[m2c] First Nations women and racism in canada: The Construction of a Negative Identity by Kim Anderson (Part 1)

[usman x]

The Construction of a Negative Identity. In A Recognition of Being:
Reconstructing Native Womanhood.  99-112. Toronto: Second Story Press. 2000.
By Kim Anderson


Drunken squaw.
Dirty Indian.
Easy.
Lazy.

Every Canadian knows these words to commonly describe and identify
Aboriginal women. Many Canadians are fooled by this construction of Native
womanhood. This imagery is so ingrained in the North American consciousness
that even Native people have, in dark times, internalized these beliefs
about their grandmothers their aunties, their daughters, and themselves.

Perhaps people begin to see alcohol abuse, sexual dysfunction, and poverty
through the lens of these stereotypes. There are many people in our
communities who are still using alcohol to drown the shame and confusion
that festers within such negative definitions of their ancestry. We have a
lot of family and sexual dysfunction because of the imposition of
Christianity, western morality, and abuses endured in the residential school
system. Yet, when we consider our lived experience, the drunken, easy squaw
is not a character that Aboriginal people know. I would not describe my
Native female relations as lazy and dirty. I don't know any squaws. So where
did these images come from? How did they become so widespread, and how do
they affect the day-to-day living of contemporary Native women?

As I began to explore these questions, I discovered how this negative
understanding of Native womanhood was constructed. The dirty, easy squaw was
invented long before poverty, abuse, and oppression beset our peoples. She
was invented and then reinforced because she proved useful to the colonizer.
The "uncivilized" squaw justified taking over Indian land. She eased the
conscience of those who wished to sexually abuse without consequence. She
was handy to greedy consumers. Dirty and lazy, she excused those who removed
her children and paved the way for assimilation into mainstream culture. She
allowed for the righteous position of those who participated in the
eradication of Native culture, language, and tradition.

To me, these images are like a disease that has spread through both the
Native and the non-Native mindset. In tracing this development, I hope to
highlight a renewed understanding of Native womanhood that will help us to
recover our strength, self-esteem, and dignity.

Roots of a Negative Female Image

In both western and Indigenous frameworks, Native women have historically
been equated with the land. The Euro-constructed image of Native women,
therefore, mirrors western attitudes towards the earth. Sadly, this
relationship has typically developed within the context of control,
conquest, possession, and exploitation. The Euro-Canadian image of Native
women has been constructed within this context and has evolved along with
the evolving relationship of European people to this continent.

When they first arrived on Turtle Island in the sixteenth century, Europeans
produced images of Native womanhood to symbolize the magnificent richness
and beauty they encountered. This was the phase of the great mother, the
Indian Queen. Cherokee scholar Rayna Green describes the personification of
"America" typical to this period (1575-1765):

"Draped in leaves, feathers, and animal skins, as well as in heavy jewelry,
she appeared aggressive, militant, and armed with spears and arrows. Often
she rode on an armadillo, and stood with her foot on the slain body of an
animal or human enemy. She was the familiar mother-goddess figure - full
bodied, powerful, nurturing but dangerous - embodying the wealth and danger
of the New World.1"

"Exotic, powerful, dangerous and beautiful," this Native female symbol
represented both "American liberty and European virtue,"2 but as the
European settler became more familiar with the land, the queen was demoted.
Colonial claims to the land would only work if the queen became more
accessible, less powerful, and within the grasp of the white man. Out of
this need the Indian princess was born. The queen was transformed from a
mother goddess firgure to a girlish-sexual figure, for who can own mother or
dominate the gods?

"Indian princess" imagery constructed Indigenous women as the virgin
frontier, the pure border waiting to be crossed.3 The enormous popularity of
the princess lay within her erotic appeal to the covetous European male
wishing to lay claim to the "new" territory. This equation of the Indigenous
woman with virgin land, open for consumption, created a Native female
archetype which, as Elizabeth Cook-Lynn has pointed out, could then be "used
for the colonizer's pleasure and profit."4

The erotic image of Native female as "new" territory in the American
narrative persists to this day. You need only to glance at posters of Walt
Disney's "Pocahontas" to be confronted with a contemporary example of this
archetype. We see a voluptuous yet innocent lookinq Native (but not too
Native) "girl," who will soon become involved with an adventurous young
white male. As Emma LaRocque points out, Disney's "Pocahontas" combines a
lot of the overarching stereotypes about Native people. LaRocque sees a
Pocahontas who is "so oversexualized, kind of crouching around, slithering
around on the rocks," part noble savage, part princess, part loose squaw.
This archetype has been perpetrated again and again throughout North
American his-story. It has been promoted through other popular his-storical
characters like Sacajewea, the Shoshone woman who led "explorers" Lewis and
Clarke into the interior of the North American continent. In Spanish
colonial history, there is la Malinche, the Aztec woman who birthed the
mestizo children of Cortez and interpreted for Spanish troops.

It is possible to interpret characters like Pochahontas, Sacajewea, and la
Malinche as strong Indingenous leaders,5 but the mainstream interpretation
of these mythic characters is quite the opposite: Native women (and, by
association, the land) are "easy, available and willing" for the white man.6
This mythology ensures that the "good" Native woman who willingly works with
white men is rewarded with folk hero or "princess status."7 Racism dictates
that the women of these celebrated liaisons are elevated above the ordinary
Indigenous female status; they must be some kind of royalty. The ultimate
"reward" for the Indian princess is marriage to a white man, providing her
the ability to transcend into his world.

What, then, of the Native woman who does not comply with the colonizer?

