Researching Native women in the work force was a bit difficult because for one, it is not something that you hear about on the daily news or on CNN. I had never really thought of Native women as being a part of America's work force, accept for those that assimilated into the dominant culture. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Native women in the work force, I think of them as being the primary care givers for children, I think of them as being the spiritual beings within the Native society, and I also think of them as being healers. Because of the way society has depicted Natives as being this way, immages of Native women are largely depicted like this.
When looking up information on Native women in the labor force I found that women are not talked about as often as men. Again, the norms of gerder roles plays a large part. The man is the bread winner and the woman is also a provider, but in a different sense. When looking up images, I found one somewhat empowering picture of a Native woman at work. She was a Native American Wonder Woman...yes, a super hero. She was given all of the Americanized characteristics of beauty and she was actually quite buff, and it was her job to save the helpless non mutant humans from the evil villans. This made me laugh because the Native woman was only given great power in a fictional sense as oppose to being shown as a hard worker within American society.
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I agree with you on how it was much harder to find statistics and information on Native American women than it was for Native American men, and this is definately a product of gender roles in todays society. I was wondering if you got a chance to look at Native women in the work force in Canada and Mexico and see if there were any differences compared to the US.
It is interesting when researching “native women in the labor force” because you typically discover only stereotypical images. I was curious how you formed your opinion of native women as being “spiritual beings” and “healers?” I appreciate someone understanding and looking at them differently than most. People tend to use stereotypes to define certain cultures, but yours come from deeper research and understanding.
This blog raises some important concerns in terms of the invisibility of "native women" in "the workforce." The gendered labor roles of Native American women and Indigenous women of Canada and Mexico have been obscured and deminished through the racialized understandings of Native American, Indigenous, Aboriginal as social constructs of 'the Other', i.e. non-civilized and non-White "others". "Labor force", has traditionally been constructed as a white peoples' or Euro-ethnic populations' domain. "Blue collar", "white collar", and such understandings largely emerged from the official histories of the Euro-immigrant histories which legitimated their identities as 'workers' in 'America.' They also serve to delineate the classed structures within the "labor force", i.e. college, high school, ... etc. as markers of wealthy, access, knowledge, and status. HOwever, when we think of certain groups' labor histories who have not been foregrounded in the 'labor story' of North America, or of the U.S., we need to think outside the nation's story of itself: migrant labor (both "inside" the U.S. borders, and "on the borders" and "outside" the borders). Why is it important, when analyzing native women's labor histories, to examine the hemisphere beyond a nation-state frame of 'borders'?
Did you know:
some of the first migrant agricultural workers in the Pacific Northwest (U.S.) were indigenous women of the Canada-U.S. border region, i.e. Plateau tribal women?
Did you know:
indigenous women of Mexican states have migrated for hundreds of years into the U.S. and Canada for access to labor markets and jobs, but when they walk into the U.S., their indigenous identity is removed and the U.S. imposes the identity of "Mexican" upon them?
Did you know:
indigenous aboriginal women of Canada migrated to and from their traditional maple producing territories in Vermont, New York, and Ontario for hundreds of years, but in the 20th century, the U.S.-Canadian border officials began to enforce restrictions upon their traditional harvests of a much required subsistence food, for their local economies and communities?
Did you know that Native and Indigenous people of Canada, U.S. and Mexico work in every major industry considered "blue collar", "white collar", "civil" and "Military" occupations, both within the nation-state boundaries of their 'home' nation, and also across the borders of their 'home' nation? --MTamez
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