Daughters of mother earth
Subtitle: the wisdom of Native American women
By: edited by Barbara Alice Mann ; foreword by Winona LaDuke.
Contributors: Mann, Barbara Alice, 1947-
Series: Native America; Native America (Praeger Publishers)
Publisher: Praeger
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Westport, Conn
Language: eng
Number of pages: 133
ISBN-13: 9780275985622
Subjects: Indian women -- United States; Matriarchy -- United States; Indians of North America -- Social life and customs; Indians of North America -- Public opinion; Public opinion -- United States; United States -- Social life and customs
Description: "Daughters of Mother Earth is nothing less than a new way of looking at history - or more correctly, the reestablishment of a very old way. It holds that for too long, elements unnatural to Native American ways of knowing have been imposed on the study of Native America. Euro-American discourse styles, emphasizing elite male privilege and conceptual linearity, have drowned out the democratic and woman-centered Native approaches. Even when the damage of western linearity is understood to occur, analysis of Native American history, society, and culture has still been relentlessly placed in male custody, following the western assumption that Euro-American men speak ably for all." "This book seeks to redress that balance, allowing, as editor Barbara Alice Mann writes, "the Daughters of Mother Earth to reclaim their ancient responsibility to speak in council, to tell the truth, to guide the rising generations through spirit-spoken wisdom."" "The recovery of women's traditions is an important theme in this collection of essays that helps reframe Native issues as properly gendered. Thus, Paula Gunn Allen looks at Indian lifeways through the many stitches of Indian clothes and the many steps of their powwow fancy-dances. Lee Maracle calls for reconstitution of traditional social structures, based on Native American ways of knowing, Kay McGowan identifies the exact sites where woman-power was weakened historically through the heavy impositions of European culture. Finally, Barbara Mann examines how communication between Natives east and west of the Mississippi came to be so deranged as to be dysfunctional, and outlines how to reestablish good east-west relations for the benefit of all."--BOOK JACKET
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [111]-119) and index.
Table of contents: title: Does Euro-think become us? / Paula Gunn Allen; title: Decolonizing Native women / Lee Maracle; title: Weeping for the lost matriarchy / Kay Givens McGowan; title: Slow runners / Barbara Alice Mann.