the historical context is essential to a critical inquiry. Critical theory posits that multiple voices in society struggle for power and legitimacy, which is partially determined by the transmission of history (Burnette, 2013; Freire, 2008); however, history is typically written by dominant group members to perpetuate and reproduce their power advantage. This article offsets the tendency of colonial writing to be dominated by male and European explorers (Burnette, 2013). The following section reconstructs history with particular attention to the central roles of Choctaw women prior to colonization and the impact of colonization on these women prior to the Choctaw land removal of 1830. Because this section describes the Choctaw prior to their removal, they are referred to as the Choctaw rather than the MBCI. Freire’s (2008) dialogic and anti-dialogic characteristics are italicized throughout text to highlight their manifestations in a localized context.

Women’s Status Prior to Colonization

Prior to colonization, women-centered societies provided unity and cultural synthesis within the Choctaw community. Being situated at the center of economic, social, and cultural activities, Choctaw women were considered matrilocal and matrilineal, with lineage passing along the mother’s line (Jaimes & Halsey, 1992; LaFromboise & Heyle, 1990; Langston, 2003; Pesantubbee, 2005; Reeves, 1985). Deer, Claimont, Martell, and White Eagle (2008) reported that the centrality of indigenous women was embedded within indigenous spiritual practices and beliefs, which maintained social order and enhanced cultural synthesis. Spiritual value, such as respect, is thought to have enabled indigenous communities to live in unity without formal government or sanctioning organizations (Jaimes & Halsey, 1992; LaFromboise & Heyle, 1990; Pesantubbee, 2005; Reeves, 1985).

Moreover, indigenous deities were often women, and the Choctaw Green Corn Woman was said to offer the gift of corn to the Choctaw, which enabled an agricultural economy (Reeves, 1985). The Green Corn Ceremony annually celebrates the importance of the Green Corn Woman, the gift of corn, as well as deepens community unity, solidarity, and traditions (Pesantubbee, 2005; Reeves, 1985; York, 2013). Although the Green Corn Ceremony is revived today in the Choctaw Fair (York, 2013), it was disrupted by warfare in the late 1700s (Pesantubbee, 2005), which symbolizes the simultaneous constraint of women’s roles.

Indeed, the centrality of Choctaw women was evident by their integral roles within the community. Not only did women prepare meals, rear children, and act as medicine healers (Pesantubbee, 2005), they were said to have contributed to the sustenance and prosperity of the Choctaw community as they worked in fields and gathered food (Pesantubbee, 2005; Reeves, 1985). Moreover, Choctaw women fought alongside men in warfare (K. York, personal communication, October 2, 2012), they were politicians and council members, they had the power to determine the fate of captives, they could determine tribal membership, and could solidify or divide relationships with outsiders using traditional gifts of food (Pesantubbee, 2005).

As opposed to adversarial gender dynamics, Choctaw women enjoyed complementary functions and cooperation with males (Deer, Claimont, Martell, & White Eagle, 2008; LaFromboise & Heyle, 1990; Pesantubbee, 2005). Women regularly engaged in trade, traveled with men to hunt and fish, and cleaned their game and gathered meat to return to the community (Pesantubbee, 2005). Marriage was consensual, and after marrying, the husband traditionally joined the woman’s household and left, without the children, if the couple divorced (Pesantubbee, 2005; Reeves, 1985); children remained with their mother after the divorce. Thus, the spiritual and functional centrality of women provided for their natural protection, whereas violence traditionally resulted in harsh punishment, such as banishment, humiliation, and removal of prior status and responsibility (Deer et al., 2008).

Colonization and Constrained Women’s Roles

Despite Freire’s (2008) dialogic qualities of cooperation, community, organization, unity, and cultural synthesis being apparent within the Choctaw precolonial culture, these qualities were quickly constrained as European colonists entered Choctaw land in the year 1540 (Reeves, 1985). Through conquest, traditional Choctaw values began to be threatened through the imposition of the European American values (Freire, 2008). Rather than a matrilocal family structure, European American families were characterized by a patriarchal structure, where men held the power and status and women were treated as subordinate (Murray, 1998). For example, in Roman society, wives were considered the husband’s property, and rape was a property offense against the husband (Murray, 1998). Likewise, religious leaders, such as Martin Luther and Saint Augustine, proselytized that men held the right to dominate and control women (Murray, 1998). In fact, a policy adopted by English Common law and the Catholic Church proposed that women who committed an offense against her husband should be beaten, penalized, and frightened (Murray, 1998).

