LETTER FROM THE CHAIR, BOARD OF TRUSTEES ....................................................................
BY THE HANDS OF MATRIARCHS BY BRENDA TOINEETA PIP E S TEM T
o the world outside the Eastern Band Cherokee Reservation, Mat- tie Youngdeer Toineeta was invis- ible, except possibly to the Bureau of Indian Affairs officials who
maintained Cherokee rolls and land records. A full blood who stood barely five feet tall, she kept her long hair braided and under a red handkerchief neatly tied around her head. She spoke mostly Cherokee and raised three generations of children after being widowed when her youngest son – my Dad – was only eight years old. In spite of the hardships she endured, she faithfully and ceaselessly attend- ed to the foundations of our lives. Grandma Toineeta wasn’t an elected official or a political rights activist, but it was through the strength of her words and example that I learned per- severance, dignity and commitment to com- munity. She was a Cherokee woman leader, a matriarch. It is in her honor – and the honor of the other uncelebrated Native women who raised communities and were central to the survival of our cultures and lives – that I intro- duce this issue of American Indian magazine with its focus on the world of Native women, past and present. When popular culture deluges the mega-
stores and mail order catalogues with “Indian Princess” costumes and high fashion produces “Native American-inspired” garb, I remember my Grandmother as the antithesis of this mockery. I move my daughters’ eyes away. These misappropriations and misrepresenta- tions make trivial the profound importance of women in the culture, governance and society of the First Peoples of the Western Hemisphere. The disruption of the roles of women in Native society by the now domi- nant culture has contributed to a host of social ills that continue to confront Native women, and all of Indian Country, and against which women are continuing to lead the fight on many fronts. The great majority of the holdings in our
Museum are the work of women crafters, sewers, beaders, quill-workers, potters, paint- ers and makers of all of what we now call “material culture.” Our noted curator Cecile Ganteaume, responsible for the awe-inspiring
12 AMERICAN INDIAN WINTER 2015
Brenda Toineeta Pipestem
Infinity of Nations exhibit in our New York Museum, describes this often “sublime” art- istry in an article that also gives the sometimes joyous and sometimes heartbreaking context of this work. Some items, like the Apache Mary Jane moccasins that she describes, may have been made for celebrations; others, like the medicine necklace, were made to ward off the ever-present threat of disease. Women have always been the bulwark of
the family, and even more so of the Indigenous family. As this role has been undercut by mod- ern society, Native life has been left open to the evils of domestic abuse, violence and worse. Several articles describe the current struggles against these evils, led again by strong and resilient Native women. One project, the play Sliver of a Full Moon written by Mary Kath- erine Nagle (Cherokee), and described here by Anya Montiel, uses theater to make public the struggle Tribal governments face to protect Native women from domestic and dating vio- lence on tribal lands. The dedication of Native women Tribal leaders, including Eastern Band of Cherokee leader Terri Henry, and the cour- age of Native women survivors to spend count- less hours testifying on Capitol Hill made the crucial difference in the passage of the Violence Against Women Act of 2013. A Native lawyer and playwright, Mary Katherine Nagle tells the story of domestic violence on Native lands and the lawmaking that reaffirmed inherent Tribal jurisdiction over non-Indian perpetrators of violence on Tribal lands.
Montiel and Millie Knapp also tell the sto-
ries of Canadian First Nations women who are campaigning against the sinister phenomenon of missing and murdered Indigenous women. The struggle to bring attention to this plague has become a positive social movement in its own right. The Walking With Our Sisters cam- paign has mobilized groups on reservations through Canada and the United States to pro- duce beaded moccasin vamps commemorat- ing our missing sisters, daughters and mothers; more than 1,760 of these remarkable, heart-felt artworks have been contributed so far. The Native Women’s Association of Canada
has studied these disappearances, and one of their conclusions resonates strongly. They at- tribute this pattern of abuse and violence to “a colonial process that involved a deliberate strategy to undermine the influence and re- spect held by Aboriginal women and replaces the existing social, economic and political systems of Aboriginal peoples with ones rooted in patriarchy and European understandings of femininity and masculinity.” It is a tribute to the strength and resilience
of Native women that we are resisting this so- cial corrosion and the evils it has brought and are doing our utmost to bring healing and bal- ance back to our communities. We are lifted by the hands of matriarchs. X
Brenda Toineeta Pipestem (Eastern Band of Cherokee) is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of the American Indian. She is a Supreme Court Justice for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
PHOTO BY RYAN REDCORN/BUFFALO NICKEL CREATIVE
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