Life Stages and Native Women
Memory, Teachings, and Story Medicine
-
Author:
Ebook

A rare and inspiring guide to the health and well-being of Aboriginal women and their communities.The process of “digging up medicines” - of rediscovering the stories of the past - serves as a powerful healing force in the decolonization and recovery of Aboriginal communities. In Life Stages and Native Women, Kim Anderson shares the teachings of fourteen elders from the Canadian prairies and Ontario to illustrate how different life stages were experienced by Metis, Cree, and Anishinaabe girls and women during the mid-twentieth century. These elders relate stories about their own lives, the experiences of girls and women of their childhood communities, and customs related to pregnancy, birth, post-natal care, infant and child care, puberty rites, gender and age-specific work roles, the distinct roles of post-menopausal women, and women’s roles in managing death. Through these teachings, we learn how evolving responsibilities from infancy to adulthood shaped women’s identities and place within Indigenous society, and were integral to the health and well-being of their communities. By understanding how healthy communities were created in the past, Anderson explains how this traditional knowledge can be applied toward rebuilding healthy Indigenous communities today.
About Kim Anderson
Kim Anderson is a Cree/Métis educator. She is an Associate Professor in Indigenous Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford, and is the author of A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood, and is the co-editor, with Bonita Lawrence, of Strong Women Stories: Native Vision and Community Survival.
Table of Contents
Cover | 1 |
---|---|
Contents | 6 |
Acknowledgements | 10 |
Foreword by Maria Campbell | 16 |
Introduction- Digging Up the Medicines | 24 |
“How It Was”: Looking for Native Women’s History | 27 |
Life Cycle Teachings of the Anishinaabek | 28 |
Overview of the Book | 32 |
Chapter 1 - Weaving the Stories | 36 |
Purpose: Listening for Stories that “Work like Arrows” | 39 |
Building on Relationships | 41 |
Responsibilities | 44 |
Working with the Historian Participants | 45 |
Chapter 2 - People and Places | 48 |
Michif, Nēhiyawak, Anishinaabek: Locating the Oral Historians | 48 |
The Times | 49 |
Introducing the Oral Historian Participants | 53 |
Chapter 3 - The Life Cycle Begins: From Conception to Walking | 59 |
Maintaining the Life Line | 60 |
Birth and the Celebration of New Life | 67 |
Caring for Infants | 77 |
“Walking Out”: The Toddler Years | 83 |
Conclusion | 84 |
Chapter 4 - The “Good Life” and the“Fast Life”: Childhood and Youth | 86 |
The “Good Life”: Nurturing, Discipline, Self-Reliance,and Interdependence | 87 |
The “Fast Life”: Moving into Adolescence | 104 |
Conclusion | 116 |
Chapter 5 - Adult Years: The Women’s Circle | 118 |
Entering the Women’s Circle | 119 |
Managing the Resources: Work Within the Women’s Circle | 125 |
Keepers of Relationships: Collectivism and Kinship | 133 |
Sexuality, Courting, and Marriage | 139 |
Conclusion | 146 |
Chapter 6 - Grandmothers and Elders | 147 |
General Roles and Responsibilities for the Elder Years | 148 |
Beginning with the Physical: Aging | 152 |
Leadership and Governance | 155 |
Teaching | 164 |
Managing the Health of the Community | 168 |
Doorkeepers to the Spirit World | 175 |
Conclusion | 180 |
Conclusion - Bundling the Layers: Building on the Strengths of the Pastto Take Us into the Future | 182 |
Layer One: The Power of Women and Girls | 183 |
Layer Two: Connecting the Stories to Life Stage Theory | 186 |
Layer Three: Contributions to the Health and Well-Being ofNative Communities | 188 |
Layer Four: Applying Story Medicine, Today, and into the Future | 190 |
Notes | 201 |
Introduction | 201 |
Chapter 1: Weaving the Stories | 203 |
Chapter 2: People and Places | 207 |
Chapter 3: The Life Cycle Begins | 208 |
Chapter 4: The “Good Life” and the “Fast Life” | 211 |
Chapter 5: Adult Years | 214 |
Chapter 6: Grandmothers and Elders | 217 |
Conclusion: Bundling the Layers | 219 |
Bibliography | 220 |
Index | 228 |
By the same author
View allBook details
- Publisher
- University of Manitoba Press
- Collection
- Critical Studies in Native History
- Category
- Sociology
- Published
- August 2012
- Pages
- 240
- Chapters
- 57
- Language
- English
- ISBN EPUB
- 9780887554162
- ISBN Paper
- 9780887557262