{"id":11375,"date":"2021-01-07T05:22:30","date_gmt":"2021-01-07T10:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/we-are-not-feminists-we-are-the-law\/"},"modified":"2021-01-07T05:22:31","modified_gmt":"2021-01-07T10:22:31","slug":"we-are-not-feminists-we-are-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/we-are-not-feminists-we-are-the-law\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We are not feminists: We are the law\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New award-winning independent documentary is here \u201cto \u201cshake the foundation of the established history of the women\u2019s rights movement in the United States.\u201d (COURTESY: South Dakota Humanities Council)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

BROOKINGS \u2013 \u201cMy grandmother would say, \u201cWe\u2019re not feminists, we\u2019re the law.\u201d
\nSo began a film screening and discussion Dec. 15 on indigenous women\u2019s roles in cementing universal suffrage in the United States. It would conclude after a battery of thought-provoking reflections on gender roles in governance.
\nThe event was the kickoff of the \u201cVoting: Why It Matters\u201d series of interactive public online productions being offered at no cost by the South Dakota Humanities Council, based in Brookings.
\nIt featured the new award-winning short documentary \u201cWithout a Whisper\/Konnon:Kwe,\u201d made by Mohawk Territory producer-director Katsitsionni Fox to tell a long-unheralded story about how the people of the matrilineal Iroquois Confederacy have been influencing public policy over time.
\nAs the movie\u2019s official website notes, its protagonists, Mohawk Clan Mother Louise Herne and Women\u2019s Studies pioneer PhD Sally Roesch Wagner join forces here to \u201cshake the foundation of the established history of the women\u2019s rights movement in the United States.\u201d
\nTogether with Fox, they \u201cshed light on the hidden history of the influence of Haudenosaunee women on the women\u2019s rights movement, possibly changing this historical narrative forever.\u201d
\nIn the opening scenes, their conversation assures viewers, \u201cIt\u2019s not about history; it\u2019s all about her story.\u201d
\nPolitical science buffs are aware that the Six Nations of the Iroquois (Hodin\u00f6hs\u00f6:ni\u2032 or Haudenosaunee), including the Mohawk Territory of Akwesasne, can claim a centuries-old form of government that inspired the language of the U.S. Constitution and the federal system of checks and balances.
\nLikewise, students of society\u2019s development during the 250 years since colonization usually trace the roots of the women\u2019s movement to the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments hammered out by suffragettes at an unprecedented civil rights convention in the hamlet of Seneca Falls.
\nHowever, the bulk of the scholarly documentation casts a blind eye to the underlying fact that women of the tribes in what is now up-state New York held and still hold the authority that instigated the turn of these events, as Roesch Wagner noted in editing the book that helped gain her a place in the film, The Women\u2019s Suffrage Movement.
\n\u201cThis book doesn\u2019t begin with white women,\u201d feminist Gloria Steinem, who wrote the book\u2019s forward, says at a presentation of it shown in the movie.
\nIn fact, both the book and the movie begin with the creation story of Sky Woman who made Turtle Island from a handful of dirt when she danced on it \u2013 a striking contrast to Judaic-Christian creation myth, in which woman is formed from a rib of a man.
\n\u201cWhen you take away the concept of God the Father, the white guy in the sky, and replace it with the sacredness in the earth \u2026 instead of placing people up here and other animals down here\u2026,\u201d Roesch Wagner said, the effect is remarkable.
\nThe early-day settlers of upstate New York were impressed in many ways by their native counterparts, being moved to utopian quests for everything from abolition of slavery to integrated food systems, not only democratic governance and gender equality, she found.
\n\u201cMan didn\u2019t create the earth; woman did,\u201d Herne said. \u201cThat set in motion, we are women of the law. The continuous flow of the generations maintains that maternal order. Clan mothers have the right of nomination of their leaders, the right of recall for any shenanigans, the right to declare war. They have their hands on the national treasury and the food supply. They decide how many babies will be born in a year.\u201d
\nHaudenosaunee women\u2019s traditional role includes planting and harvesting, along with responsibility for community organization, while men\u2019s domain is \u201cthe woods,\u201d the film\u2019s protagonists explain.
\nFrench explorers and early Jesuit missionaries who had early contact with Haudenosaunee communities marveled at the women\u2019s strength and ease in childbirth, attributing it to ignorance of the Christian Bible while summoning up ideas of how to exert supremacy, the viewer learns.
