When You Don't Know The Language,
Listen To The Silence: An Historical
Overview ofNative Indian Women in B. C.
MARJORIE. MITCHELL
ANNA FRANKLIN

I

order to describe and understand the history of Native
Indian women in British Columbia, the hiding places of the history must first
·be discovered. There was a time, before European conquest of North
America, when the voices of Native women were strong and clear. As they
raised their children, taught their daughters the traditional roles and skills for
living, shared daily events with their sisters and husbands, and captivated
their grandchildren with tales of mythical heroines--of Bear Mother, Mouse
Woman, Sun's Daughter, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Puppies, and
Tzonoqua, the Cannibal Ogress--Native women .of this province spoke and
were listened· to.
With the arrival of Europeans in the late eighteenth century, louder
voices, predominantly male and foreign, were heard and, ultimately,
prevailed. Many Native voices, indeed, whole linguistic communities, were
silenced by fur traders' cannon, by epidemics of smallpox and other
devastating diseases, by the plague of alcohol, and by the despair of poverty
and political powerlessness. Not surprisingly, by the twentieth century, the
assumption of Euro-Canadians was that not only the voices, but also the very
languages and cultures, of Native people were lost, if they had ever existed at
all.
How, then can the reconstruction of the history of BC Native Indian
women proceed in the face of this widespread perception of their silence? Are
those voices from the past truly lost forever, or are they simply not being
heard? The thesis of this essay is that, first, although Native women of the past
left no written record of their culture, history and personal experiences, some
Europeans and Euro-Canadians, mostly male, did listen, albeit sometimes
with a jaundiced ear and often only to Indian men. Their observations and
accounts, located in journals, administrative reports, police records, and
Barbara K. Latham and Roberta J. Pazdro, Eds., Not Just Pin Money
Victoria: Camosun College, 1984

18

Native Indian Women

anthropological works, contain elusive and provocative glimpses of the lives
of Indian women. Second, Native women have continued to speak, in order to
transmit old traditions and new perceptions to their offspring and to give
meaning and value to their everyday lives. Female descendants of those
original women are living repositories of not only Indian cultural history but
also of the common life experiences of women everywhere, and they must be
encouraged and assisted to share with their Native and non-Native sisters
their collective memories, their life histories, and the creative strategies they
have used to adapt to and cope with the harshest of circumstances.
The intent here is, first, to provide an outline of the major features of
traditional Indian culture that shaped the lives of Native women in traditional
times and, second, to present a brief historical overview, with emphasis on
changing economic patterns of women of Indian descent since the time of
European contact. In addition, a critical assessment of written sources
pertaining to traditional and historical views of Indian women will be
discussed. As well, new directions for o.iscovering the history, past and
present, of those women will be considered.
Of necessity a discussion of women in traditional Native cultures of
British Columbia is limited. Moreover, any history of Indian women in
British Columbia suffers from generalizations, just as a history of European
or African women would. Within the present political boundaries of this
province, there existed perhaps thirty different Native languages spoken by
people of ten major ethnic groups.I Consequently, here, concentration will be
upon two traditional cultures, the Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands, and
the Coast Salish of southeastern Vancouver Island and the southwestern
mainland, who embody the two major forms of social organization that must
be considered in order to understand the roles and status of aboriginal
women. 2 Among the Haida, as well as other northern groups such as the
Tsimshian and northern Kwagiulth, social organization centred upon a
principle of matrilineal descent and kinship (Figure 1). Among the Coast
Salish and other southern groups, including the Nuu-chah-nulth-aht, or
Nootka, Bella Bella, Bella Coola, and southern Kwagiulth, kinship and
descent were organized around a bilateral principle.
Haida Matrilineality

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FaSiDa

FaSiSo

So

Da

MITCHELL & FRANKLIN

19

Clarification of both matrilineal and bilateral social organization is
essential, not only because kinship and descent gave structure to women's
roles and to social and economic relationships, but because a common
popular misconception, current among some feminists, attributes to all North
American Indian cultures, or at least to those organized matrilineally, a
matriarchal society. While matriarchal societies, based upon a principle of
female political and economic dominance and upon female-centred religious
beliefs, were postulated by nineteenth-century social theorists such as
Bachofen3 , Morgan4, and Engels 5 as the earliest form of human social
organization, there is no reliable archaeological, historical, or
anthropological evidence for the existence anywhere of primitive
matriarchies and certainly not for the Native societies of British Columbia. 6, 7
As Bamberger maintains, matriarchy is a male-created, sexist myth,
portraying original woman either as a mystical and virtuous Mother
Goddess--as mid-Victorian, male intellectuals envisioned her--or as a
deceitful, treacherous, and sexually promiscuous child-woman, as she is
frequently depicted in the mythology of contemporary primitive societies:8 In
either case, matriarchies were concocted by males to provide justification for
the way the world is and ought to be--truly patriarchal and male-dominated.
Bamberger comments that
the elevation of woman to deity on the one hand, and
the downgrading of her to child or chattel on the other,
produce the same result. Such visions will not bring
her any closer to attaining male socioeconomic and
political status, for as long as she is content to remain
either goddess or child, she cannot be expected to
shoulder her share of community burdens as the
coequal of men. The myth of matriarchy is but the tool
used to keep woman bound to her place. To free her,
we need to destroy the myth. 9
Despite insisting that matriarchal societies have no empirical validity,
consideration must be given to Webster's view that, although mythical," ...
matriarchy is the only vision we have of a society in which women have power.
• • . " 10 and as such allows us ". . . to pose critical questions about the
relationship between power, gender, and social structure. " 11 Cameron's
Daughters of Copper Woman provides a rich illustration of the metaphorical
value of matriarchy as a literary vision to enhance the position of Native
women in traditional society. 12
An examination of Native cultures on both the north and south coasts of
British Columbia shows that although women were not exploited and
oppressed to the same degree that occurs in modem capitalist societies, and
although women frequently enjoyed high status and some influence and
authority in domestic, economic, political, and religious realms, real power
was largely concentrated in the hands of men, whether fathers, brothers, sons,
or nephews. Aboriginal Native society was male-dominated throughout
British Columbia.
For example, among the matrilineal Haida, descent of clan and lineage
identity, as well as inheritance of all property, was traced through lines of
females, but although a married woman might own property received from

