Countering Colonization: Native American Women and Great Lakes Missions, 1630-1900

by Carol Devens

With Countering Colonization , Carol Devens offers a well-documented, revisionary history of Native American women. From the time of early Jesuit missionaries to the late nineteenth century, Devens brings Ojibwa, Cree, and Montagnais-Naskapi women of the Upper Great Lakes region to the fore. Far from being passive observers without regard for status and autonomy, these women were pivotal in their own communities and active in shaping the encounter between Native American and white civilizations.

While women's voices have been silenced in most accounts, their actions preserved in missionary letters and reports indicate the vital part women played during centuries of conflict. In contrast to some Indian men who accepted the missionaries' religious and secular teachings as useful tools for dealing with whites, many Indian women felt a strong threat to their ways of life and beliefs. Women endured torture and hardship, and even torched missionaries' homes in an attempt to reassert control over their lives. Devens demonstrates that gender conflicts in Native American communities, which anthropologists considered to be "aboriginal," resulted in large part from women's and men's divergence over the acceptance of missionaries and their message.

This book's perspective is unique in its focus on Native American women who acted to preserve their culture. In acknowledging these women as historically significant actors, Devens has written a work for every scholar and student seeking a more inclusive understanding of the North American past.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

200 pages, Hardcover

First published March 20, 1992

Reviews

[Sharmeen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty short book (127 pages) that I read for an editorial I am co-writing on the concept of primitive accumulation and feminist resistance. I kind of came across it by accident, and almost didn't consider it because it felt so specific in terms of the years 1630 - 1900 in the Great Lakes area. But this was one of the best reads I have had on Canadian native history, and I feel an important book to read if you want to get a sense of the early days of colonization, the different impacts it had on different nations depending on the fur trade and missionaries and the responses by native women from the Ojibwa, Cree and Montagnais-Naskapi nations.

What I found most interesting is Devons uses journal writing from missionaries and discusses how European men were completely freaked out by the native women they were trying to colonize. Their anecdotes about sexuality, the division of labour, women's authority and food distribution represented everything they were against - and they would often write about how disturbing it was to see women with authority work autonomously from men and have decision making over food distribution. She also writes in detail the various way both labour and ideology was transformed, not only as this process of force, but how women would strategically resist - at times accepting conversion as a way to keep traditional aspects of their life intact.

Anyways, it's a short read, but i learned so much about the area i live in. And it's written with clarity. Normally i find history books like this a bit boring, but this was pretty accessible. And so important to read.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent treatise on women's history and the impact of the missions. Good background information, bibliography and citations.