Indigenous Feminism
The idea of indigenous feminism is raised by Leah Sneider, who analyzes Winnemucca's intent through this work. This is strongly connected to the further discussion of the gender performances, masculine and feminine, that Winnemucca uses to achieve rhetorical means.
Winnemucca was quick to notice the unequal power between the colonial structure and her people, and especially the ways that her gender was demeaned in colonial culture. She reflects that she believed genders truly equal among the Piutes, because actions and gendered actions were so heavily based on what was needed by the community. If a woman was to take the place of a chief or go to war, the way Winnemucca herself did, they could.
But leaving further analysis of that to the Gender Performance discussion, Sarah used her femininity by golly. She exercised it while traveling in lecture, befriending Elizabeth Peabody and Mary Horace Mann, appeared as the caring daughter of a chief to the men of the military forts, and supported her people as a formal knowledge-keeper that Piutes considered a woman's respectable role to the utmost.
- Mary Horace Mann worked with Sarah to spell each word in English before this was published. Winnemucca would rather speak, than write. (Zanjani.) Title Page
- Winnemucca doesn't see a difference in humanity between her tribe and the colonizers. She sees an unequal difference in their power. (Zanjani... 242) p. 6 and 7
- Sarah's role as an indigenous woman to her people meant her as a knowledge keeper, and rather different concepts of gender roles than normative colonial roles. p. 10 and 11
- Perhaps Winnemucca's letter has symbolic significance to the letters Sarah would send as an activist later in life p. 22 and 23
- Sarah would continue to hold out hope that white people would help her in her activism, which led to meeting Elizabeth Peabody during lectures in the late 1870s, and this friendship inspired the work's publication.
The pages of the Winnemucca selection, Chapters 1 and 2, are laid out here for reference. If you need to, you may click any one of them to "turn" to that page at any time. Because, this little note will be in each page of the Winnemucca path!
Title Page, Table of Contents, Page 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57