20

Native Indian Women

her parents" ... as endowerment for her marriage,"13 and at her death that
property was passed to her daughter, the bulk of her matrilineage's estate was
. transferred from her brother to her own son (Figure 1). 14 Included in the
important wealth of the estate which passed from a man to his own sister's son
was tangible property such as houses, totem poles, and canoes, and
ceremonial property. The male beneficiary, in turn, bequeathed his property,
both real and symbolic, to his sister's son.
Haida marriage patterns also reflect the ambivalence between women's
influence and men's power. A girl's mother was instrumental in selecting a
husband for her daughter, 15 but the maternal uncle and the father of the girl
may have had the final say in groom selection. 16 Upon marriage, a bride
submitted to her husband's domestic authority, although this authority was
exercised subtly. Moreover, while a widower was not required to remarry and
could marry whom he pleased, a widow either had to accept the new husband,
often many years her junior, selected by her male kin or, if she did not
remarry, she was exiled, with few personal belongings, from her late
husband's house and had to seek refuge as a poor relative with matrilineal
kin. 17
Although there was some male-female overlap in economic tasks
traditionally assigned to females, women were not permitted to engage in
male hunting and fishing activities because of menstrual and reproductive
taboos which, if broken, could bring serious harm to male activities or to men
themselves. 18 Women who were skilled in female occupational pursuits, such
as food preservation and preparation, or basket-making, were held in high
regard by men as well as by other women, but they were not permitted to
transgress traditionally male occupations. 19 Only in one male-dominated
economic sphere, that of trading, did women play a significant role. Early
European maritime traders remarked on more than one occasion that Haida
men were loathe to conclude fur-trading deals without their wives' consent;
without that consent, a husband might be berated or even physically abused
by an irate wife. 20 Whether Haida women exercised the same authority in
trading activities before European contact is not clear, but, as Blackman
observes,
given the acknowledged role of men as traders, ... it is
likely that they represented their wives in exchange
and that the dominant role of women [in trading] is
reflective of . . . [women's] interest in their own
property. 21
In the political sphere, Haida women participated in and influenced
lineage and council decision-making, but household, lineage, and village
chieftainships were usually held by males. If no male heir were available, a
woman might hold a chief's seat until her eldest son reached maturity, at
which time chieftainship passed to him. 22 After European contact decimated
the Haida in the nineteenth century, women were more commonly found in
positions of chiefly nobility. 23 Nevertheless, while women seem to have played
a fairly active role in Haida political matters, females, from the time of their
first menstrual seclusion, were subjected to a number of restrictive and rigid
taboos on their activities, movements, and social contacts with males and

MITCHELL & FRANKLIN

21

were instructed in the ideal virtues of womanhood: " . . . submission,
contentment, and industry . . . , endurance, modesty, [and] a retiring
disposition ... , "24 hardly qualities and regulations conducive to gaining
political power and prestige.
In the realms of ceremonial activity and religion, Haida women were
active in potlatching. Although nearly all large, important potlatches were
hosted by males, a girl's puberty potlatch was hosted by the celebrant's
mother, and women were entitled to receive wealth at all potlatches. 25 In
dancing societies, "'women were barred from the more important dances,' " 26
but sometimes wore important ceremonial regalia when they did dance.
Apparently, both men and women could become shamans, or religious
practitioners, although there is some evidence that a menstruating shaman
was excluded from any house where a male shaman was working,lest her
menstrual contamination impair his power. 27
Finally, in artistic pursuits, the socially significant painting and carving
of crest designs and figures was exclusively a male occupation, while women's
art, largely weaving, was considered relatively unimportant. 28
In summary, then, the positon of women in the matrilineal societies of
Native British Columbia reflects relatively high status and not a small degree
of influence and authority in many cultural domains, probably because
female reproductive power provided daughters to perpetuate each
matrilineage and sons to inherit the wealth and chieftainships of their
mothers' brothers. Nonetheless, real power in all but the reproductive sphere
was firmly in the hands of Haida men.

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Group of Salish(?) women. R.Maynard photograph.

