The significant corpus I chose is “In the Days of Our Grandmothers: A Reader in Aboriginal Women’s History in Canada” by Mary-Ellen Kelm and Laura Townsend. This is a collection of essays that depict the role of Indigenous Women of Canada over the last 300 years. I was reminded of a similar book on Canadian history that focused on settlers that I read during my undergrad. In a rather big collection of pieces, only one essay was dedicated to the pioneering women. And yet, when you read about all they did, you would think there would be more literature available on the topic. This was a number of years ago, and in that time, things may have changed – more may have been written. However, western culture’s history is still a rather male-centric subject. Hence my excitement when I stumbled across this title and began to read.

These essays cover many topics, including the representation of Indigenous women in historical texts. As Kelm & Townsend state, “since male anthropologists chose male informants, the world of Aboriginal women remained a mystery to researchers” (p. 4). There are lost stories of women who up until recent history had been delegated to tales of childbirth, rearing and other stereotypical gender roles (not that there is anything wrong with that history, but there is just so much more). Books like this help broaden the understanding of matriarchal and egalitarian societies, and allow for further empowerment of women.

My Question: How has the role Aboriginal Women been perceived in history?

The Terminology

Indian: 93                                Women: 91                        Matrilineal: 5                          Maternal: 7

Indigenous: 54                       Gender: 87                         Female: 70                               Weak: 4

Aboriginal: 98                        Men: 92                              Gender Role: 32                     Elders: 22

First Nations: 62                   Male: 82                             Matriarch: 4                           Empower: 5

Native: 94                               Paternal: 5

The Results

As this is a book dedicated to the First Peoples of Canada, I am not surprised by how frequently the first 5 terms were present in the essays. However, I am surprised that there are more mentions of men/male over women/female – I made sure to add spaces to ensure that the men/male were not prefixed by wo- or fe-.

Reference

Kelm, M.-E., & Townsend, L. (2006). In the days of our grandmothers: A reader in aboriginal women’s history in Canada. University of Toronto Press.