But... Women are women, right?

 In this play, the reader can enjoy the pilgrimage of seven women from their reserve, Wasaychigan Hill Indian Reserve, in Manitoulin Island, Ontario, to the biggest bingo in the world in Toronto.

These seven women are the protagonists of the story. Yes, seven protagonists, all equal in their importance. And you, dear eurocentric reader, might be saying, what!? Well, it is one the characteristics of Native literature, and we'll see what it means in a second.

The characters are Pelajia Patchnose, Philomena Moosetail, Marie-Adele Starblanket, Annie Cook, Emily Dictionary, Veronique St. Pierre and the lovely Zhaboonigan Peterson.

Again, all women, and this is the point we will be making here. These women exemplify the different themes in the play, adding as well, a very interesting gender perspective to the study of The Rez Sisters.

In the previous entry, we have saying that the play depicts many aspects of Native culture and society, some of the aspects are the sense of community, sexism, womanhood, consumerism, the consequences of the clash with white culture, etc... all of them have to do in one way or another with women, and therefore, ,with gender.

What Highway was proudest about was about the gender perspective of his work because “ it raised public consciousness of an specific segment of the women's community- Indian women and older women at that” (Tomson Highway, from Jennifer Preston, “Weesagediak Begins to Dance: Native Earth Performing Arts Inc.”, The Drama Review 9:1/2 (1987))

Women here have to deal with their situation as women in the reserve as well as in comparison to the dominant white culture that surrounds and affects all of them.

Highway himself was a product of that cultural collision or in more political terms exchange, so this mixture is very present in his text.

Indeed he will be showing us a new image of the Native woman through the several aspects that we'll be discussing here as the themes of The Rez Sisters.

Since we are taking a feminist perspective on a post-colonial text, it is important to talk about what post-colonial feminism is.

Some of you might be thinking, well, feminism is feminism, right? Well, yes and no. According to critic Chandra Talpade Mohanty, in her article “Under Western Eyes, Feminist scholarship and colonial discourse”,

“the critical assumption that all of us of the same gender, across classes and cultures, are somehow socially constituted as a homogeneous group identified prior to the process of analysis. This is an assumption which characterizes much feminist discourse. (…) What blinds women together is a sociological notion of the 'sameness' of their oppression.” (244)

It is true then, that women as a group are oppressed, but since feminist has been mainly constructed by western women, and therefore, they result in the implicit assumption of “the West” as the primary referent in theory and praxis.

The problem appears with the realization of the West being the dominant culture and unconsciously ignoring the situation of women in other cultures and situations, which falls as simple and unnecessarily homogenizing. Mohanty also says that the 'Third World Woman' is” an image which appears arbitrarily constructed, but nevertheless carries with it the authorizing signature of Western humanist discourse.” (242)

Do you remember when I said that the Natives were writing their own story?, The same point can be made referring to Native women, whose situation must be considered as different and studies as such. Because, as Mohanty states, “Sisterhood cannot be assumed on the basis of gender; it must be formed in concrete, historical and political practice and analysis.” (244)

This has been a short introduction about the perspective with which these type of texts should be approached, and also the approach I'll be taking to the comment of The Rez Sisters.