\nIn marriage, the Haudenosaunee husband traditionally moves into the longhouse of the wife\u2019s clan. If he misbehaves, the wife puts his belongings outside, a custom that astounded 19th Century women\u2019s rights and suffrage movement leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton, according to Roesch Wagner.
\nAt the time, Euro-American women became men\u2019s property at marriage, could not own anything, divorce or sue, and had no place in the halls of governance, as detailed in the Seneca Falls declaration.
\nWhen founding fathers of the United States Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin saw the Iroquois clan mothers in action, they dubbed the Native generals, \u201cpetticoat chiefs\u201d, wondering why they would confer with women when trying to make political decisions, Roesch Wagner noted.
\nBeing as it was, Haudenosaunee women had no call to clamor for equal rights or voting parity with men, the film explains. Even after the 72-year struggle for Euro-American women to obtain at least enough legal status to vote, Haudenosaunee citizens remained skeptical of taking part in the balloting system, Herne said.
\nLater, when Native people became United States citizens and voters in 1924, she observed, it was not by consent, rather an arbitrary decision by those in power. \u201cI always tell people don\u2019t vote,\u201d she said.
\nShe called to mind the Haudensosaunee Two-Row Wampum Belt that signifies an agreement in a 17th Century treaty with Dutch settlers to stay out of each other\u2019s boats. To assert sovereignty, the rule of thumb since then has been \u201cnot to be involved and not to take part in the other system, or it will sink our canoe,\u201d she said.
\nShe conceded that 2020 elections were heavily influenced by a successful Native vote drive, and with recent wins in U.S. elected posts resulting in more Native women participating in government process, \u201cits real important there is presence there.\u201d
\nHerne sees \u201cWithout a Whisper\/Konnon:Kwe\u201d as a tool for restoring balance lost due to society\u2019s failure to take into account the contributions of Native women.
\n\u201cThis film will now awaken all those voiceless ancestors who went to their graves unheard,\u201d she said. Through this film, because of our invisibility, we\u2019re hoping the erasure of indigenous people stops and that our voices are heard, and we are listened to, because we\u2019ve been screaming for a long time.\u201d
\nFrom the Haudenosaunee perspective, \u201cthe continuity of the law is grounded in the status or well-being of the mother. The condition of the globe right now is because we have disregarded her for so long Violence against the earth is violence against women. When there is an assault on the earth, it\u2019s usually the indigenous women who say, \u2018You can\u2019t do that,\u201d she said.
\n\u201cAs we move forward and we kick down the door, you better align yourself with an indigenous woman somewhere, because if anybody can read the earth, we still know how. If there is going to be any reversal in the train wreck we\u2019re heading for, it\u2019s going to be found in an indigenous woman in this hemisphere.\u201d
\nShe added, \u201cWe\u2019re all in this together and we\u2019re all related.
\nDirector Fox encouraged viewers to take that message to heart. \u201cOne of our most important teachings is our opening address,\u201d she noted. \u201cWe give thanks to everything in the natural world and acknowledge all those things every day and in ceremony.
\n\u201cIf everybody would do that, and not just say the words, something everybody can do is be reverent and that changes things.
\nRoesch Wagner had another piece of advice for those who seek unity through reconciliation. She said for her, the process involves \u201cliving my life as a recovering racist, learning appreciation not appropriation.\u201d
\nThe discussion is recorded for public access on social media.
\nThe film, facilitated by Executive Producer Shirley Sneve at Vision Maker Media, is being aired by Public Broadcasting Services. It premiered in November at the Red Lake Film Festival, where it won the award for best short documentary, and has been honored at nine other independent film festivals.
\nFox hopes schools will use it widely. For a sneak peek and more information, visit the production\u2019s official website www.withoutawhisperfilm.com<\/a><\/p>\n

(Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.net<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The post \u2018We are not feminists: We are the law\u2019<\/a> first appeared on Native Sun News Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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New award-winning independent documentary is here \u201cto \u201cshake the foundation of the established history of the women\u2019s rights movement in the United States.\u201d (COURTESY: South Dakota Humanities Council) BROOKINGS \u2013 \u201cMy grandmother would say, \u201cWe\u2019re not feminists, we\u2019re the law.\u201d So began a film screening and discussion Dec. 15 on <\/p>\n

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