As with other colonial his-stories, once Indigenous peoples began to resist
colonization, the archetypes changed. Indigenous women worldwide became
symbols of the troublesome colonies, and in the Americas the squaw emerged.
Carol Douglas Sparks has traced the princess-to-squaw devolution in
colonizer accounts of the Navajo.8 The virgin-princess, so commonly found in
white male adventurer records of the nineteenth century, is soon
transformed. While the princess held erotic appeal for the covetous imperial
male wishing to claim the "new" territory, the squaw drudge justified the
conquest of an uncivilized terrain:

"... Americans found squaw drudges far more comfortable than these outspoken
and powerful women, whose presence defied colonial rationalizations. Not
only could the squaw be pitied, but her very existence justified American
intrusion into her land and society.9"

In her book, "Capturing Women: The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in
Canada's Prairie West," Sarah Carter demonstrates how both the Canadian
state and the national press deliberately promoted "dirty squaw" imagery in
the late 1800s.10 At the time of settler invasion in western Canada, "dirty
squaw" fiction was useful for a number of reasons. The uncivilized squaw
provided a backdrop for the repressive measures against the Native
population of the time. Like the men who were depicted as savage warriors,
the women were reported to be "violent instigators of atrocities" (against
whites),11 thereby justifying colonial violence against Indigenous peoples.
The image of the Native woman as the beast of burden in her society was
drawn up to demonstrate the superiority of European womanhood and femininity
(after all, women did not "labour"), and the necessity for replacing Native
womanhood with European womanhood. This distortion of Native women's
physical labour and contribution to their community is at the root of the
longstanding "squaw-drudge" image. Rather than being seen as significant
players in the economic structure of society, Native women were framed as
drudges and beasts of burden.

As Native people moved off the land, and women lost their status and role as
producers within the economic structure of their societies, they were cast
as lazy and slovenly. Women were no longer able to provide for their
families because they had lost the means to produce primary goods, such as
clothing and food. They became dependent upon purchased goods and an economy
in which they held no power. The dirty squaw emerged, conveniently taking
the blame for the increasing poverty on reserve and deflecting attention
from government and public complicity in the devastation of Indigenous
peoples. If Native women were constructed as "squaws," dirty, lazy, and
slovenly, it was easier to cover up the reality of Native women who were
merely struggling with the increasingly inhuman conditions on reserve:

"In the unofficial and unpublished reports of reserve life ... it was widely
recognized that problems with reserve housing and health had little to do
with the preferences, temperament, or poor housekeeping abilities of the
women. Because of their poverty, the people were confined in one-room
shacks, which were poorly ventilated and were impossible to keep clean
because they had dirt floors and were plastered with mud and hay. One
inspector of the agencies noted in 1891 that the women did not have soap,
towels, wash basins, or wash pails, nor did they have any means of acquiring
them. Similarly, it was frequently noted that the women were short of basic
clothing and had no textiles or yarn to work with. Yet in official public
statements, the tendency was to ascribe blame to the women rather than
drawing attention to conditions that would injure the reputation of
government administration." 12

Similarly, if Native women were portrayed as poor parents, it was then
excusable for the state to remove Native children and place them in
residential schools and foster homes.

Native female sexuality was also transformed into the "squaw" who was "lewd
and licentious" and morally reprehensible. This representation was projected
onto Native women to excuse the mistreatment they endured from white settler
males. Within the context of late nineteenth-century morality, it was easier
to blame Native women than to challenge the behaviour of the heroes on the
frontier. The narrative espousing how "easy" Native women were was developed
to cover up the fact that white males were involved in unmarried sexual
activity and that state officials were perpetrators of sexual assault. This
tactic is common in rape cases and is well entrenched in the western
consciousness: blame women for the sexual deviance of certain men. As part
of the Native woman-blaming campaign, the "Toronto Daily Mail" of February
2, 1886, railed, "The character of the men of this country has been
assailed. 13

The squalor of the media-driven, uncivilized, easy squaw was further
intended to guard against interracial marriages, thus protecting racial
"purity" in the new country: "There were fears that the Anglo-Celts might be
overrun by more fertile, darker and lower people, who were believed to be
unable to control their sexual desires.14 The moral reform movement of the
late 1880s in the West embraced images of the dirty squaw in an effort to
keep the races segregated and to keep the white race pure.

The dirty, dark squaw not only justified the deplorable treatment of
Aboriginal peoples, she also created a gauge against which white femininity
could be measured and defined. Where Native women were powerful physical
workers, white women were encouraged to be weak and frail. The Native woman
thus was re-invented as a drudge. Where Native women had sexual liberty,
white women were restricted from pleasure. The Native woman had then to be
perceived as easy. Where Native women resisted the increasing restrictions
and poverty of reserves, white women were expected to be models of
domesticity, industriousness and obedience. The Native woman had to be
reconstructed as deficient in order to prop up the image of the white woman:

"The particular identity of white women depended for its articulation on a
sense of difference from Indigenous women. What it meant to be a white woman
was rooted in a series of negative assumptions about the malign influence of
Aboriginal women. The meanings of and different ways of being female were
constantly referred to each other, with Aboriginal women always appearing
deficient."l5

Since contact with the European, Native women have been trapped within a
western dichotomous worldview, where everything is either good or bad; dark
or light; pure or corrupt. The Euro-constructed Indigenous woman with her
dark ways, her squalor, and corruption makes the construction of whiteness
all the more attractive. In the absence of white women, Native women can
represent both characters: the "Indian princess," bathed in a sublime light
(and well on her way to becoming white), or the "easy squaw," hunched and
wallowing in her darkness. In terms of female identity, the Native woman
must endure the western framework of virgin-whore, which was translated to
princess-squaw and slapped on top of the complex understanding of Native
womanhood that had existed for tens of thousands of years. This his-story
continues to interfere with the lives of contemporary Native women.



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"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be
afraid of their people."
V in "V for Vendetta."
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