In virtually all the writing about American Indian people, men are always lionized and women are always secondary. And the image of the Native woman as sort of a beast of burden, a person with no power is a European trope.
It’s not the reality within our Native cultures. Women are central and powerful. I remember my friend [unint.] of the Onondaga Nation. When I visited her one day in Syracuse, I said – this was back some decades ago, “What do you think about the Equal Rights Amendment?” And she said, “Oh, I don’t know about it.” I said, “What”? She said, “Yeah, I don’t think men could ever be equal to women.” But that sense of humor was making a really good point.
Another point, when I was at Onondaga, there was a reading being done of the wampum belts. The wampum belts are very significant. They maintain history and relationships between cultures, and they’re a very, very important part of Northeastern tradition. And one of the chiefs was holding up a wampum belt and describing it. And I was sitting in the back with some of the clan mothers, and one of my friends, Audrey Shenandoah, who was a clan mother, said, “Uh, excuse me. Excuse me.” And then she said, “You got it upside down.” He goes, “That’s why we got clan mothers,” and he turned it right side up.
But there is a sort of image there that men often do get it upside down, and it takes the women to turn it right side up.