European men, socialized into patriarchal roles, were thought to be perplexed by the matrilineal and matrilocal Choctaw and often refused to trade and conduct business with indigenous women (Deer et al., 2008). The unfamiliar matrilocal ways were deemed as “unChristian” (Deer et al., 2008). Moreover, Choctaw women’s roles in trade and travel were removed with heightened risk of being abducted by European settlers as sex slaves (Pesantubbee, 2005). The abduction of the Choctaw women sex slaves was an immediate threat, as European settlers entered their land (Pesantubbee, 2005); these practices were harder to escape, as the settler population increased significantly in the early 1700s (Reeves, 1985).

The cultural invasion resulting from decades of warfare, not only disrupted the cultural context of the Choctaw, it constrained the roles of women (Freire, 2008). For instance, warfare between French-Choctaw and the English-Chickasaw lasted for over 63 years (Reeves, 1985). The profound effects of this constant warfare included the disruption of the stable farming economy as whole communities and crops were destroyed (Reeves, 1985). The ramifications on women, who were largely responsible for crops, were extensive (Pesantubbee, 2005).

As settler population increased, heightened division among Choctaw was reportedly promoted through intermarriage, primarily between Choctaw women and European American men (Freire, 2008; Wells, 1986). European government officials promoted intermarriage to curtail the growing problem of European men taking Choctaw women as sex slaves; however, they added the condition that the Choctaw wife be converted to Christianity (Pesantubbee, 2005). Intermarriage provided a significant resource advantage for non-Choctaw husbands by enabling their gain of land and status (Wells, 1986).

Settlers were also said to manipulate leadership (Freire, 2008), by offering false generosity in the form of larger land allotments and upward mobility during the land removal era of 1830. Wells (1986) explained that solidarity within the tribe was threatened during the signing of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which removed the majority of the Choctaw to present day Oklahoma. On September 22, 1830, Pesantubbee (2005) reported that seven elder Choctaw women were situated at the center of treaty negotiations—the last time in written history that Choctaw women were represented on the tribal council until the 20th century.

After much deliberation, a small party of Choctaw were reportedly coerced and bribed to sign the treaty on September 27, 1930 (Pesantubbee, 2005; Wells, 1986). This macro-level event affected the status of women in immediate and significant ways, as the patrilineal treaty language reversed matrilineal lines of descent by specifying male heads of households as land recipients (Kidwell, 1986). Furthermore, if the male owner sold the land allotment, wives’ and children’s contiguous lands were also forfeited (Kidwell, 1986). Thus, as demonstrated by this historical analysis, the dialogic characteristics of cooperation, community, unity, organization, and cultural synthesis that were evident prior to colonization were impaired by the colonial antidialogic tactics of cultural invasion, conquest, divide and rule, and manipulation (1998).

The Present

Despite experiencing historical oppression, the MBCI demonstrated survivance, with approximated 2,500 the Choctaw remaining on their homeland despite removal efforts (Wells, 1986). Although the detailed history is beyond the scope of this article, most MBCI lived in meager dwellings and eventually served as sharecroppers (Kidwell, 1986). They established reservation communities in 1944, and the MBCI received federal recognition in 1945 (MBCI, 2011).

Resilience is apparent among the present day MBCI who have experienced remarkable improvements in economic and social conditions. The tribe’s numerous business and economic enterprises provide jobs to over 5,725 employees, making it one of Mississippi’s top five largest private employers (MBCI, 2011). The tribe operates cultural enrichment programs, health care and medical services, multiple tribal schools, police, fire, provides academic scholarships, land management, and health and human services facilities (MBCI, 2011).

Women are also experiencing a resurgence of the roles and status they previously enjoyed. For instance, on October 2011, Phyliss Anderson was elected as the first female chief in history (MBCI, 2011). Recently receiving the 2013 Political/State and Local Government Woman of Year Award from the Mississippi Commission on the Status of Women, she is a clear leader on women’s issues (MBCI, 2013). Moreover, the current 17-member tribal council has five women representatives (MBCI, 2011). Therefore, despite experiencing centuries of historical oppression, MBCI and women are experiencing notable revitalization and resilience. In closing, the historical and contemporary contexts of indigenous women are imperative to understand, documenting their survivance and decolonizing efforts. Explication of these contexts offsets a tendency to essentialize and dehumanize indigenous women, who continue to resist marginalization and demonstrate resilience into contemporary times.