22

Native Indian Women

The propitious, if largely male-derived, status of women in matrilineal
societies of northern British Columbia is less evident among the women of
Coast Salish and other southern cultural groups, where matrilineality did not
exist to validate the importance of females. Although both father's and
mother's sides of the family were important in determining social identity and
economic and political standing in the bilaterally structured Coast Salish
community, males held all of the most important economic property,
including hunting, fishing, and gathering sites, and most ceremonial
prerogatives. Futhermore,only men held positions of political power and
authority. Although daughters inherited the property of their mothers,
female property was economically and socially insignificant. 29 Customarily,
when a woman married, she resided in her husband's village, under his
domestic authority. "In the event of separation, the common property
remained with the husband. "30 Moreover, since marriages were arranged, and
Coast Salish girls were expected to acquiesce to parental choices of husbands,
women who left their husbands, even physically abusive husbands, were not
well-received at the homes of their fathers. In cases of divorce, "male children
beyond infancy always remained with their fathers, and sometimes the girls
did too. Infants in arms went with their mothers and sometimes remained
with them, but a boy, at least ... "31 was likely to be returned to his father so
that he could share in his father's property and social position.
An examination of the literature reveals, further, that Coast Salish boys
had more freedom than girls did, especially during puberty when a girl was
expected to prepare for marriage by remaining in a state of complete
inactivity and virtually total seclusion from the time of her first menstrual
period until her marriage. Girls were kept under strict female supervision,
going outside only at night accompanied by their mothers, and were expected
to remain chaste and modest and to regard marriage with a wealthy man as" ..
. the consummation of their Hfe interest. "32
The division of labour was reasonably clear cut, with females engaged in
domestic tasks, child-rearing, and weaving. Although there is no indication
that the subsistence activities of women were regarded as inferior to those of
men, and although men and women sometimes helped each other with
economic tasks and pooled their labour for the family unit and for feasting
activities, a distinct division operated where artisanry was concerned, with
men involved exclusively in all aspects of woodworking and the construction
of equipment, utensils, tools, and weapons, and women involved exclusively
in weaving and other work with textiles. 33
Even in the sphere of supernatural power, males were predominant.
Coast Salish religion centred around a belief in a multitude of supernatural
helpers, or guardian spirits, who ensured success in daily subsistence activit_i~s
and in obtaining wealth, and who were manifested in public displays of spmt
possession during winter ceremonial dances. In addition, special supernaturnl
helpers enabled individuals to become shamans. While women might seek
these supernatural powers, girls were unable to go on prolonged guardian
spirit quests, as young males would do. In consequence, women had l~~s
intense and less frequent encounters with the spirit world. Moreover, spmt
helpers were not as necessary for women as for men " ... to achieve pre-

MITCHELL & FRANKLIN

23

eminence in some occupation. "34
In summary, many women of Coast Salish society might be of high-class
status, but their position was dependent upon the status of their fathers and
husbands, who had the social, economic political, and supernatural means to
obtain wealth, prestige, and political power. Real wealth lay outside the
direct control of women, and consequently, they seem to have had little or no
external political power, and apparently were rigidly excluded from
positions of leadership and from village decision-making. 35
Although European contact had variable impact upon the lives of Native
Indian women, the intrusion of an expansionist and exploitive cultural
system was ultimately to bring profound and largely negative changes to
women's lives, for now, in addition to the asymmetry of cultural relationships
balanced in favour of men, there was to be a new and more devastating form
of male domination of the Indian woman's world.
Initially, during the approximate eight and one-half decades of EuroIndian fur-trading activity, change to Native Indfan culture was minimal. 36 In
fact, the fur trade stimulated cultural growth by bringing " ... prosperity
[and] an increase in wealth ... [to] a society already organized around
wealth"37 and by strengthening the existing social and economic systems
rather than weakening them.
Not until the publication of Van Kirk's Many Tender Ties was the effect
of the fur trade on Indian women examined. 38 Ironically, it is by virtue of
their relationships with men, particularly with White men, that Native
women's role in the fur trade came to light. Van Kirk suggests that "both the
attitudes of the Indians and the needs of the traders dictated an important
social and economic role for the Native woman that militated against her
being simply an object of sexual exploitation. "39 As traders' wives, Native
women cemented trade alliances and often acted as peacemakers in disputes
between White and Indian traders; on the other hand, the women sacrificed,
according to Van Kirk, considerable personal autonomy in adjusting to
European values of home and family. 40 What Van Kirk's research41 does not
consider is that Indian women of the south coast who married White traders
may not have fared well at all if they left their husbands and returned to th~-own kin. When the grandmother of one. of our Coast Salish informants /
returned to her natal home after marriage to a European trader, her family \
felt compelled to hold a potlatch to erase her shame and to make her name I
good again. According to our female informants in Coast Salish society,
children of these unions were regarded, in the early days at least, as
illegitimate and brought shame to the mother and her family. Since social
identity was determined by both sides, but particularly the father's side of the
family in Coast Salish society, unions with European men were considered by
Native people to deprive children of the more important paternal half of their
birthright. ln matrilineal societies such as the Haida, on the other hand, a
woman's marriage to a non-Haida, even a White man, was not particularly
disadvantageous, because the children inherited property from their mother
and their mother's brother. not from their father.
In another way, the fur trade affected Native-women. Among the Nuuchah-nulth-aht, or N ootka, shortages of female labour in production of

