Sifters: Native American Women's Lives (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780195130805)

In this edited volume, Theda Perdue, a nationally known expert on Indian history and southern women's history, offers a rich collection of biographical essays on Native American women. From Pocahontas, a Powhatan woman of the seventeenth century, to Ada Deer, the Menominee woman who headed the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1990s, the essays span four centuries. Each one recounts the experiences of women from vastly different cultural traditions--the hunting and gathering of Kumeyaay culture of Delfina Cuero, the pueblo society of San Ildefonso potter Maria Martinez, and the powerful matrilineal kinship system of Molly Brant's Mohawks. Contributors focus on the ways in which different women have fashioned lives that remain firmly rooted in their identity as Native women. Perdue's introductory essay ties together the themes running through the biographical sketches, including the cultural factors that have shaped the lives of Native women, particularly economic contributions, kinship, and belief, and the ways in which historical events, especially in United States Indian policy, have engendered change.

Author: Theda Perdue
ISBN-10: 0195130804
ISBN-13: 9780195130805
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 03/29/2001
Pages: 272
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.74h x 6.06w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 12/01/2001 pg. 748