24

Native Indian Women

resources were critical to the underpinnings of social, economic, and political
organization, and slavery was a solution to any shortage of labour power.
"The importance of female labour power also fits in with a preference for
female slaves. "42 During the fur trade era, vrnmen's work in processing
finished furs was crucial to trade-generated wealth. 43 Unfortunately, the
responses and views of women, whether high class, commoner, or slave, to the
shift in occupation, can only be guessed at. What did a high-status woman
have to say vvhen she was compelled to take time from familiar traditional
domestic and subsistence activities to process countless numbers of furs and
to supervise extra slave women? How did a woman v1ho was taken as a slave
for this purpose feel about her plight? Male writers, whether missionaries,
government agents, or anthropologists, rarely, if ever, concern themselves
with the real feelings and experiences of women.
With the advent of settlement and colonial rule in British Columbia
from 1849 on, stimulation of the Native economy gave way rapidly to
overwhelming negative change. As Fisher suggests, European settlement
introduced major cultural changes so rapidly that Native people lost control
over the disruption of their traditional lifestyles. 44 He argues that, as
settlement increased in the 1840s and 1850s, Christian missionaries appeared
and began to demand "total cultural capitulation" 45 from the already reeling
Native population. Focusing first upon preaching and conversion,
missionaries of differing and competing faiths began to establish mission
schools by 1861. 46
According to the records of 189 l for Kuper Island Residential School,
twelve subjects, including English, scripture and verses, morals, and
deportment, were taught, along with "trades or other industries. "47 Native
girls were instructed in knitting, sewing, housework, and kitchen work. The
school day at this southeastern Vancouver Island institution consisted of four
to five hours in the classroom and four and one-half hours learning domestic
trades. 48 A March l 896 report noted that twenty-one girls, between the ages
of seven and sixteen, made ninety-four articles of clothing, besides doing the
general mending for staff and students. 49 By June 1896, those twenty-one girls
had produced another forty dresses, six nightshirts, twelve chemises, twelve
sheets, and tv.,,enty-six pairs of knitted hose. 50 Tv1entieth-century
enlightenment had little effect on Native Indian education. In 1938, records
indicated that the number of hours students spent at domestic vvork had
increased substantially, while time spent on more academic classroom
activities diminished. 1n the March 1938 records, forty-nine girls between the
ages of eight and sixteen each spent an average of 225 hours at a trade and
from thirty to sixty hours in the classroom. 51
An Indian girl washed, cooked, cleaned, and mended her way through
residential school. Even during the 1950s, females spent more time mending
the resident priest's underwear than they did reading, according to some of
our younger Native informants. Inevitably, the training she received prepared:
the Native girl for later domestic duties both at home and in the work place. A
former nun reminisces that
the girls ... liked to work. And this was what they
needed . . . how to make clothes and how to mend . ...

MITCHELL & FRANKLIN

25

the white people around were always glad to hire an
Indian girl during the holidays because they said
they're clean, they know how to work and how to give
satisfaction. They would never be looking for jobs if
they wanted to work.s2
In spite of dreary. menial tasks that bordered on slave labour, and in
spite of other educational shortcomings, school records and correspondence
between Native parents and school officials,53 and interviews with ex-pupils
suggest that students often asked to be re-admitted, because school life
frequently offered more security and stability to Native children than home
life did. Some children were orphaned by epidemics; others had parents or
close relatives who, with the advent of wage labour, were obliged to work far
from their home reserves for long periods of time. Family illness, family
poverty, and domestic upheaval brought about by the encroachment of the
White economy and attendant social problems are other situations that
Native ·children faced if they returned home. In virtually every case, leaving
the residential school meant low-paying jobs in the burgeoning White
economy. Yet, while some women claim that they enjoyed school life, others
reflect on their feelings of homesickness, of loneliness, and of frustration and
bitterness when they were forbidden to speak their Native languages54 or to
converse openly with their own brothers in the rigidly sex-segregated school
yards and dining halls. As well, many women remember recurring epidemics
of measles and whooping cough, pleurisy and pneumonia that swept through
the schools, claiming the lives of many of their classmates. All of the women
interviewed expressed regret that they were not permitted to learn more than
domestic trades at residential school.One woman shared with us her
disappointment that she was not taught well enough to read the books that
the teachers read to her; another wanted to take piano lessons, but the school
piano was forbidden to Indian students.
The potential for resentment and anger among Indian school girls is
reflected in this reminiscence of a Roman Catholic teaching sister:
The girls did all kinds of fancy work and sewing. They
were very industrious. They liked to work .... The
boys were eas_ier to handle than the girls. They
[teaching missionaries] always had difficulty with the
girls .... the girls were more capricious and very, very
hard to please.ss
Not surprisingly, given their school training, domestic service in
European homes appears to have been a major form of employment for many
Native women from the late nineteenth century to the present. 56 Wages were
fifty cents a day in 1900 and $1.50 a day during the Depression, according to
Native informants. Other early female occupations include prostitution,
cannery work, and seasonal agricultural labour, the latter two remaining
sources of supplementary incomes today.
Prostitution among Native women of British Columbia, in the last
decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries, is an
oft-cited example of either their degradation and promiscuity or of their
victimization. Time does not permit a detailed examination of the social,

26

Native Indian Women

economic, and personal consequences of prostitution, but three important
aspects of this occupation emerge from archival research. Although some
early writers single out Haida women as the largest group of prostitutes, 57
first, on board fur-trading ships, and later, in Victoria, only a few suggest that
the women were apparently of low or slave status in traditional society. 58 59
Male customers and/ or observers of the time invariably refer to prostitutes,
or to any Native women who took their fancy as "chief's daughters" or as
"Indian princesses,"61 although the lack of distinguishing symbols of high
status, such as lip ornaments, belies the first designation, 62 while the second is
a political impossibility on the northwest coast. The implications of the use of
low-ranking or slave women in prostitution would indicate that not only were
some women forced into this occupation, but that Haida men did not
prostitute women of high status.
Second, a perusal of early police records suggests that Indian prostitutes
in Victoria in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries displayed a
spirited inclination to turn the tables on their customers. After making an
assignation to meet a male client, an Indian woman would contact two or
three of her female colleagues who followed her to the meeting place. The
women would jump the unsuspecting male, beat him senseless, roll him and
run with his purse for dividing and their sense of honour and justice intact. 63
Finally, a search of the Victoria City Police charge books for the period
1880-1910 yields a total of only six arrests oflndian women for street-walking
as compared to much larger numbers of arrests of White, Chinese, and Black
prostitutes. Most arrests of Native women are alcohol-related charges in all
years investigated. 64 Furthermore, although a suggestion was made by Duff
that the first brothel in Victoria was operated by a Haida woman, police
archival documents list only non-Indian women as both keepers and inmates
of bawdy houses, and all arrests of Native women prostitutes in Victoria are
listed as street-walking offences. 65 66 One explanation for the rarity of
prostitution charges against Native women in Victoria may be that as soon as
large numbers of non-Indian won1en arrived in the colonial city, Indian
women were squeezed out of the trade.
When labour was scarce in the province, in the late nineteenth century,
many Native women found employment in the rapidly growi.ng fish-canning
industry. In the early 1870s, nearly all Fraser River fishermen were Native.
Cannery managers contracted with individual fishermen and paid them for
their catch. The Native fisherman was usually accompanied by his wife and
children, and by other family members. 67 The wife might work in the cannery,
but she also frequently acted as boat-puller for her husband, rowing and
maneuvering the boat, fully laden vvith fish and heavy nets. 68 Furthermore,
a Native man who was fishing for a cannery was more likely to get a boat and
fishing gear on loan from the cannery manager if the wife of the fisherman was
adept at can-filling or net-mending. 69 In 1880, an estimated 400 Native
women worked in the Fraser River canneries; by 1895, fully one-third of the
province's canneries were located in the north, particularly on the Skeen.1
River, and these northern canneries relied totally on Native labour,
predominantly f emale.7° Women were hired as can-fillers, fish-cleaners, arid
net-menders, and their children were often hired to clean off the filled can.7 1

MITCHELL.& FRANKLIN

27

In 1892, fishermen on the Fraser could make $600to $1000 per season. 72 Yet,
in 1893, women who cleaned and packed fish made only one dollar to $1.50 a
day, without board, working an average of ten hours per day--for a maximum
of fifteen cents per hour. 73
The Minimum Wage Board did not prescribe a
minimum rate of wages for women in canneries until
1943, although virtually all other industries were
covered. [In that year, the Board] set a minimum rate
of 33 cents per hour. 74
That Indian women did not accept passively the miserable working
conditions, the drudgery, and the meagre wages that befell them as cannery
workers is evidenced by the observations of a cannery supervisor writing in
1891 who described the Klootchmen, as they were called, as "awfully selfwilled," squashing salmon, filling cans with "nothing but back and skin" and
angrily throwing filled cans on the floor and shouting "you work" when he
criticized them. 75 The supervisor also related an incident when a group of
twenty Indian men and twenty-five Indian women cannery workers
flourished their long knives at him in a pretend thrust, watching his face to see
if he were frightened. 76
Agricultural labour was another early source of income for the female
Indian labour force of British Columbia, one deserving of full-scale treatment
on its own. 77 Like cannery work, agricultural work, whether picking fruit,
berries, and flowers or working in the potato and hop fields, meant backbreaking twelve or thirteen-hour days and wages ranging from about one
dollar a day in the late 1800 s to $1.25 an hour in 1971. 78 An interesting
characteristic of agricultural work for Native women has been, until recently,
travel across the border to pick in the United States. A few women were hired
as contractors who arranged for groups of Native pickers to pick fruit or hops
in the States. Cash advances were paid to the workers, and women who were
involved remember bitterly that "once you accepted the advance, you were
hooked. That small advance was the only cash you ever saw, all summer
long." Food had to be purchased at the grower's store, at vastly inflated
prices, using the grower's scrip or food tokens. A single person might earn, at
the turn of the century, a total of ten dollars for the three-week hop-picking
season; women who brought their children along as workers fared better,
earning close to one hundred dollars for the season. 79 Even in 1952,just before
mechanization replaced Native hop-pickers, experienced workers in the
Fraser Valley hop fields could seldom earn more than" ... $7 .50 for an
average thirteen hour day''BO or a total of perhaps $157 .50 for twenty-one days
of work, before deductions for living expenses.
Women, of course, were involved in a number of other wage labour
activities, including the Cowichan knitting industry and tourist art
production, but for the purposes of this essay, only two other factors will be
mentioned. First, during the Depression of the 1930s, it is our impression that
Indian women were often the economic mainstay of their families, not
because of the wages they earned, which were almost non-existent, but
because they were able to return to traditional subsistence pursuits such as the
gathering of plant foods and the collection of shellfish to sustain their children

28

Native Indian Women

and themselves.· A second important point is that a full-scale study of the
history of Indian women in the labour force remains to be done. In his 1978
publication, Indians At Work, Knight bemoans the fact that" ... the scope
and nature of Indian wage labour ... "81 has been little more than a footnote in
the economic history of British Columbia, and yet his discussion of Indian
women's economic participation is reduced to the same footnote status.
Before concluding this essay with a discussion of sources of Indian
women's history, brief mention should be made of the Indian Act and its
effect on Native women. Although this impact has been discussed at length
elsewhere,82 83 84 the consequences, for women of Indian descent, of Sections
(1f' and 12 cannot be underestimated. Not only does Section 12 (1, b)
/ ~y~tematically deprive an Indian woman of her rightful heritage if she marries
a non-Indian man, but also, upon losing her Indian status, she forfeits her
legal rights to live on Indian land, to inherit land or a house on an Indian
reserve, and even to be buried in a reserve cemetery. Moreover, even if she
retains her Indian status by marrying a registered Indian male, she loses
membership and all rights in her natal band if her husband is a member of
another band. 85 In either case, should her marriage dissolve and should she
return, to live illegally on her natal reserve, as a high proportion of separated
and divorced women , do, among family and friends, her housing
accommodation will be precarious, and she will exist either as a floating guest
f: in the already overcrowded homes of relatives or as the inhabitant of a
: condemned house for which no repair monies may be allocated. 86
-..-=---~ Finally, if she chooses to remain unmarried, the Indian status of her
children born out of wedlock may be contested under Section 12 (2). 87
Although rarely used today, up to the 1960s this sub-section enabled Indian
agents to make illicit contracts with one or more White men to claim paternity
of the infant of an unmarried Indian woman whom the agent considered a
trouble-maker or unduly promiscum1s, thus denying the Indian status
, otherwise entitled to her child under Section ll(e). 88
L____
.
.
.
Revisions to the Indian Act do not bode well for Native women, given
the reluctance of Indian men to accord status to women who marry nonIndian men. Even if Sections 11 and 12 are replaced with fair legislation, there·
is
little likelihood that redress will be made to the thousands of women of
1
i Indian descent who have already lost their status through marriage.
\
.. .... .....
,_.
In assessing ·sources for research on the history of Native Indian women,
we concur with Niethammer that the best source of information on Native
women, especially prior to European contact"... would be that obtained
from Native . . . women themselves, "89 but they have left us no written
histories. We must rely, instead, on the accounts of European explorers,
traders, missionaries, and later, anthropologists. Nearly all of these observers
were male, and as such, were concerned primarily with " ... the heady stuff of
male politics and public life. "9o Not only are most of these accounts heavily
biased in favour of men's culture, but also what little information does appear
about Native women is almost entirely gleaned from male Indian informants,
whether the topic be women's participation in aboriginal fishing activities,
women's artistic endeavours-almost always reduced to the status of craftsor childbirth and motherhood. Conscious or unconscious, early European
I

- ... -- ...

I

_,.,;::.:.··:..:...::·.:: ;

.;.....;...-

MITCHELL & FRANKLIN

29

and later Euro-Canadian biases, coupled with male biases on the part of both
reporter and informant, leave little but questionable and often contradictory
reflections about the lives of Indian women. Undoubtedly, some White, male
observers may have spoken with Native women, " .... but we must assume
that the situation of ... [an] Indian woman talking to a white male tended to
colour her story somewhat, perhaps in ways she did not even realize. ''9 1
Women are accustomed to sharing their experiences not only with other
women, but also, and sometimes more frequently, with men, particularly with
male lovers or husbands. Women are accustomed, also, to hearing those men
revising, editing, and reducing the reality of women's experience into
insignificance. For Native women, the issue of their reality is compounded,
particularly by male anthropologists who have inquired of Indian men about
the lives and roles of Indian women. A recent personal experience comes to
mind. In a discussion with a male band council member from a Vancouver
Island reserve about revisions to the Indian Act, the Native male's distortion
of women's reality became very apparent. When Mitchell suggested that the--"!
present Indian Act discriminated very harshly against Native women, the 1
Indian man dismissed her statement by claiming, rather emphatically, that in
the old days, Indian women did have equality with men," .. , because we let
/..ili_em be initiated into the winter dances." Thus, anthropological accounts
screen the real world of Native women, first, through the perception of
Indian men, and then through the perception of the male anthropologist.
Moreover, what Joy Kagawa calls the "blue sky reality''9 2 of women--the
inner essence of female experience--simply has not been a major concern of
anthropology, precisely because males are more comfortable with the public
arena where they seem to conduct much of their own lives.
·1ronically, some of the few real insights into that "blue sky" world of
Native women have come from the often bland and blatantly ethnocentric
archival accounts of pre-anthropological writers. Reading between the lines
of early historical documents, we are able, at least, to pose compelling
questions about the unreliability and capriciousness of Indian school girls,
the status and defensiveness of Indian prostitutes, and the behaviour of "selfwilled" female cannery workers--questions that betray the conventional
image of the Indian woman as a passive, submissive victim, Regrettably,
however, there was little to find between the lines of traditional
anthropological accounts. Indeed, not until publication of Margaret
Blackman's life history of Florence Edenshaw Davidson, a Haida woman,
has the breadth and depth of the life of any British Columbia Native woman
been regarded as " ... inherently worthy of consideration. "93 94
If we_ are ever to understand and share in all the realities of Indian
women, the direction seems clear. The life history method will enable Native
women, at last, to tell their own stories, in their own words and with their own
perceptions and definitions of what it means to be a woman and an Indian.
Our own life history research with five elderly women of the Nanaimo Indian
Band on southeastern Vancouver Island has been a revelation. 95 Not only are
the women able to relate many childhood memories about the more
traditional lives of their grandmothers and mothers, which verify or call into
question material in standard ethnographic accounts for the Coast Salish, but

30

Native Indian Women

they have shared with us their intensely private joys and sorrows, their
humour, anger, and tenacity, and their unlimited capacities for living,
working, and coping in a world that has shown them little but contempt.

MITCHELL & FRANKLIN

31

Footnotes
l. Wilson Duff, The Indian History of British Columbia: Vol. I. The Impact of the
White Man, Anthropology in British Columbia Memoir No. 5 (Victoria, BC:
Provincial Museum, 1964): 12, 15.
2. The choice of Haida and Coast Salish as representative cultures is not entirely
arbitrary. Mitchell has done fieldwork among both groups and Franklin among the
Coast Salish; see n. 95 .
3. Jacob J. Bachofen, Myth, Religion, and Mother Right, trans. Ralph Manheim
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967).
4. Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society, ed. Eleanor Leacock (Cleveland: World
Publishing Co., 1963).
5. Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, ed.
Eleanor Leacock (New York: International Publishers, 1972).
6. Joan Bamberger, "The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in Primitive
Society," Woman, Culture, and Society, eds. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise
Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974): 263-280.
7. Paula Webster, "Matriarchy: A Vision of Power," Toward an Anthropology of
Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975): 141-156.
8. Bamberger, op. cit.: 280.
9. Ibid.
10. Webster, op. cit.: 145
11. Ibid.
12. Anne Cameron, Daughters of Copper Woman (Vancouver: Press Gang
Publishers, 1981).
13. Margaret B. Blackman, During My Time: Florence Edenshav,,· Davidson, A
Haida Woman (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982): 32.
14. Ibid.
15. John R. Swanton, Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida, American
Museum of Natural History, Memoir No. 8 (New York: American Museum of
:-Jatural History, 1909): 50.
16. Blackman, op. cit.: 29.
17. Ibid.: 33.
18. Ibid.: 35.
19. Ibid.: 34.
20. E.g., Joseph Ingraham, Joseph Ingraham 's Journal of the Brigantine Hope on a
Voyage to the Northwest Coast of North America, 1790-92, as cited in Blackman,
During My Time, p. 35; see also Erna Gunther, Indian Life on the Northwest Coast of
North America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972): 133.
21. Blackman, op. cit.: 35-36.
22. Ibid.: 38-39.
23. George Dawson, Report on the Queen Charlotte Islands, Geological Survey of
Canada, Report of the Progress for 1878-79, as cited in Blackman, During My Time,
p. 38.
24. Blackman, op. cit.: 28.
25. Ibid.: 36-37.
26. Edward S. Curtis, The Haida, The North American Indian, XI, p. 142(1916), as
cited by Blackman, During My Time, p. 37.
27. Blackman, op.cit.: 39.
28. Ibid.: 39-40.
29. Homer G. Barnett, The Coast Salish of British Columbia (Eugene: University of
Oregon Press, 1955): 250.

32 Native Indian Women

30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.: 195.
32. Ibid.: 180.
33. Marion W. Smith, The Puyallup-Nisqually (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1940): 139.
34. Barnett,op. cit.: 78.
35. Smith, op. cit.: 75.
36. Robin Fisher, Contact and Conflict, Indian-European Relations in British
Columbia, 1774-1890 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1977),: xiv.
37. Duff, op. cit.: 57.
38. Sylvia Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society in Western
Canada, 1670-1870 (Winnipeg: Watson and Dwyer, 1980).
39. Ibid.: 4.
40. Ibid.: 6.
41. Ibid.
42. Leland Donald, "Was Nuu-chah-nulth-aht (Nootka) Society Based on Slave
Labour?" The Development of Political Organization in Native North America, ed.
Elisabeth Tooker, 1979 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society
(Washington: The American Ethnological Society, 1983): 112.
43. Ibid.; see also, for the Tlingit of southern Alaska, Frederica de Laguna,
"Aboriginal Tlingit Sociopolitical Organization," The Development of Political
Organization in Native North America, ed. Elisabeth Tooker, 1979 Proceedings of the
American Ethnological Society (Washington: The American Ethnological Society,
1983): 81.
44. Fisher, op. cit.: xiv.
45. Ibid.: 124.
46. Duff, op. cit.: 90.
47. Canada, Department of Indian Affairs, "Kuper Island Indian Industrial School
Records 1889-1928, 1935-1938," XL, 1891, p. l. PABC
48. Ibid., 1896, p. 35.
49. Ibid.: 37.
50. Ibid.: 39.
51. Ibid., XLIV, March, 1938.
52. Margaret Whitehead, Now You Are My Brother: Missionaries in British
Columbia, Sound Heritage Series No. 34 (Victoria: Provincial Archives, 1981): 44, 47.
PABC.
53. Canada, Department of Indian Affairs, op. cit.,1-VI, XXXVI-XLIX, passim.
54. Whitehead, op. cit.: 51.
55. Ibid.: 44; 46.
56. Ibid., passim.
57. E.g., Francis Poole, Queen Charlotte Islands: A Narrative of Discovery and
Adventure in the North Pacific, ed. John W. Lyndon(Vancouver: J.J. Douglas, 1972):
313.
58. John R. Jewitt, The Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt, Captive
Among the Nootka, 1803-1805, ed. Derik G. Smith (Toronto: McClelland and
Stewart, 1974): 65.
59. Gilbert M. Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life {London, 1868): 92.
60. Henry R. Wagner and W.A. Newcombe, ed., "TheJournalof Jacinto Camano,"
trans. Capt. Harold Grenfell, R.N., B. C. Historical Quarterly, II ( 1938): 207.
61. Jewitt, op. cit.: 56.

MITCHELL & FRANKLIN

33

62. Blackman, op. cit.: 43.
63. Victoria City Police Department, Charge Books, 1880-1910, MSS (Victoria:
Victoria City Police Archives), passim.
64. Ibid., passim.
65. Wilson Duff, personal communication with Marjorie Mitchell (Victoria, 1975).
66. Victoria City Police Dept., op. cit passim.
67. J.C. Lawrence, "An Historical Account of the Early Salmon Canning Industry
in B.C. 1870-1900," M.A. Thesis (Vancouver: University of British Columbia,
September 1951): 28. PABC.
68. Ibid.: 29.
69. Ibid.: 28.
70. Ibid.: 31, 45.
71. Alfred Carmichael, "Account of a Season's Work at a Salmon Cannery"
unpublished correspondence, 1891. PABC.
72. Lawrence, op. cit.: 65.
73. Ibid.: 65,66.
74. Ibid.: 66, n. 2.
75. Carmichael, op. cit.
76. Ibid.
77. See, for example, Marjorie Mitchell, "Women, Poverty, and Housing: Some
Consequences of Hinterland Status for a Coast Salish Indian Reserve in Metropolitan
Canada, "MS. Ph.D. dss. (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1976).
78. Ibid.: 120-121, 235 ff.
79. Ibid.: 120.
80. Cy Young, "B.C. Hops," Weekend Picture Magazine, Vancouver Daily
Province (October 4, 1952): 25.
81. Rolf Knight, Indians at Work: An Informal History of Native Indian Labour in
British Columbia, 1858-1930 (Vancouver: New Star Books, 1978): 9.
82. Kathleen Jamieson, Indian Women and the Law in Canada: Citizens Minus
(Ottawa: Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1978).
83. Mitchell, "Women, Poverty, and Housing."
84. Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada
(Ottawa: Information Canada, 1970): 237-238.
85. Canada, Office Consolidation: Indian Act, R.S., c. 1-6 amended by c. 10 (2nd
Supp.),1974-75-76, c. 48 (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1978): 6-8.
86. Marjorie Mitchell, "The Indian Act: Social and Cultural Consequences for
Native Women on a British Columbia Reserve," Atlantis, IV, 2 (1979): 186.
87. Canada, Indian Act, p. 7.
88. Mitchell, "Women, Poverty, and Housing," p. 173.
89. Carolyn Niethammer, Daughters of the Earth: The Lives and Legends of
American Indian Women (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1977),: xiii.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid.
92. Joy Kagawa, talk presented to Women in B.C. History Conference, April 27,
1984 (Victoria: Camosun College, 1984); see Joy Kagawa, Obasan, p. 196.
93. Blackman, op. cit.: 6-7.
94. The Days of Augusta, ed. Jean E. Speare (Vancouver: J.J. Douglas, 1973) is an
earlier poetic oral history narrative from the life of Mary Augusta Tappage Evans, a
Shuswap woman of Soda Creek, British Columbia.
95. The Nanaimo Indian Band Cultural Research Project, funded in 1980 by

34 Native Indian Women

National Museums of Man, Canadian Ethnology Service, Urgent Ethnology
Programme, is coordinated by Marjorie Mitchell and includes an Elders' Life History
Project. The life histories of five N anaimo Indian women and one man will eventually
be published by the Nanaimo Indian Band.
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Woman, Culture, and Society, eds. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise
Lamphere. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974.
Barnett, Homer G. The Coast Salish of British Columbia. Eugene: University of
Oregon Press, 1955.
Blackman, Margaret B. During My Time: Florence Edenshaw Davidson, A Haida
Woman. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982.
Cameron, Anne. Daughters of Copper Woman. Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers,
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--------. Personal Communication with Marjorie Mitchell. Victoria, 1975.
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Victoria: Camosun College, 1984.

MITCHELL & FRANKLIN 35

Lawrence, J.C. "An Historical Account of the Early Salmon Canning Industry of
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British Columbia, 1951. PABC
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Women on a British Columbia Reserve," Atlantis, IV, 2, 1979, pp. 179-188.
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Publishing Co., 1963.
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Poole, Francis. Queen Charlotte Islands: A Narrative of Discovery and Adventure in
the North Pacific, ed. John. W. Lyndon. Vancouver: J.J. Douglas, 1972.
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